At the feet of mountain glaciers, melting ice forms pools of water that can be trapped behind moraines. And with warming temperatures, these pools are surging in both size and number. In Alaska and northwestern Canada, 183 new lakes appeared between 1984 and 2019, covering 483 square kilometers (190 square miles). New research showed that the presence of these proglacial lakes affects how quickly their parent glaciers retreat. “We kind of knew that there’s this interplay between glaciers and proglacial lakes, but we’re just scratching the surface of that understanding,” Main explained. To better understand the link, she and her colleagues examined 120 years of historical photographs and used satellite images, field visits, and air surveys of Kaskawulsh Glacier in Canada and the lakes found at its foot.
