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Glacier Photograph Collection

Summary

The National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology, Boulder (NSIDC/WDC) houses many photographic prints of glaciers, taken both from the air and from the ground. These photographs constitute an important historical record, as well as a data collection of interest to those studying the response of glaciers to climate change. NSIDC is partnering with the NOAA Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) and the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) to digitize selected photographs and to make them available through a searchable interface. These photographs comprise the Glacier Photograph Collection. More than 4,000 glacier photos are online, and most of these glaciers are in the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Greenland. The collection includes a smaller number of glaciers photos for Europe and South America. In March, 2006, we began our special collection of Repeat Photography of Glaciers. Updates to this product are ongoing.

Access to the Glacier Photograph Collection is unrestricted, but users are encouraged to register for the data. Registered users will receive e-mail notification about any product changes.

Citing These Data

To cite the NOAA/NSIDC Glacier Photograph Collection, please use the following citation:

NSIDC/WDC for Glaciology, Boulder, compiler. 2002, updated 2007. Glacier photograph collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology. Digital media.

To cite individual photographs taken from the Glacier Photograph Collection, please use the following citation:

Photographer's name. Year photograph was taken. Name of glacier: From the Glacier photograph collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology. Digital media.

For example:

Gregg, Raymond. 1938. Tyndall Glacier: From the Glacier photograph collection. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology. Digital media.

Overview Table

Table of Contents

1. Contacts
2. Overview
3. Detailed Data Description
4. Data Acquisition and Processing
5. Data Access and Related Collections
6. References and Related Publications
7. Acknowledgments
8. Document Information

1. Contacts

Investigator

Allaina M. Wallace, Librarian and Analog Data Archivist, National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology, Boulder.

Technical Contact

2. Overview

Glaciers are sensitive to temperature and precipitation fluctuations accompanying climate change. Most of the world's glaciers are retreating in response to warmer temperatures. This retreat is often marked by an obvious change in glacier terminus location (see, for example, Mountain Glacier Fluctuations: Changes in terminus location and mass balance). Historical glacier photograph collections are therefore an important climate record.

NSIDC's library houses approximately 15,000 glacier photograph prints as well as approximately 100,000 imaged on microfilm. Research into the history of this collection is ongoing. William O. Field compiled one subset of this collection, roughly 5,000 prints titled the American Geophysical Union/American Geographical Society Collection. Field was head of the Department of Exploration and Field Research at the American Geographical Society from 1947 until he retired in 1969. Field took many of the photographs and assembled them for the American Geophysical Union Research Committee. It was because of this collection that in 1957 the IGY committee awarded the World Data Center for Glaciology to Field and named him the first director. He maintained the collection until the WDC was moved to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in Tacoma, WA and ultimately to Boulder, CO in 1976. The photographs are primarily of Alaskan glaciers but also include the Pacific Northwest (U.S. and Canada), the Rocky Mountains, and Europe.

NSIDC’s collection of prints is fragile, and to view the collection, users must travel to NSIDC, or NSIDC staff may, in special circumstances, search the print collection for users. Because of this, the climatologically and historically significant analog collection had relatively few users. To help rectify this situation, in partnership with NOAA NGDC, NSIDC released the NOAA/NSIDC Glacier Photograph Collection in December 2002. This subset of our analog collection was digitized under the NOAA CDMP, a partnership between the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and private industry to image and key the paper and microfilm records and to make them available on the Web to members of the climate and environmental research community. Images in the database are retrievable by glacier name, photographer name, date, state, geographic coordinates, and subject keywords.

