Ice fields of the world
North America
One of the more celebrated North American ice fields is the Columbia Icefield located in the Rocky Mountains between Jasper and Banff, Alberta. Easy access by road contributes to the status of this ice field as one of the most visited in North America, although it is actually a comparatively small ice field within the huge and largely ice-free American cordillera.
Many particularly expansive ice fields lie in the Coast Mountains, Alaska Range, and Chugach Mountains of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory. The 6,500 km2 Stikine Icecap (located between the Stikine and Taku Rivers) and the 2,500 km2 Juneau Icefield (located between Lynn Canal and the Taku River) both straddle the British Columbian-Alaskan border. Farther north, the Kluane Icecap — which feeds the immense Malaspina and Hubbard Glaciers as well as the Bagley Icefield — sits upon the British Columbia-Yukon Territory-Alaska border and surrounds most of the Saint Elias Mountains as well as both Mount Saint Elias and Mount Logan; it extends as far west as the Copper River.
There are also large ice fields located in the Kenai Peninsula-Chugach Mountains area, such as the Sargent Icefield and the Harding Icefield. Throughout the Alaska Range there also large icefields (including one surrounding Denali) which are mostly unnamed.
The Coast Mountains are a major mountain range in the Pacific Coast Ranges of western North America, extending from southwestern Yukon through the Alaska Panhandle and virtually all of the Coast of British Columbia south to the Fraser River. The mountain range's name derives from its proximity to the sea coast, and it is often referred to as the Coast Range. The range includes volcanic and non-volcanic mountains and the extensive ice fields of the Pacific and Boundary Ranges, and the northern end of the volcanic system known as the Cascade Volcanoes. The Coast Mountains are part of a larger mountain system called the Pacific Coast Ranges or the Pacific Mountain System, which includes the Cascade Range, the Insular Mountains, the Olympic Mountains, the Oregon Coast Range, the California Coast Ranges, the Saint Elias Mountains and the Chugach Mountains. The Coast Mountains are also part of the American Cordillera—a Spanish term for an extensive chain of mountain ranges—that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western backbone of North America, Central America, South America and Antarctica.
The Pacific Coast Ranges are the series of mountain ranges that stretch along the West Coast of North America from Alaska south to Northern and Central Mexico. Although they are commonly thought to be the westernmost mountain range of the continental United States and Canada, the geologically distinct Insular Mountains of Vancouver Island lie farther west.
Kluane National Park and Reserve are two protected areas in the southwest corner of the territory of Yukon. The National Park Reserve was set aside in 1972 to become a national park, pending settlement of First Nations land claims. It covered an area of 22,013 square kilometres. When agreement was reached with the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations over an eastern portion of the Reserve, that part—about 5,900 square kilometres —became a national park in 1993, and is a unit of the national park system administered co-operatively with Parks Canada. The larger western section remains a Reserve, awaiting a final land claim settlement with the Kluane First Nation. The park borders British Columbia to the south, while the Reserve borders both British Columbia to the south, and the United States (Alaska) to the south and west.
The Saint Elias Mountains are a subgroup of the Pacific Coast Ranges, located in southeastern Alaska in the United States, Southwestern Yukon and the very far northwestern part of British Columbia in Canada. The range spans Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in the United States and Kluane National Park and Reserve in Canada and includes all of Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska. In Alaska, the range includes parts of the city/borough of Yakutat and the Hoonah-Angoon and Valdez-Cordova census areas.
The Stikine River is a major river in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada and southeastern Alaska in the United States. It drains a large, remote upland area known as the Stikine Country east of the Coast Mountains. Flowing west and south for 610 kilometres (379 mi), it empties into various straits of the Inside Passage near Wrangell, Alaska. About 90 percent of the river's length and 95 percent of its drainage basin are in Canada. Considered one of the last truly wild large rivers in BC, the Stikine flows through a variety of landscapes including boreal forest, steep canyons and wide glacial valleys.
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is an American national park located in Southeast Alaska west of Juneau. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed the area around Glacier Bay a national monument under the Antiquities Act on February 26, 1925. Subsequent to an expansion of the monument by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) enlarged the national monument by 523,000 acres on December 2, 1980, and created Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The national preserve encompasses 58,406 acres of public land to the immediate northwest of the park, protecting a portion of the Alsek River with its fish and wildlife habitats, while allowing sport hunting.
Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve is an American national park and preserve managed by the National Park Service in south central Alaska. The park and preserve were established in 1980 by the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The protected areas are included in an International Biosphere Reserve and are part of the Kluane/Wrangell–St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek UNESCO World Heritage Site. The park and preserve form the largest area managed by the National Park Service with a total of 13,175,799.07 acres, an expanse larger than nine U.S. states and around the same size as Bosnia and Herzegovina or Croatia. 8,323,147.59 acres are designated as the national park, and the remaining 4,852,652.14 acres are designated as the preserve. The area designated as the national park alone is larger than the 47 smallest American national parks combined and is more than twice the size of all but two other national parks. Its area makes up over 15% of all national park designated land in the United States.
The Alsek River is a wilderness river flowing from Yukon into Northern British Columbia and into Alaska. It enters the Gulf of Alaska at Dry Bay.
Yukon is in the northwestern corner of Canada and is bordered by Alaska and the Northwest Territories. The sparsely populated territory abounds with natural scenery, snowmelt lakes and perennial white-capped mountains, including many of Canada's highest mountains. The territory's climate is Arctic in territory north of Old Crow, subarctic in the region, between Whitehorse and Old Crow, and humid continental climate south of Whitehorse and in areas close to the British Columbia border. Most of the territory is boreal forest with tundra being the main vegetation zone only in the extreme north and at high elevations.
Tatshenshini-Alsek Park or Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Wilderness Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada 9,580 km2 (3,700 sq mi). It was established in 1993 after an intensive campaign by Canadian and American conservation organizations to halt mining exploration and development in the area, and protect the area for its strong natural heritage and biodiversity values.
The Boundary Ranges, also known in the singular and as the Alaska Boundary Range, are the largest and most northerly subrange of the Coast Mountains. They begin at the Nass River, near the southern end of the Alaska Panhandle in the Canadian province of British Columbia and run to the Kelsall River, near the Chilkoot Pass, beyond which are the Alsek Ranges of the Saint Elias Mountains, and northwards into the Yukon Territory flanking the west side of the Yukon River drainage as far as Champagne Pass, north of which being the Yukon Ranges. To their east are the Skeena Mountains and Stikine Plateau of the Interior Mountains complex that lies northwest of the Interior Plateau; the immediately adjoining subregion of the Stikine Plateau is the Tahltan Highland. To their northeast is the Tagish Highland, which is a subregion of the Yukon Plateau. Both highlands are considered in some descriptions as included in the Coast Mountains. The Alexander Archipelago lies offshore and is entirely within Alaska.
Wrangell–Saint Elias Wilderness is a wilderness area located in southeastern Alaska in the United States. At 9,078,675 acres (3,674,009 ha), the Wrangell–Saint Elias Wilderness is the largest designated U.S. Wilderness Area. The wilderness lies within Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest national park in the United States.
The Southern Patagonian Ice Field, located at the Southern Patagonic Andes between Chile and Argentina, is the world's second largest contiguous extrapolar ice field. It is the bigger of two remnant parts of the Patagonian Ice Sheet, which covered all of southern Chile during the last glacial period, locally called the Llanquihue glaciation.
The Alsek Ranges are the southeasternmost subdivision of the Saint Elias Mountains of the Pacific Cordillera. They span the region between the Alsek River, Glacier Bay and the Kelsall River. Their western boundary is the Grand Pacific Glacier, beyond which is the Fairweather Range, another subdivision of the St. Elias Mountains. To their east is the northernmost section of the Boundary Ranges, the northernmost subdivision of the Coast Mountains and which are also known as the Alaska Boundary Range, and which run south to the Nass River and form, as their name indicates, the spine of the boundary between the American state of Alaska and the Canadian province of British Columbia.
The Stikine Icecap is a large icefield straddled on the Alaska–British Columbia boundary in the Alaska Panhandle region. It lies in the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains. Within the United States, most of it is under the administration of the Tongass National Forest and is part of the Stikine-LeConte Wilderness within the national forest.
Glacier morphology, or the form a glacier takes, is influenced by temperature, precipitation, topography, and other factors. The goal of glacial morphology is to gain a better understanding of glaciated landscapes and the way they are shaped. Types of glaciers can range from massive ice sheets, such as the Greenland ice sheet, to small cirque glaciers found perched on mountain tops. Glaciers can be grouped into two main categories:
Kluane / Wrangell–St. Elias / Glacier Bay / Tatshenshini-Alsek is an international park system located in Canada and the United States, at the border of Yukon, Alaska and British Columbia.
Tortel is a Chilean commune located at the outflow of the Baker River and Pascua River to the Pacific Ocean. It lies between the Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Field in the Capitán Prat Province in the Aysén Region. The commune is administered by the municipality in Caleta Tortel, the principal settlement.
Stikine, meaning "great river" in the Tlingit language, may refer to:
The Alaska–St. Elias Range tundra is an ecoregion of northwestern North America.
