EXAMINING GLACIER HEALTH USING ELA FROM HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS, 1948-1994, SOUTHCENTRAL/SOUTHEAST, ALASKA

Historical photographs for 27 glaciers in Southcentral/Southeast Alaska were examined to gauge the relative health of this region’s glaciers over the past half century. Snow lines were transferred from the photographs to topographic maps, and then digitized. The snow line altitude was adjusted for the date of the photograph to the equilibrium line altitude (ELA). The ELA’s did not show a distinct trend in time and a isoline map of the geographic distribution of ELA’s could not be created because there was not a sufficient density of points. The glaciers of the Chugach region showed a correlation between ELA and latitude.