In March 2006, a number of repeat photographs (also known as glacier pairs) were added through the contribution of a USGS investigator. In October 2006, 215 photographs from the Harry F. Reid collection were added to the collection. In August 2007, over 1,200 photographs of Greenland glaciers, donated by the U.S. Coast Guard, were added to the collection. In January 2008, 13 Rocky Mountain National Park Glacier Survey Reports and the accompanying 264 glacier photographs were added. Seventy-nine terrestrial phiotographs taken by Fred D. Ayres in Peru during the 1950s were added to the collection in February 2008. These prints are part of NSIDC’s Historic Glacier Photograph Collection. In March 2008, a new special collection was added to show glaciers from the International Geophysical Year (DAHLI IGY glacier photographs). In June 2008, over 360 Arapaho Glacier images were added to the collection. These images are part of the H. A. Waldrop Arapaho Glacier Thesis Research Papers. Waldrop collected photographs of Arapaho Glacier taken in the early 1900s by Junius Henderson (first curator of the CU Museum). Using repeat photography techniques, Waldrop recreated Henderson’s photographs for his thesis research completed in 1962.

NSIDC hopes to continue working with the CDMP program and with USGS investigators and other data users to add more digital images in the future.

3. Detailed Data Description

Spatial and Temporal Coverage and Resolution

The photographs are primarily of glaciers in Alaska, Greenland, the Pacific Northwest (U.S. and Canada), the Rocky Mountains, and some from Europe. The latitude and longitude reported for each photograph is the location of the glacier, not the point from which the photograph was taken.

The earliest glacier in the Glacier Photograph Collection is from 1883, and the most recent is from 2005. Many photographs are of the same glacier: for example, as of July 2005, there were 2,914 photographs in the Glacier Photograph Collection, of 316 glaciers.

The map below shows the location of glaciers in this data set as of August 2007.

Format

Images are available in JPEG format (the thumbnail and reference images) and as high-quality TIFF format (the high-resolution images). For certain photographs, high resolution images are available only as JPEG.

Sample Data Record

The following is an example of results from a search of the Glacier Photograph Collection. To order a high-resolution image, check the box next to Glacier ID. To view metadata along with the reference image, click on the thumbnail image.

THUMBNAIL	GLACIER NAME	PHOTOGRAPHER NAME	PHOTOGRAPH DATE	GLACIER ID
	Agassiz Glacier	Alden, W.C.	1913/8/15	agassiz1913081501
	Andrews Glacier	Lee, Willis T.	1916/8/2	andrews1916080201

The metadata and image below are displayed if, for example, you click the Andrews Glacier thumbnail in the search results above.

You selected the following glacier id: andrews1916080201.
Photographer Name : Lee, Willis T.
Glacier Name : Andrews Glacier
Publisher : National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology, Boulder
Date of Original Media : 1916/8/2
State/Province : CO
Country : U.S.A.
Coordinates - Latitude : 40.2889
Coordinates - Longitude: -105.6833
Original Media : Photographic print. Imaged.
Description : 1 photoprint; 17 x 11.5 cm. (6 3/4 x 4 1/2 in.)
Keywords : Terminus
Other glaciers in image:
Notes :
Source : U.S. Geological Survey
Rights : Photograph held by the National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology, Boulder . May be used freely if properly cited.
High Resolution Image Size : 31895 (KB)

File Naming Convention

Glacier Photograph Collection Glacier IDs are assigned at NSIDC based on the name, year, month, day of the photograph, and an index number. In the example above, the date of the Andrews Glacier photograph (that is, the date written on the print) is 02 August 1916, and it is the first in a possible series of Andrews Glacier photographs with this date, resulting in the glacier image file ID of "andrews1916080201". If the day or month that the photograph was taken is not known, "00" fills that position. Note that all three digital image files of this glacier--the thumbnail, reference, and archive--have the same file name.

For the Reid collection, the Glacier IDs are assigned differently. The format is similar to "charpentier1892_353", which refers to the glacier name, year the photograph was taken and the number assigned to the photograph by Reid. Users should note that photographs without glaciers have a Glacier ID starting with "noglacier" and a glacier name of "NoGlacier".

For the Greenland collection, the Glacier IDs are also assigned differently from the rest of the collection. These are based on the glacier name, followed by "GI" followed by a box number and then by the order of the slide within each box. For example, the glacier identifier of "hayesGI01_02" refers to Hayes Glacier in box 1 and it is the second slide from that box.

