PORT ANGELES — How many glaciers are in the Olympic National Park?
How many were there in the past?
How fast are Olympic glaciers shrinking (or growing)?
Bill Baccus, a physical scientist at the park, will answer those questions with a datastick full of fresh, new information at the latest ONP Perspectives lecture series at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Baccus will present “Olympic Glaciers — Past, Present, Future” at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center, 3002 Mount Angeles Road in Port Angeles.
The discussion will look in detail at the changes in the park’s glaciers, particularly in the last 30 years.
Baccus has been studying the park’s 311 glaciers in detail since 2010, after receiving a grant to study global climate change on the Olympic glaciers.
“The last time this was done was 1987,” Baccus said.
Using a combination of digital geographic information systems and Global positioning satellite systems, researchers from the park, the University of Washington and Portland State University, mapped the park’s glaciers in detail — including both the area they cover and their thickness.
Changes to Blue Glacier, located to the north of Mount Olympus, have been particularly detailed because of previous research done by teams from the University of Washington, Baccus said.
Then the researchers compared the new maps to a similarly complete survey done in 1982.
“We have a rough estimate of their volume change,” Baccus said.
“There are remarkable losses,” he said.
Baccus will present maps and photographs of the glaciers from different eras to illustrate the changes.
The final portion of the project will be to create a more extensive Web page at the park’s website, www.nps.gov/olym, that allows members of the public to access the same information at their leisure, he said.
The website is expected to be complete in the near future, he said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.