Double Exposure - Photographing Environmental Change

BLACKSTONE BAY

HENEY GLACIER

VALDEZ GLACIER

HUGH MILLER

HUGH MILLER GLACIER

Winters here average 7 degrees F warmer than in 1940. The glacier has retreated up the valley and around the corner, and spruce trees have grown where there once was bare earth and rock.

The boxed area shows a major tributary feeding ice into the Hugh Miller. Less seasonal snow exists in this late-summer photograph.

The tributary has all but disappeared. What remains of the Hugh Miller lies out of sight, approximately three miles beyond the far corner of the valley.

Alaska's first surf shop opened in 1999. The average August ocean temperature of Yakatat, 150 miles northwest of Hugh Miller, has risen almost 5 degrees F since 2001. Winters in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, are 3 degrees F warmer now than in 1960, which has altered when plants and animals migrate through the Bay. This probably explains why predators are feasting on a once-thriving commercial fishery, and why cold water fish edible to humans are losing their food supply to inedible southern upstarts.