The Glacier IDs for the National Park Service Rocky Mountain National Park Glacier Survey Reports are assigned based on the Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) report year and the year of the glacier photograph. For example, the glacier identifier of "rmnp1939_andrews190901" refers to the Rocky Mountain National Park Report from 1939 of Andrews Glacier which was taken in 1909. The "01" refers to a unique identifier and is used with every photograph in this special collection.

File Size

The Glacier Photograph Collection image files range in size, as follows:

JPEG (thumbnail images): 2.5 KB to 48 KB
JPEG (reference images): 19 KB to 302 KB
TIFF (archive images) images: 7.9 MB to 108.5 MB
JPEG (archive images) images: up to 4.4 MB

Note that clicking the thumbnail image of a photograph on the search results page (see Sample Data Record above) will display metadata about the photograph, including the size of the high-resolution image.

Error Sources, Quality Assessment and Other Information

NSIDC worked with the CDMP contractor to check the quality of image files. Most image files of digitized photographs were checked for correct file name, proper digitization, and proper image size at NSIDC, and were digitized again by the contractor if deemed necessary.

A variable degree of uncertainty surrounds the metadata for each image. See The Digital Collection section of this document.

Most latitudes and longitudes were determined in 1981 when NSIDC staff created an "Index" of metadata for some of the NSIDC analog glacier photograph collection. When creating the online database, if no location information existed for the individual photos, NSIDC staff researched published literature or referred to the Geographic Names Information System for latitudes and longitudes.

Some photographs have more than one glacier and some degree of subjective judgment was necessary to document metadata for these photographs. In these cases, NSIDC staff referred to the original labels associated with the photographs.

NSIDC added "Other Glaciers" and "Notes" fields to the metadata database in 2005. The "Other Glaciers" field may be blank even if other glaciers are in the image. This field is filled only if and when users send this information to NSIDC. The "Notes" field was added to capture additional information that glaciologists using the database may be able to supply about individual images, or to record errors or uncertainties in metadata if they are known. In addition, the "Notes" field may contain descriptive information that NSIDC has collected. The information for the photographs taken by Reid came from Field.

The Glacier Photograph Collection refers to glaciers in the mountain ranges along the Alaskan/Canadian border as occurring in both Alaska and Canada.

4. Data Acquisition and Processing

The Analog Collection

NSIDC houses many thousands of glacier photographs as prints and on microfiche. The largest single collection of print images at NSIDC is the American Geophysical Union/American Geographical Society Collection, donated to NSIDC/WDC by William O. Field. Field indexed the photos by region and drainage system. For example, he indexed Alaskan glacier photos starting in the southeast corner of the state, continuing north and west, following each drainage basin in a counterclockwise direction. This method enables photos of neighboring glaciers to be filed next to each other. It is from this collection that the first photographs were selected for the online project.

The American Geophysical Union/American Geographical Society Collection that Field donated to NSIDC/WDC included the Harry F. Reid collection. Reid, America’s first geophysicist (Gillispie 1970 - 1980, 11:361-362), traveled to Glacier Bay, Alaska, in 1890 and 1892 in order to photograph and map the area. Collected by Field after Reid’s death in 1945, the materials include approximately 600 glass plate negatives and prints, 22 expedition notebooks, and about 1 cubic foot of manuscript materials (including drafts of Reid’s map of Glacier Bay). Also included are photographs taken during Reid’s trips to the Alps beginning in 1894 through 1901. Users should note that some of the photographs taken by Reid were of the local area and not of a glacier. The Reid photographs without glaciers were given a Glacier Name of "NoGlacier" in the database.

The Austin Post aerial photograph collection became a part of the WDC collection when the WDC was transferred to the USGS in Tacoma in 1970. This collection of photographs, the Post-Mayo-Krimmel (PMK) Collection, comprises approximately 100,000 photographs, almost all of which are only available on microfilm at NSIDC.

