Sentinel-2 stitched image from June 27, 2019.
In the late 1700’s, sailor Alessandro Malaspina reached the shores of what is today British Columbia and the Alaskan panhandle in search of the Westward Passage that Spain’s King Charles IV hoped existed within the inlet today known as Yakatuk Bay. Rumor turned out to be false, and Malaspina’s surveying mission turned to other features along the Pacific coast such as the massive piedmont glacier in southern Alaska today named after him. His mission is notable for a variety of scientific and anthropological studies, from measuring mountain tops to recording local languages, as well as being one of the first long distance voyages to be (nearly) scurvy-free. Yet upon return to Europe, political differences effectively led to his work being forgotten until its rediscovery in the late 1800’s.
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More expansive than the state of Rhode Island (~4000 square kilometers), this is the largest glacier of its kind in North America, and the largest non-polar piedmont glacier in the world, lying in an open depression whose icy floor reaches almost 270 meters (900 feet) below sea level. There are more superlatives: at over 600 meters (2000 feet) thick in places, it is thought that meltwater from a single feature has contributed to one half of one percent of sea level rise. Malaspina is part of the largest United States national park (Wrangell-St. Elias), which when combined with Canadian Tatshenshini-Alsek National Park makes it part of the largest international protected wilderness, which also contains the stunning 80-mile long Nabesna Glacier.
To see how researchers have measured the flow of Malaspina, check this out.
Satellite data from ESA’s Copernicus program. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.