This summer, for the first time in Glacier National Park's 100-year history, Gem Glacier was entirely snow-free, a glistening sheet of bare ice sweating dark and blue under a relentless sun.
Many miles away, a bubbling mountain stream turned to a trickle, fading finally, underground. It was one of many streambeds that dried up this year, and one of many more to come. "There's still water down there under the cobble," Dan Fagre said of that stream, "but it's not so good if you're a fish."
Fagre, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, has been monitoring Glacier's glaciers for years, studying the many implications of retreating ice and snow. This summer's disappearing streams, he said, are but the latest signs of a rapidly changing climate driving an equally rapidly changing park system.
For years, he said, scientists monitored streamflows throughout Glacier National Park, and lately he's put a renewed emphasis on that historic work. Fagre knew the glaciers were thawing out, knew streams would be running full with all the melt water, and so he set out to track the runoff.
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