The Greenland photograph collection was donated to the WDC in the mid 1980s by Captain Ron Kollmeyer of the U.S. Coast Guard. Captain Kollmeyer was the lead for the Greenland Glacier Survey. More than 1,200 color slides have been digitized and are available. The photographs of western Greenland glaciers were taken between 1969 and 1980, from ground observation stations and from USCG helicopters at an altitude of between 100 and 1,000 feet.

Unfortunately, NSIDC does not have resources for storing all analog glacier photographs under archival quality conditions. As a consequence, some are in danger of deterioration. This gives urgency to our digitization work in partnership with NOAA CDMP. Allowing researchers to access high-quality digital reproductions of these fragile and rare photographs limits the need to use the original archival image and aids in the preservation of the originals.

Analog to Digital - the CDMP Program

In partnership with NOAA NGDC and LASON Corporation, a CDMP corporate partner, NSIDC is digitizing selected analog photographs for online distribution. The goals of the CDMP Glacier Photograph Digitization Project are to

• Make the photographs better known among the glaciological community and others
• Increase availability of the images
• Provide the highest-quality digital reproductions of the photographs available
• Provide proper archival storage for the digitized subset of glacier photographs.

NSIDC selected images for digitizing that are held by NSIDC with no copyright restrictions that are good quality images, and that show substantial portions of glaciers. Most come from the American Geophysical Union/American Geographical Society Collection (the Field donation). Athabaska Glacier photographs were obtained from the GeoData Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The original black-and-white photographic prints range in size from 2 x 3 inches to 8.5 x 11 inches.

A selection of glacier photograph prints being prepared for shipment to the CDMP contractor for digitizing.

The following requirements were provided to the CDMP contractor for digitizing the photographs.

• The reproductions will be an uncompressed archival image (TIFF), a compressed reference image (JPEG), and a thumbnail image (JPEG).
• The archival image will be the highest-quality image possible (TIFF) with version 6.0 headers, uncompressed, unedited, at 600 dpi. Use 24-bit RGB color, 1800 to 6600 pixels across the long dimension, depending on the size of the original print. This resolution should be the actual optical resolution of the capture and not achieved by interpolation.
• The compressed reference images will be saved in the JPEG format and will be 640 pixels on the image's long side. This resolution should be the actual optical resolution of the capture and not achieved by interpolation. JPEG File Information Format (JFIF) headers will be used.
• The thumbnail image will have a spatial resolution of 150 pixels on the image's long side in the JPEG compressed format. JFIF format/headers will be used.
• The tonal range of the reproduced images should be representative of the original scene. General imaging industry standards, as well as standards established during the initial startup and testing phase, will be followed. There will be no clipping.
• The reference and thumbnail images will be reduced in scale and sharpened and compressed, but the methods used to accomplish this shall not degrade the image. All derivative images shall maintain the general look and character of the archival images.
• The software used to produce the digitized images shall meet requirements pertaining to spatial resolution, tonal distribution, and noise. Spatial resolution shall be determined by measuring the modulation transfer function of the capture system. The required resolution shall not be sampled up from a lower resolution.
• Scanners and monitors should be calibrated at the start of the project and scanners should be re-calibrated with a change in media size and twice each day: at the beginning of each day's digitizing and halfway through the digitizing. If more than one scanner is used, each lot must be kept separate, so that quality control can take into account the calibration that was done for each batch. Set monitor to 24 millions of colors, set gamma at 2.2 (1.8 for Macintosh), color temperature at 6500 degrees, calibrate to sRGB.

The Digital Collection

Metadata for the digitized images are compiled at NSIDC in an Excel spreadsheet that is uploaded to a Sybase database. Metadata for the initial release of about 1,000 glaciers in 2002 was derived primarily from the Glacier Photograph Collection Index, a project started in the late 1970s by NSIDC staff. This index, or inventory of glacier names with metadata for some of NSIDC's analog glacier photograph collection, is housed at NSIDC on paper and on microfiche. The Index metadata cover many aspects of the individual photos, including the altitude at which a photograph was taken, date, photograph number, latitude/longitude, mountain range, and drainage system. Not all of the aspects were included in the metadata.

