From Virginia Tech, a surprising study showing some biological benefit of melting glaciers.
Glacier melt adds ancient edibles to marine buffet
Glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are enriching stream and near shore marine ecosystems from a surprising source – ancient carbon contained in glacial runoff, researchers from four universities and the U.S. Forest Service report in the December 24, 2009, issue of the journal Nature*.
In spring 2008, Eran Hood, associate professor of hydrology with the Environmental Science Program at the University of Alaska Southeast, set out to measure the nutrients that reach the gulf from five glaciated watersheds he can drive to from his Juneau office. “We don’t currently have much information about how runoff from glaciers may be contributing to productivity in downstream marine ecosystems. This is a particularly critical question given the rate at which glaciers along the Gulf of Alaska are thinning and receding” said Hood.
Hood then asked former graduate school colleague Durelle Scott, now an assistant professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech, to help analyze the organic matter and nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) loads being exported from the Juneau-area study watersheds. “Because there are few reports of nutrient yields from glacial watersheds, Eran and I decided to compare the result from a non-glacial watershed with those of a watershed partially covered by a glacier and a watershed fully covered by a glacier,” said Scott.
 |
||||
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
  IMAGE: A glacier river plume enters the marine environment in Berner’s Bay near Juneau, Alaska.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
||||
Hood and Scott’s initial findings, reported in the September 2008 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience (http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n9/abs/ngeo280.html), presented something of a mystery. As might be expected, there is more organic matter from a forested watershed than from a fully or partially glacier-covered watershed. With soil development, organic matter is transported from the landscape during runoff events. However, there was still a considerable amount of organic carbon exported from the glaciated landscape.
How can a glacier be a source of the organic carbon? His curiosity peeked [sic], in spring 2009, Hood’s Ph.D. student, Jason Fellman, collected samples from 11 watersheds along the Gulf of Alaska from Juneau to the Kenai Peninsula. The samples were analyzed to determine the age, source, and biodegradability of organic matter derived from glacier inputs.
“We found that the more glacier there is in the watershed, the more carbon is bioavailable. And the higher the percentage of glacier coverage, the older the organic material is – up to 4,000 years old,” said Scott.
Hood and Scott hypothesize that forests that lived along the Gulf of Alaska between 2,500 to 7,000 years ago were covered by glaciers, and this organic matter is now coming out. “The organic matter in heavily glaciated watersheds is labile, like sugar. Microorganisms appear to be metabolizing ancient carbon and as the microorganisms die and decompose, biodegradable dissolved organic carbon is being flushed out with the glacier melt,” said Scott.
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 IMAGE: Researchers measured the nutrient content of subglacial outflow from the Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska, seen here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
How much? “Our findings suggest that runoff from glaciers may be a quantitatively important source of bioavailable organic carbon for coastal ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska and, as a result, future changes in glacier extent may impact the food webs in this region that support some of the most productive fisheries in the United States,” said Hood.
*The article, “Glaciers as a source of ancient, labile organic matter to the marine environment,” was authored by Hood; Fellman, now at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Robert G.M. Spencer and Peter J. Hernes of the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California Davis; Rick Edwards and David D’Amore of the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the U.S.D.A. Forest Service in Juneau, and Scott.
The research is supported by Scott and Hood’s three-year grant from National Science Foundation to study the impact of Alaska’s melting glaciers on the transport and fate of nutrients in coastal watersheds in the Gulf of Alaska.
Also as part of the NSF-funded research, this past summer, Scott and his Ph.D. student, Michael Nassry of Hopwood, Pa., along with biological systems engineering senior Andrew Jeffery of Fairfax, Va., who was doing a 10-week undergraduate research study with Hood, conducted the first hydrologic tracer experiment on a supraglacial stream — a stream entirely on top of the glacier. The helicopter company Northstar provided complimentary transportation to the base camp on the Mendenhall Glacier, where the team injected a salt, reactive nitrogen, and phosphorus over a 150 meter range, then collected water samples over a five-hour period. “At the end of the experiment, the helicopters were no longer flying, which provided the opportunity to sleep on top of the glacier,” said Scott. Samples from this experiment are still being analyzed, and initial findings will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union December 14-18 in San Francisco.
