Investigation: When will there no longer be glaciers in Glacier National Park?

• Build skills and gain experience in analyzing and interpreting real geologic data

This activity is meant to follow a discussion of glaciers and their effects on alpine landscapes. See the course description, including links to all of the other teaching activities for this course. on the Geology of the National Parks.

For more recent data on the Grinnell Glacier, students can use Google Earth imagery, USGS repeat photographs, or images from the Glaciers of the American West. Integrating data from various sources and deriving quantitative data from imagery can add to the skills students will develop in this exercise.

The activity report can be completed individually or as a group and should be a summary of the Investigation Question, the process for answering it and what that answer was. The report should be concise (less than 2 pages, typed) and should answer each of the major questions asked in the activity sheet.

Image of the extent of the Grinnell Glacier from 1850 to 1993. Click on the image to view a larger version. Image from the USGS.

• Johnson, Arthur (1980). Grinnell and Sperry glaciers, Glacier National Park, Montana; a record of vanishing ice. USGS Professional Paper 1180
• Glacier Retreat in Glacier National Park, Montana
  By Carl H. Key, Daniel B. Fagre, and Richard K. Menicke, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386–J–2. Contains a similar figure, but it's a map instead of an aerial photo
• Grinnell Glacier from Mt. Gould 1938 - 2009 - repeat photography from the USGS. Several other images sets of the Grinnell Glacier are available from the navigation menu.
• Grinnell Glacier imagery photos from 1901 through 2009, from Glaciers of the American West
• Gigapan image of the Grinnell Glacier from North Moraine, photographed August 2010
• See the related activity, Glacier (?) National Park

Quantiative Skills Addressed

Geoscience Topics Covered