The keyword headings used for the Index project were Terminus, Medial moraine, Terminal moraine, Lateral moraine, Firn line, All of glacier, Rock glacier, and Other. Transcribing the Index information was too labor intensive to be sustained, so NSIDC assigned keyword terms by looking at the photographs. Only glaciers in the first release of about 1,000 photographs have keywords assigned. The keyword heading for glaciers in the second release, July 2005, are blank.

NSIDC used the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) to look up geographic coordinates of most glaciers. For those glaciers that did not appear in the GNIS or when more than one entry for the same title appeared, NSIDC determined approximate coordinates by either referring to the original photos (for hand-written information from the photographer), or by doing Web-based research, including Topozone or Terraserver, to estimate coordinates near the middle of the glacier.

In some glaciers for which the Index or the GNIS did not supply geographic coordinates, the Alaska Atlas & Gazetteer (2001) or Holmes et al. (2001) provided coordinates.

Repeat Photography of Glaciers

As Harrison wrote in 1960, The glacier story is always changing, but it can be caught and preserved with the proper use of a camera. Glacier photographs taken from the same vantage point but years apart in time often show changes in the glacier terminus position that may be indicative of climate forcing. (Tidewater glaciers may exhibit shorter term cycles of terminus advance and retreat as well). These repeat photographs are of special interest to glaciologists. The Glacier Photograph Collection contains many photographs of the same glaciers, but relatively few repeat photographs. In 2006, Dr. Bruce F. Molnia, a glaciologist with the United States Geological Survey (USGS), collected and contributed repeat glacier photographs. He had taken many of the later ones himself, and had digitized the earlier ones from data collections. These are identified in the Source metadata as U.S. Geological Survey (distinguished from USGS Photo Library, which refers to USGS historic collections). Notes and Keyword metadata are based on information from Dr. Molnia. To view this subset of the Glacier Photograph Collection, see Repeat Photography of Glaciers.

Muir Glacier, photographed by Field on 13 August 1941 (left) and by Bruce F. Molnia on 31 August 2004 (right).

Click on the image above for a larger version. If you use this image in a publication, please cite as follows:

NSIDC/WDC for Glaciology, Boulder, compiler. 2002, updated 2007. Glacier Photograph Collection. Boulder, CO: National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology. Digital media.

Lonnie G. Thompson contributed repeat photographs in July of 2007. The appropriate image credit for Lonnie Thompson's photographs reads: Lonnie G. Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center, the Ohio State University.

In June of 2006, Matt Nolan also donated repeat photographs to this collection.

National Park Service Glacier Survey Reports

Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) began conducting glacier surveys at the request of Francois E. Matthes in 1932. The National Park Service donated copies of the glacier survey reports to Matthes for the International Committee on Glaciers (the committee is now called the International Commission for Snow and Ice Hydrology). For a history of the committee and its subsequent transformations, click here. Matthes later donated his collection to the WDC for Glaciology now housed at NSIDC. Glaciers included in the survey were Tyndall Glacier and Andrews Glacier. NSIDC holds reports from the years 1932-1952; these reports include 264 glacier photographs. Several of the reports combine more than one year into one report. For example, 1934 includes the two previous years. Not all of the reports contain photographs.

Note: Metadata in the notes field were taken from the captions associated with the photographs in the reports. To view the photographs in context, see the associated PDF file.

To cite the photographs from the reports, see the section on Citing these Data. To cite the digital reports (PDF files):

Author’s last name, first name. Year published. Title. Boulder, CO: National Snow and Ice Data Center. URL to the PDF report at NSIDC.

Gregg, H. R. 1939. Glacier Survey, Rocky Mountain National Park. Boulder, CO: National Snow and Ice Data Center. http://nsidc.org/data/glacier_photo/nps_reports/rmnp_report_1939.pdf

DAHLI IGY Glacier Photographs

The Discovery and Access of Historic Literature from the IPYs (DAHLI) International Geophysical Year (IGY) Glacier Photographs special collection is now available. Glaciology was one of the primary research areas studied during the IGY. Taken between 1957 and 1959, these photographs represent an attempt to systematically study glacier change in Alaska. For a more general overview of the DAHLI project, click here.