Learn more about Eran Hood’s research at http://www.uas.alaska.edu/dir/ewhood.html
Learn more about Durelle Scott’s research at https://filebox.vt.edu/users/dscott/web/
Totally OT but quite amusing!
http://xkcd.com/681_large/
Might have a slight application for water flowing down?
lol
“It’s so nice to transport you today, you’re such a well-behaved passenger. That color looks good on you. You packed your equipment so nicely, and it fits well in my cargo compartment. Thanks for choosing a day with such good weather.”
“crosspatch (18:28:21) :
In many cases what is happening at the face of the glacier is an indication of what has happened over the past 50 years or more and might not be an indication of what is happening overall at the current time. ”
For some reason the BBC never mentioned that when talking about retreating glaciers. Thanks for this comment! WUWT is full of amazing insights for me!
1. If NSF had only known that something positive could have come out of the study, they would have turned down the grant application. I guess you can’t just assume that a proposal studying melting glaciers is going to be AGW friendly.
2. “George E. Smith (15:14:39) :
….But his curiosity could also have peaked, after which he just got bored with the whole thing…”
Oh I like that one, because you get two for the price of one spelling, as in, “when he was bored, his curiosity would have been peaked.” (2 syllables)
It’s good to see some healthy debate going on in these pages. Among other things, it demonstrates how little we know, and how much we need to know, expecially when it comes to scales and rates and regionalization. At the last glacial maximum (approx. 20K years ago) about one-third of Earth’s land surface was covered by ice. Today it’s close to ten percent. We have a pretty good idea of sea ice extent now, but as for the last major glaciation the debate rages on and it involves very important things like sea aurface temperatures, albedo and heat exchange, ocean-atmosphere gas interactions and biological productivity. Were the equatorial oceans as warm then as they are today? Or not? It makes a big difference and it’s still in doubt. There are a host of feedback mechanisms, positive and negative, that have to be doped out, including sea level changes and their effects on continental shelf productivity, hydrostatic pressure on hydrothermal vents, the oceanic and atmospheric circulations, etc. Let the games begin!
The contribution of nitrates in the Antarctic ice sheet to the productivity of the surrounding ocean has been studied and estimates are included in another Va Tech study (1978):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v271/n5646/abs/271651a0.html
Antarctica has hosted lush forests and vegetation in the past per an article 6/3/09 New Scientist (Nature was mentioned as a journal reference). Most people here probably know of this. According to other government funded research outlets, this planet has at times been completely free of ice (before automobiles existed). Since everyone knows this, they know the earth will keep changing anyway (which I do not assume it is to the extent they’re saying) but it takes thousands if not millions of years. Why can’t someone stop the whole global warming agenda by reminding people of the history of the planet? Someone needs to get this in front of the media 24/7.
Holy cow, what is surprising about the benefits of a melting glacier for life? Have you tried to live under a glacier, whether you are a mammal or anything else?
The only benefit of a glacier could be for animals like polar bears who love to swim in cold water but who want to return to a firm ground often. This could be fixed by giving them a few thousand big floating boats for a few thousand dollars each.
Everything else would obviously be benefits. Unfortunately, don’t expect too much of this melt.
So if I have understood correctly, there are positive outcomes to warming and glacial loss. Very interesting. This does not sound to me like the politically-correct outcome-based science current these days. Hope these pople are getting decent funding, their work looks particularly interesting.
piquant adj. 1 agreeably pungent, sharp, or appetizing. 2 pleasantly stimulating to the mind. piquancy n. [French piquer prick]
pique —v. (piques, piqued, piquing) 1 wound the pride of, irritate. 2 arouse (curiosity, interest, etc.). —n. resentment; hurt pride. [French: related to *piquant]
OED (which we treat as standard for engineering work over here)
I guess Al’s curiosity in this topic will be peaking quite soon.
If you look at the longest living tribes/populations on earth often the commonality is they water their food crops with glacial milk – the nutrient rich waters that run from glaciers
“Can I encourage others to click on the link below, and add their comments to the Daily Telegraph story?
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/dying-for-a-chat-with-kevin-rudd/comments-e6freuy9-1225814235842 ”
I did. Looks very important. Mr.Spencer is serious about dieing or winning, 37 days into a fast, he might do both.
