Columbia GlacierPhotograph by James Balog
Massive Columbia Glacier, photographed here in June 2006, wends its way through western Alaska's Chugach Mountains. The bald streak at the bottom of the mountains, called the trimline, shows this glacier has lost 1,300 feet (400 meters) of thickness since its maximum in 1984. It has also retreated 10.5 miles (17 kilometers) since that time.
After the last camera is collected in the summer of 2009, Extreme Ice Survey founder James Balog will begin to stitch the hundreds of thousands of images together into a multimedia educational package, a documentary, and a traveling exhibition—all designed to draw attention to global warming. |