‘When the Glaciers Disappear, Those Species Will Go Extinct’
Apr 18 2019 | 04:04:06
As glaciers shrink, the melting is disrupting habitats for everything from bacteria to fish.
Scientists are racing to understand the changes.
‘When the Glaciers Disappear, Those Species Will Go Extinct’
Henry Fountain,
a New York Times climate reporter, and Max Whittaker, a photographer,
traveled to the Pacific Northwest and Alaska to see how glacial melting
is affecting the natural world. Map by Jeremy White.
April 17, 2019
When it was built in the early 1900s, the road
into Mount Rainier National Park from the west passed near the foot of
the Nisqually Glacier, one of the mountain’s longest. Visitors could
stop for ice cream at a stand built among the glacial boulders and gaze
in awe at the ice.
The glacier now ends more than a mile farther up the mountain.
As surely as they are melting elsewhere around the world, glaciers are disappearing in North America, too.
This great melting will affect ecosystems and
the creatures within them, like the salmon that spawn in meltwater
streams. This is on top of the effects on the water that billions of
people drink, the crops they grow and the energy they need.
Glacier-fed ecosystems are delicately balanced,
populated by species that have adapted to the unique conditions of the
streams. As glaciers shrink and meltwater eventually declines, changes
in water temperature, nutrient content and other characteristics will
disrupt those natural communities.
“Lots of these ecosystems have evolved with the
glaciers for thousands of years or maybe longer,” said Jon Riedel, a
geologist with the National Park Service who has established glacier
monitoring programs at Rainier and other parks.