Glacier Bay Podcasts: a Park for Science (14:03)

Glacier Bay Podcasts: A Park for Science (14:03)

Interview Hosts: Elizabeth Harriman & Paul Lasley

Interview Guest: Luis Sherman, Park Ecologist

PAUL: If you thought Glacier Bay National Park was just whales and bears and glaciers well, you have another think coming. As you sail into Glacier Bay today on your Holland America cruise you're going to learn more about Glacier Bay than you even thought possible. The naturalists will be sharing some real insights into the park. I'm Paul Lasley.

ELIZABETH: I'm Elizabeth Herriman. So let's begin this journey together. So Glacier Bay is so wonderful, and it's known as a mecca for visitors. But people often don't realize it's also a huge scientific laboratory. And scientists are working here all the time discovering and study the glaciers and studying the wildlife and the marine life, to find out more about our ecosystem not just in Glacier Bay but also what implications it has for the planet.

PAUL: And with all these scientists studying various things in the park, and conducting experiments, I suppose if someone wasn't watching out for them they would probably be stumbling all over each other. Can you imagine that scientists stumbling all over each other? Well anyway, there's so much scientific research going on in the park that the person who watches over all that and coordinates that is Luis Sherman. Luis is Park Ecologist at Glacier Bay. And Luis, what is a park ecologist?

LUIS: Well, a Park ecologist is really a person who does all kinds of general science work that's not done by a specialist. We have marine mammal specialists, we have invasive plant specialists, fisheries, biologists, a bear biologist and several other science specialists who work within the park. And the ecologist is the guy who sort of takes a broader more comprehensive view of natural history and science.

PAUL: What sorts of things are you doing in the park now?

LUIS: A big part of my job is to oversee scientific research that's conducted in the park by entities outside of the park. So various universities and other agencies and independent institutions that come to Glacier Bay from in some cases all over the world, to conduct research on topics of interest to them.

PAUL: Can you give us some ideas of some of those things?

LUIS: Well, many people come to Glacier Bay to view tidewater glaciers for example. And as many folks have heard glaciers in general are thinning or stagnating or retreating, worldwide. But Glacier Bay is one of the few areas that is relatively easily accessible can actually be viewed up close and personal, an active tidewater glacier.

ELIZABETH: And Luis, some of the glaciers are retreating, and then others are advancing, is that right?

LUIS: The park does host a couple of tidewater glaciers that are actually advancing. There are only a small handful of those in all of Alaska. A couple of them are present in Glacier Bay. There aren't many that are advancing, most are either stagnant or retreating so we're fortunate to have a couple here that are relatively healthy and even advancing a bit.

PAUL: The rapid change here must be really interesting for scientists.

LUIS: I would say in general, if one were to characterize any one thing about the park with the word unique, maybe that general term of dynamic and changing is sort of at the core of what makes Glacier Bay special. Whether it's the changing landscape, the changing response of the cultures to that landscape, this place is about as dynamic and active as you'll find anywhere in the world.

PAUL: Can you give us a couple examples of projects that you're particularly interested in, or things that you see happening at Glacier Bay from your perspective?

LUIS: The ones that really intrigue me are the ones with the notion of sea level change in Glacier Bay. And in Glacier Bay it's not the relative vertical height to sea level is not controlled only by more water entering the oceans. Many people have heard the story of global warming, glacier melting, and subsequent seawater rise. Here that's somewhat complicated and enriched by the notion that as regional glaciers have melted over the past two or three centuries, that relative melting on weights the land and allows the land to actually rise. So here there's this very interesting interplay of that land uplift, which we call isostatic rebound, and rising sea-level that ultimately determines what the real sea level is. And here sea level is actually falling. The net change in sea level is a negative one. So this is one of those places in the world where we here locally are not going to have trouble with rising sea levels inundating our land.

ELIZABETH: So the land is rising too? Well that's comforting?

LUIS: It is. And it's rising very rapidly. Recent research here in this area has documented an average rate of uplift on the land of about an inch a year which in geologic terms is supersonic in speed. So people are very interested in observing this rebound of the land upward. It is expected to outpace, easily, the rate of global sea- level rise.

PAUL: I think the other thing that is interesting to seeing Glacier Bay, especially from a ship, is the rapidity from which the land recovers from being covered by ice. That’s always amazing me.

