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Introduction to 1977-1982 Brooks Range Research
This section of the website is included as a resource to those interested in baseline data from 1977 to 1982 for glaciers and rock glaciers in the Brooks Range of northern Alaska. My objective is to keep the light of day on this baseline work and on the Brooks Range - so someone, somewhere will be encouraged to use remote sensing, GIS, and field work to revisit the landforms to report on what is happening now that we are in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century. More information and data can be obtained by contacting James Ellis via email.
During 1977-1982, I hiked across the Brooks Range of northern Alaska with Dr. Parker Calkin and graduate students from University of Buffalo, Department of Geological Sciences. A pdf of the presentation slides presented at the 2008 NE GSA Conference summarizes the glacial mapping story - and discusses recommended future work.
Field Site Maps page: Data were collected in four areas: east-central Brooks Range (centered about Atigun Pass and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline), Arrigetch Peaks, Anatuvuk Pass, and Northeastern Brooks Range.
Change Detection page: Maps and photographs comparing the extent of some glaciers during 1977-1982 to more recent years are shown here.
Survey Maps page: I visited and created maps of many cirque glaciers and rock glaciers, compiled physical data on each landform, and surveyed 3 glaciers and 2 rock glaciers with a theodolite and stadia rod with the help of Steve Walti, Michael Bruen, Tom Lowell, and Parker Calkin.
Google Earth page: Regional maps of the 4 study areas and Landsat images are formatted to display in Virtual Earths, such as Google Earth and ArcGIS Earth. Zips of .kmz files are on this webpage. Download the zip, open the .kmz and the GIS layers will display in Google Earth. You can fade the map over the image. At each glacier there will be a posting with a ground photograph from 1977-1982 and physical characteristics listed. Publications page: Publications are provided as pdfs, links or references on this webpage. The goal of this 40+ year-old collection is to provide curious people easy access to papers that can be difficult to find and view for those outside of academia and research agencies. Shawnee A. Kasanke was awarded a M.Sc., University of Alaska, Fairbanks in June 2019 based on her Arctic-Alpine vegetation research in the Atigun Pass area, in and around Grizzly Glacier, under the guidance of Dr. D.A. "Skip" Walker, Director, Alaska Geobotany Center. The image on the Change Detection webpage shows Grizzly Glacier in 1978 and in 2017. The cirque glacier has melted away! Alarming, rapidly changing climate is documented by the glaciers in the Brooks Range.
Google Earth page: Regional maps of the 4 study areas and Landsat images are formatted to display in Virtual Earths, such as Google Earth and ArcGIS Earth. Zips of .kmz files are on this webpage. Download the zip, open the .kmz and the GIS layers will display in Google Earth. You can fade the map over the image. At each glacier there will be a posting with a ground photograph from 1977-1982 and physical characteristics listed. Publications page: Publications are provided as pdfs, links or references on this webpage. The goal of this 40+ year-old collection is to provide curious people easy access to papers that can be difficult to find and view for those outside of academia and research agencies. Shawnee A. Kasanke was awarded a M.Sc., University of Alaska, Fairbanks in June 2019 based on her Arctic-Alpine vegetation research in the Atigun Pass area, in and around Grizzly Glacier, under the guidance of Dr. D.A. "Skip" Walker, Director, Alaska Geobotany Center. The image on the Change Detection webpage shows Grizzly Glacier in 1978 and in 2017. The cirque glacier has melted away! Alarming, rapidly changing climate is documented by the glaciers in the Brooks Range.
Click-on the text above to see the pdf (98 slides). A 40 minute video is available by request. The video is in .mp4 format and is 189 MB unzipped (153 MB zipped). The video would be delivered via Dropbox. It is too big for this website to handle.