Submitting Glacier Photographs to NSIDC

NSIDC is interested in obtaining additional photographs of glaciers already in the collection that have been taken in earlier or later years. If you are considering contributing photographs, please consider the following points.

• Photographs should be hard copy originals taken on 35mm film or better.
• Photographs should show substantial portions of the glacier (preferably the margins) and should include some landmark that would allow the photograph to be recreated at a later date or matched with another image currently held by NSIDC.
• Repeat photographs should be taken from the same time of year and from the same vantage point. To contribute repeat photographs to our collection, review the procedures on Submitting Repeat Glacier Photographs
• The date of the photograph must be known.
• All photographs should include the glacier name, geographic position, country, province, or state in which the glacier lies and the photographer name.
• Photographs become the property of NSIDC.
• Acceptance of photographs by NSIDC will not imply an agreement by NSIDC to include the photographs in its online database.
• Donors must agree to allow NSIDC freely distribute the images and to make these images available via the Internet as funding allows.
• Photographers and contributors will be acknowledged in the documentation.

Useful information on taking photographs of glaciers can be found in Harrison (1960).

Contact User Services to discuss a potential contribution of photographs. If photographs are contributed, a Deed of Gift signed by NSIDC and the contributor will record the terms of the contribution.

5. Data Access and Related Collections

Data Access

The Glacier Photograph Collection may be accessed through an online interface or see the Repeat Photography of Glaciers for the repeat photography subset.

Using the Glacier Photograph Collection Search Interface

In Step 1, select the search parameters. You may search by photograph, geographic or keyword information, or any combination. Click Submit to display the Input Search Criteria screen.

In Step 2, enter the search criteria to constrain your search. You may use drop-down menus for Photographer Name and for State/Province/Country. For choices for other fields, see the section on Data Field Names and Descriptions below. Search criteria are

• Photographer Name
• Glacier Name (if you do not know a specific glacier name, try searching on the state in which its located)
• Photograph Year
• Glacier Coordinates - Latitude/Longitude
• State/Province
• Keyword

In Step 3, search results will display. The table includes the following: Thumbnail image, Glacier name, Photographer name, Date of original media, Other glaciers, and Glacier ID. To display metadata about an image along with the reference JPEG image, click the thumbnail image. To order a high -resolution archive TIFF image, check the box next to the glacier ID, and fill in information at the bottom of the search results table. The JPEG thumbnail and reference images may be downloaded directly from the Search Results pages.

Search Tips

• You must select at least one search parameter for a successful search.
• Field criteria are not case sensitive.
• Field criteria do not have default entries; you must enter the information by which to search.
• When conducting a search by photograph year, you must enter a year in both the Minimum Photograph Year and Maximum Photograph Year fields. To search for photos taken during one year only, enter the same year in both fields.
• If you conduct a search for which there are no results, the message "No data matched your criteria. Use your "Back" button to try again" displays in the Search Results screen.
• Queries on the glacier number or glacier name are not case sensitive.
• The wild-card % is allowed in searches.
• Searches return anything that contains the string entered into the search box. For example, if you type "jeff" as a photographer name, the search will return records containing "jeff," but it will also return such terms as Jefferson, Jeffries, and Jeffrey.
• Note that the search results display your search string parameters. For example, if you do a search for photos of Arapaho Glacier, between the years of 1900-1950, the following search string parameters will display: MIN_PHOTO_YEAR like 1900 AND MAX_PHOTO_YEAR like 1950 AND GLACIER_NAME like arapaho.

Data Field Names and Descriptions

Glacier ID: See File Naming Convention.

Photographer Name (searchable): The name of the photographer of the original photograph, when known. Many of the aerial photographs have unknown photographers. First and last names are spelled out when known. A list of photographers is provided in a drop-down menu.