LUIS: The colonization and subsequent development of both plant and animal communities on land, and in the sea, in the park is one of the reasons the park was established in 1925. It is extremely interesting to be able to observe the, what we call the ecological succession, of both a land and a seascape subsequent to its exposure as glaciers retreat. Only three hundred years ago Glacier Bay really wasn't here. There was as you know, a giant glacier feeding what is today Glacier Bay. And that retreat, that very rapid retreat, followed closely by the colonization of animals and plants on the landscape, is something of interest to scientists worldwide.

ELIZABETH: Well, that's interesting because you look at these forests and you think they're ancient. Well, they must have been here since primeval times, but in fact some of them haven't been here for maybe more than a couple of centuries right?

LUIS: Right. I'd say the oldest tree in Glacier Bay proper below, in elevation of say 2000 feet, is 250 years old. To be able to observe that type of development over a couple of generations of scientists is a real opportunity and is pretty rare. PAUL: Is there anything from your perspective as an ecologist to point out to people that maybe they might miss otherwise? Is there something people look at but don't realize what they're looking at?

LUIS: In particular, one can see from a cruise ship, you can see the water around you, you can see the adjacent shoreline, you can see into the outlands, but it's all relatively distant. If one were to be able to get on land and actually look closely at the vegetation for example, or the relative diversity of organisms in the intertidal zone along a gradient of distance from tidewater glaciers and the age, one would see tremendous changes in level of diversity and abundance of organisms of both animals and plants. And you can see that in a broad context from the landscape as things change from going up bay from mature spruce forest to a cottonwood forest, to maybe one that is dominated by younger willows and alders and brush, and ultimately a very uncolonized moonscape next to the glaciers. If you were to look more closely, you could even see that same pattern in the tidal zone or even under the water.

PAUL: Some of your research takes place under water?

LUIS: Glacier Bay is after all called Glacier Bay National Park and preserve, so a great deal of our research, especially in the last couple of decades, has focused on the marine ecosystem.

PAUL: Anything interesting down there?

LUIS: Well, the park happens to host of all things, a large concentration of coldwater corals. Corals are typically thought of as organisms that are restricted to tropical or subtropical marine ecosystems. But there are some corals that grow quite well in cold higher temperate waters. And it turns out that we have some of those, they are called red tree corals, they're very brightly colored things that are big. Maybe a meter or more in height. And in cold water in Glacier Bay. You'd never think you'd find something like that in a cold ocean with icebergs floating above. But those are some of the things we discover once we take a look under water.

ELIZABETH: I've heard that there are giant octopuses down there. Is that right? You know octopus can be very clever. We saw an octopus in Hawaii, and he was actually able to unscrew a jar. Does Glacier Bay have any clever octopuses or octopi? LUIS: There are giant squid that we have found stranded on beaches. The body of the squid might be maybe 4 feet long and the tentacles might be another 6 or 8 feet long, so these things are big. They are presumably fairly large octopus underwater as well, we have not collected any of those. We have seen some on beaches and in shallow water of the intertidal waters and when we have stretched them out from armpit to armpit to be 3 or 4 feet across. So pretty large octopus.

ELIZABETH: So a big octopus, maybe I wonder what they could unscrew?

PAUL: Probably a 55 gallon drum.

ELIZABETH: Maybe so. It could be an octopus hotel. Well, whether it's the marine environment under the water or the ecological environment above the water, gosh Luis, you've got it all don't you?

LUIS: Amongst all of the people with all of their interest in scientist who come to Glacier Bay we cover the gamut, from terrestrial plants to marine mammals to marine invertebrates and plankton, to birds, to bears, to geology, to ecological succession, to weather and climate and everything in between.

PAUL: Luis Sherman, you must have a really interesting job here at Glacier Bay.

LUIS: I've always thought that I have one of the best jobs in the National Park Service. Glacier Bay is an absolutely magical place. Not only in terms of scenery but in terms of the scientific opportunities and the lessons that Glacier Bay has to offer to folks who study the park. And to be able to be in the middle of that, and see what everybody does and help them do it, is a real privilege.

ELIZABETH: Well it was a privilege for us to talk to Luis Sherman Park ecologist at Glacier Bay National Park. Thank you for joining us in Glacier Bay National Park. This recording is a copyright production of Holland America line and is made possible through the cooperation of the rangers and scientists who work and study in Glacier Bay National Park.