I guess if you have a run of papers like this one, then if the cooling comes the next scare is ‘global cooling: HELP!’
“Glaciers. Glaciers.
Get your crunchy, nutritious glaciers.
$50 a pound. Only $50 a pound.”
[quieter] “Only $20 to you madam.”
Crosspatch you are right that the terminus does not always reflect volume change above. That is why mass balance is the gold standard for glacier change. Global mass balance has been negative for the last 17 years running based on glaciers with 30 year records and all glaciers monitored. The glaciers with 30+ year records were not cherry picked as most were selected for or shortly after the 1957 IPY.
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/
We have measured the mass balance of the Lemon Creek Glacier, right near the Mendenhall Glacier for over 50 years and the trend is negative and it is retreating just as are all but one outlet glacier of the Juneau Icefield.
http://www.nichols.edu/departments/Glacier/Lemon.html
The exception is the Taku Glacier.
What is more important is that we must observe the upper reaches of a glacier as well as the terminus. The upper reaches is the accumulation zone, income area, for the glacier, no accumulation zone, and a glacier will not survive.
http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/helm-glacier-melting-away/
When I began work at age 15 as a rural contract labourer in New Zealand, one of the older Maori blokes who was teaching me how to build farm fences remarked during the early Autumn
“Winter is going to be really wet this year – the ducks are nesting much higher than usual.”
His forecast was right; we had a miserable winter with record floods.
I remember much of the simple weather knowledge I learnt as a youth from men who had no knowledge of science but were wonderfully observant. Most of them could predict in broad terms with fair reliability – more accurate than our met service then – a season in advance and based many of their forcasts on a combination of 7-year weather cycles and the behaviour of wild life.
And I really enjoy Grandpa Bear; this would make a wonderful children’s book, with suitable illustrations, as it is as relevant as anything Aesop ever wrote.
Gosh, this gives me such a great idea. Take all the warmers, starting with Algore, lead them on a walk about across the glacial crevasse fields, and eventually they will really be contributing to carbon recycling!
Charles. U. Farley (15:19:57) :
“Isn’t nature unpredictable and wondrous?”
Word!
🙂
Say, does anyone know if there are dietary supplements containing such nutrients? I think I remember reading once about using fertilizers consisting of gravel dust.
I have to ask…how is “organic” carbon different from “non-organic” carbon? 🙂
rickM:
None. Carbon is an element. Atomic Number 6.
Some of the contributors have thoughtfully alerted us to another sortie from the collapsing fortress of the Globo-cops who want to panic us into doing what they want. Yes, it’s those melting glaciers again which will force us to climb aboard their Ark (but only two by two). They especially hate the science of ice, that is, glaciology, so let’s take a look at it.
A Coast Guard icebreaker skipper I once knew wrote a book called “Ice Is Where You Find It”. Actually, it’s all around us. The “cryosphere” of frozen water interacts with the rest of the hydrosphere, the lithosphere, the atmosphere and the biosphere. It includes those photogenic valley glaciers that Mr. Gore likes to pose next to as if it were a crime scene, but they are a very small part of the picture. There are snowfields, icefields, ice caps, ice sheets (including Antarctica, which even James Hansen admits is getting colder in parts) ice shelves, lake and sea ice (that in the Antarctic is inconveniently expanding), river ice, permafrost (terrestrial and submarine), and the many forms of atmospheric ice. The latter include snow, hail, sleet, freezing rain, ice fog, and those beautiful cirrus clouds overhead. Much of our ordinary rain starts as ice crystals (the Bergeron process). If you are heading into an ice storm, a common occurrence lately, it would be advisable to have a glaciologist with you rather than Mr. Gore or Dr. Hansen.
Where is most of the ice? About 96 percent of the glaciated area (even more of the actual volume of ice) is in the polar ice sheets, and most of that is in the stable East Antarctic region. About 0.8 percent is in central Asia (Hindu Kush – anyone checking the Afghan glaciers lately, between fire fights?- Karakorum, Himalayas, Tien Shan, Pamir, etc.); and about 0.3 percent is in Alaska, including the Mendenhall Glacier in the story above.
Of course, these glaciers are only a part of the cryosphere and it is a part of the hydrosphere, which runs continuously through the complex dynamics of the hydrologic cycle.