Glacier Name (searchable): The official name of the glacier according to the GNIS, U.S.Geological Survey. Photographs that do not include a glacier were given a glacier name of "NoGlacier".

Publisher: Always National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology, Boulder.

Date of Original Media (searchable as Photograph Year): The date the original photograph was taken, displayed as YYYY/MM/DD. In some cases only the year, or the year and the month, are known. You can search only by year.

State/Province (searchable): The State or Province in which the glacier is located, listed as the standard two-character abbreviation. When a glacier straddles geographic boundaries, the database lists both countries and states/provinces.

States

• Alaska - AK
• California - CA
• Colorado - CO
• Montana - MT
• Oregon - OR
• Washington - WA
• Wyoming – WY

Provinces

• Alberta – AL
• British Columbia - BC

Country: The country in which the glacier is located. When a glacier straddles geographic boundaries, the database lists both countries.

Countries

• Canada
• Greenland
• Italy
• Peru
• United States
• Switzerland

Coordinates (searchable): Latitude and longitude of the glacier. See The Digital Collection section of this document for more information.

Original Media: The format of the original image (photograph or negative) and whether it has been digitally imaged. Each of the images in the database was digitized from one black and white photographic print, with the exception of the repeat photography.

Description: Describes the physical elements of the original media, such as size.

Keywords (searchable): Keywords from the Index project are available for some but not all glaciers. This field is blank for most of the digitized glaciers. See The Digital Collection section of this document for more information.

Keywords

• All of glacier
• Terminus
• Terminal moraine
• Lateral moraine
• Medial moraine
• Firn line
• Trimline
• Rock glacier

Other glaciers in image: This field was added to the database in 2005, but it is not filled unless a user sent this information to NSIDC.

Notes: A field to record information on specific photographs that may come from donors and users of the collection or other sources. Notes for photographs in the Reid collection came from Field.

Source: The original source of the photograph. Most of Field's collection came from work done by the World Data Center for Glaciology-A/American Geographic Society (WDC-A/AGS). The USGS and the National Park Service donated additional images to Field. Aerial photos taken by the U.S. Navy were taken at the request of Field and WDC-A/AGS.

Rights: All of the images in this collection are in the public domain and may be freely used. NSIDC requests that you use the proper citations when referencing the Glacier Photograph Digital Database or individual photographers. See Citing These Data.

High Resolution Image Size: The size of the digitized TIFF image (or JPEG image for the repeat photographs). You may request a high resolution image by filling out the request form at the bottom of the Search Results screen.

Related NSIDC Data Collections

• World Glacier Inventory
• Airborne Surface Profiling of Alaskan Glaciers
• Glacier Inventory of West Greenland
• GLIMS Glacier Database
• View NSIDC Data on Virtual Globes: Google Earth: Locate and view glacier photos from the collection using Google Earth.

Other Related Data Collections

The USGS Repeat Photography Project has photographs from Glacier National Park, Montana, USA.

Photographs of Glacier Bay National Park glaciers and animations are available from USGS.

Repeat glacier photographs are also available from the DOUBLEXPOSURE project.

The Glacier Photograph Collection is also available through the following:

• NGDC Glacier Data Map Viewer: Offers a GIS map server interface to the Glacier Photograph Collection and to the World Glacier Inventory
• EarthSLOT: Provides 3D visualization of the world via a GIS web-based application and links to images from the Glacier Photograph Collection

6. References and Related Publications

Alaska Atlas & Gazetteer. 2001. Yarmouth, Maine: DeLorme.

Alaska State Library staff. January 2002. "Alaska Glacier Names." http://www.library.state.ak.us/asp/Alaska_Glaciers.html.
20 November 2002.

Andreassen, L.M., H. Elvehoy, and B. Kjollmoen. 2002. Using aerial photography to study glacier changes in Norway. Annals of Glaciology 34: 343-347.

Bird, M.L. 1984. The AGS and polar work: highlights in retrospect. Polar Times 98: 8-9.

Brecher, H.H. 1986. Surface velocity determination on large polar glaciers by aerial photogrammetry. Annals of Glaciology 8: 22-26.

