Page 15 - Flathead Beacon // 3.26.14

FLATHEADBEACON.COM
IN DEPTH
MARCH 26, 2014 | 15

Research ecologist Dan
Fagre talks about climate
change in Northwest
Montana on March 20.
GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON

ing snowpack, alpine climate, vegeta-
tion and avalanches. Just a few weeks

ago, Fagre and his team went to Apgar to
gather snow samples to send to a lab in
Denver as part of an ongoing snow study
in the western parks. Fagre said by melt-
ing snow, scientists have found diferent
atmospheric pollutants, including some
chemicals that have been banned in the

United States, like Dichlorodiphenyltri-
chloroethane, also known as DDT. The
chemical is still in use in parts of Asia
As Temperatures Rise, A and Fagre said the pollutant can travel
through Trans-Paciic weather patterns
to our region.
“It shows you that even though you
‘Teaching Moment’ Arises in Glacier
have a very large park that is protected,

just like ours, it’s still touched by what-
ever is happening around it,” he said.
More than two decades after arriving in Glacier National Park, Perhaps no one within the National
Park Service is as familiar with climate
Dan Fagre is one of the foremost scientists studying climate change than Glacier Superintendent Jef
Mow. Prior to coming to Montana, Mow
change in one of America’s most iconic landscapes
was the chief of Kenai Fjords National
Park, a site on the front lines of climate

change in Alaska. Mow said the most
important thing for the Park Service is y JUSTIN FRANZ of the Beacon
from the University of California, Davis, major address on climate change. Fagre B
to reduce its own carbon footprint and Wwith a doctorate in animal ecology and said what surprised him the most about
educate people on the changes ahead.
EST GLACIER – Twenty-two
behavior and came to Glacier National the visit, and resulting media attention,
During his tenure at Kenai Fjords, years ago, when Dan Fagre
Park a year after Congress passed the was how interested people were in the
the iconic Exit Glacier disappeared.
irst walked up to the Grin- Global Change Research Act of 1990. before-and-after photos of the glaciers.
“We’re heading into a period of less nell Glacier, its icy mass towered over- The act mandated that federal agencies “We were pretty surprised when

and less certainty of what the world will head. Today, it’s about as high as his
study the impact of climate change.
people kept focusing on the pictures of
look like and you have to learn to be knees.
In Glacier, Fagre was tasked with the glaciers and not the actual data,”
comfortable with that,” Mow said.
Grinnell is one of the few glaciers
setting up what would eventually be- Fagre said. “We then realized that it was
For Fagre, now in his 23rd year in that still exists inside the 1 million acres come the USGS’ Climate Change in a very powerful way to show the impact
Glacier, those uncertainties are what of Glacier National Park. But just be- Mountain Ecosystems program. The of climate change.”
bring him back to his oice in a small cause Grinnell and the other glaciers national parks were selected as labora- Since then, Fagre and his small staf
house behind park headquarters in West ind shelter inside the preserve doesn’t tories for climate change because they have put a lot of efort into repeat pho-
Glacier. Fagre said the study of climate mean they are not endangered. In fact, have been relatively unchanged by hu- tography of the glaciers and the images

change has brought about some amazing due to rising temperatures, scientists mans. Glacier in particular was selected have been shared around the world. But
discoveries about mountain ecosystems believe the park’s namesake bodies because of its namesake, which accord- USGS scientists also measure and moni-
that may not have happened otherwise. of ice will be gone in a few decades. In ing to Fagre, “act like a checking account tor glaciers, and every June Fagre and
As he sat in his oice, he lipped through 1850, it’s estimated that there were 150 for the climate.” Unlike plants or ani- his team venture to Sperry Glacier to see
yet another climate change report that glaciers inside the park; today there are mals, which can be sickened by disease how it has changed. While most years
had come out a few days earlier.
just 25. Fagre, a research ecologist for or impacted in other ways, glaciers only they have documented the glacier’s re-
“The questions pile up much faster the U.S. Geological Survey, says it is one respond to changes in the climate.
treat, Fagre said there have been a few

than answers and the more you study of the most visual examples of climate In the mid-1880s, there was an esti- years where the glacier stabilized or
the more you start asking questions change in the continental United States.
mated 40 square miles of ice in the park; grew. However, it’s not enough to make
about this, that and the other. It’s an “It’s a teaching moment,” Fagre said. today there are about ive square miles, up for what was already lost and Sperry
endlessly fascinating story,” he said. “Because within a few decades the gla- according to Fagre. In order for a body is expected to be gone within a few de-
“We’ve illed in an awful lot of the story, ciers that have been here for 7,000 years of ice to be considered a glacier it must cades.
but like a good detective novel, there are will be gone.”
be at least 25 acres in size and be slowly But Fagre’s work goes beyond melt-
still some twists and turns and that’s Fagre is one of the nation’s leading sliding toward sea level.
ing ice, and in the last decade the USGS’
what keeps you turning the pages. It’s climate change scientists and has writ- The melting glaciers garnered na- mission in the park has been geared

what keeps me out there working.”
ten three books and dozens of articles tional attention in 1997, when then-Vice toward studying climate change’s im-
[email protected]
and papers on the matter. He graduated
President Al Gore visited the park for a
pact on mountain ecosystems, includ-