Bering Glacier is a

glacier A glacier (; or ) is a persistent body of dense ice, a form of rock, that is constantly moving downhill under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. It currently terminates in

Vitus Lake Vitus Lake is a lake in Alaska. It is long and wide. It is named for Vitus Bering, leader of the 1741 expedition to Alaska. Vitus Lake forms the southern limit of the Bering Lobe, outlets via the Seal River to the Gulf of Alaska. Legends It i ...

south of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, about from the

Gulf of Alaska The Gulf of Alaska ( Tlingit: ''Yéil T'ooch’'') is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the ...

. Combined with the Bagley Icefield, where the snow that feeds the glacier accumulates, the Bering is the largest glacier in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. The glacier is named after

Vitus Bering Vitus Jonassen Bering ( , , ; baptised 5 August 1681 – 19 December 1741),All dates are here given in the Julian calendar, which was in use throughout Russia at the time. also known as Ivan Ivanovich Bering (), was a Danish-born Russia ...

Glacier retreat and earthquakes

Warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation over the past century have thinned the Bering Glacier by several thousand meters. Since 1900 the terminus has retreated as much as . The Bering Glacier exhibits "surges", acceleration events of the flow rate of the glacier, every 20 years or so. During these periods the glacier terminus advances. The surges are generally followed by periods of retreat, so despite the periodic advances the glacier has been shrinking overall. Most glaciers along the Alaskan coast have been retreating along with the Bering Glacier.''Bering Glacier: Interdisciplinary Studies of Earth's Largest Temperate Surging Glacier'' Publisher:

Geological Society of America The Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences. History The society was founded in Ithaca, New York, in 1888 by Alexander Winchell, John J. Stevenson, Charles H. Hi ...

February 1, 2010 ,. The glacial retreat has an interesting side effect, an increase in the frequency of earthquakes in the region. The Wrangell and Saint Elias mountain ranges that spawn the Bering Glacier were created by the collision of the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

and

North American North America is a continent in the Northern and Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the sou ...

tectonic plates (the Pacific Plate is being subducted underneath the North American Plate). The weight of the vast amount of ice in the Bering Glacier is enough to depress the Earth's crust, stabilizing the boundary between the two plates. As the glaciers lose mass, the pressure of the ice is diminished. This reduced compression allows the rocks along faults to move more freely, resulting in more earthquakes. Scientists from the Michigan Tech Research Institute, working with

U.S. Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on March ...

and U.S. Bureau of Land Management, have recently discovered that the glacier is releasing approximately of water a year, more than twice the amount of water in the entire

Colorado River The Colorado River () is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and in northern Mexico. The river, the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), 5th longest in the United St ...

.Bering Glacier Melting Faster Than Scientists Thought
Newswise, Retrieved on August 24, 2008. Meltwater at the terminus collects in Vitus Lake, which flows via the Seal River to the Gulf of Alaska.Bering Glacier
National Forest Service,

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commerc ...

References

External links

NASA Earth Observatory

www.beringglacier.org

CAC (Civil Applications Committee)/USGS Global Fiducials Program web page containing scientific description and interactive map viewer featuring declassified high-resolution time-series imagery
Glaciers of Alaska Glaciers of Chugach Census Area, Alaska Glaciers of Unorganized Borough, Alaska Glaciers of Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska {{ChugachAK-geo-stub

Glacier retreat and earthquakes

See also

References

External links