Casassa, G., K. Smith, A. Rivera, J. Araos, M. Schnirch, and C. Schneider. 2002. Inventory of glaciers in Isla Riesco, Patagonia, Chile, based on aerial photography and satellite imagery. Annals of Glaciology 34: 373-378.

Cotton, T. 1995. "Land Reborn: A History of Administration and Visitor Use in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Chapter II: Sightseers And Scientists.
http://www.nps.gov/glba/adhi/adhi2.htm. 21 November 2002.

Field, W.O. 2004. With a Camera in My Hands: A Life History as Told to C. Suzanne Brown. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press.

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7. Acknowledgments

The NOAA Climate Database Modernization Program (CDPM) provided funding and programmatic oversight for digitizing the photos in the Glacier Photograph Collection. Joseph Elms of the National Climatic Data Center manages the program. The photos were digitized at CDMP Corporate Partner LASON Corporation, Beltsville, MD, under the direction of John Jacobs.

Teresa Mullins, NSIDC Librarian from October 1999 through June 2004, initiated the digitization project, wrote the statement of work with imaging requirements for digitizing prints, and compiled metadata for the first set of images digitized. She also researched NSIDC's analog collection to provide background on Field's contribution of glacier photograph prints to the WDC for Glaciology, Boulder.

NSIDC glaciologist Dr. Richard Armstrong assisted with selecting photographs of greatest scientific interest for digitizing, and in documenting the collection.

United States Geological Survey glaciologist Dr. Bruce F. Molnia serves as an advisor to the project and is assisting with the evaluation and documentation of our analog glacier photograph collection. Dr. Molnia also contributed repeat photographs.

Allaina Wallace, NSIDC Data Archivist and Librarian, is curator of the collection. The NOAA team (Florence Fetterer, Lisa Ballagh, and Jonathan Kovarik) maintains these products at NSIDC jointly with Allaina Wallace and I-Pin Wang, Database Administrator. Lisa Ballagh developed the Repeat Photography of Glaciers interface. Metadata for the 2005 update was researched by Jason Wolfe. Metadata for subsequent updates was researched by Allaina Wallace. Quality control was provided by the Archive Management Services team led by Jonathan Kovarik. The interface to the online database was designed by Teresa Mullins and Alejandro Machado, and implemented with assistance from Ross Swick, NSIDC Systems Engineering.

This work is supported by funding from NOAA's National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service and the National Geophysical Data Center.

8. Document Information

Document Authors

This document was originally prepared by T. Mullins. It has been updated by F. Fetterer, L. Husted, J. Wolfe and L. Ballagh.

Document Creation Date

13 November 2002

Document Revision Date

March 2008 - L. Ballagh added information about the DAHLI Special Collection and regarding the February 2008 update for 79 glaciers in Peru.

January 2008 - L. Ballagh added information about the second special collection (National Park Service reports) based on input from A. Wallace.

November 2007 - L. Ballagh changed all of the references to the repeat photography. The correct title is Repeat Photography of Glaciers.

October 2007 - L. Ballagh changed scan to digitize in several places and updated the data set title.

August 2007 - L. Ballagh added information about the Greenland collection based on input from A. Wallace.

October 2006 - L. Ballagh added documentation about the Reid collection and updated the file sizes, based on correspondence with A. Wallace, F. Fetterer and J. Kovarik.

July 2006 - L. Ballagh updated the GLIMS Glacier Database hyperlink and changed the hyperlink of the repeat photograph sample image of Muir Glacier.

March 2006 - Documentation was updated to reflect the addition of the Repeat Photography of Glaciers.

January 2006 - Noted that photos were added in January 2006.

September 2005 - F. Fetterer added the section on contributing photographs.

July 2005 - F. Fetterer revised the format, updated information, included relevant content from the PDF “Glacier Photograph Collection Users Guide,” and removed access to the Users Guide. A. Wallace added information on WDC's analog collection.

Document URL

http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g00472_glacier_photos/index.html