NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY ALASKA EXPEDITION 581 



NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 

 ALASKA EXPEDITION 



IN a previous number of this Magazine 

 announcement was made of an appro- 

 priation by the Board of Managers of the 

 National Geographic Society of $5,000 to 

 be expended in research work during 

 1909. The Committee on Research of 

 the Society with these funds has organ- 

 ized an expedition to spend July, August, 

 and September studying the glaciers of 

 southeastern Alaska. These glaciers are 

 in many respects the most important in 

 the world, geographically ; they have been 

 little studied and it is believed that a care- 

 ful investigation of them will be most 

 useful. The expedition is headed by 

 Prof. Ralph S. Tarr, of the Department 

 of Geography in Cornell University, and 

 author of numerous geographic text- 

 books, and Prof. Lawrence Martin, of 

 the Department of Geology of the Uni- 

 versity of Wisconsin. The expedition 

 will leave Seattle on the steamer Port- 

 land June 24. 



Mr W. B. Lewis, of the United States 

 Geological Survey, will accompany the 

 expedition as topographer, and O. D. 

 von Engeln, Instructor of Physical Geog- 

 raphy at Cornell University, as photog- 

 rapher. 



The party will proceed direct to Yaku- 

 tat Bay, where Professor Tarr has pre- 

 viously made two expeditions for the 

 United States Geological Survey — one in 

 1905, the other in 1906. Professor Mar- 

 tin was attached to the first of these expe- 

 ditions as Special Geographic Assistant. 



The Yakutat Bay region has yielded 

 rich results from previous geographical 

 work. It was from this base, in 1890, 

 that Professor Russell, under the aus- 

 pices of the National Geographic Society, 

 made his first expedition to Mount Saint 

 Elias, and it was to the shores of this 

 bay that he returned on his second expe- 

 dition in 1 891. To Professor Russell's 

 expeditions w r e owe the first thorough 

 description of the great Malaspina gla- 

 cier, the largest on the North American 

 continent, and the type of the Piedmont 

 glacier. Yakutat Bay was also visited 



in 1899 by the Harriman expedition, and 

 in Dr Gilbert's report upon the Glaciers 

 and Glaciation of Alaska considerable 

 space is given to the study of the gla- 

 cial phenomena in this inlet, illustrated 

 by maps made by Mr. Henry Gannett. 



COAST ELEVATED 47 EEET BY EARTHQUAKE 



In September, 1899, the coast of 

 Alaska, in the vicinity of Mount Saint 

 Elias, was visited by a series of heavy 

 earthquake shocks, and in the expedition 

 of 1905 it was found that the coast line 

 of Yakutat Bay had been greatly de- 

 formed at the time of the earthquakes. 

 In some places the coast was depressed, 

 in others it was upraised, in one section 

 to a height of 47 feet, the greatest known 

 elevation of the coast that can be as- 

 signed to a single earth movement. 



LTp to 1905 the glaciers of Yakutat 

 Bay had been in a state of stagnation 

 and recession during the period of ob- 

 servation, but the expedition of 1906 dis- 

 covered a series of remarkable changes in 

 several of the glaciers. Where in Au- 

 gust, 1905, it was possible to walk over 

 the smooth, practically uncrevassed sur- 

 faces of these glaciers, in June, 1906, the 

 smooth surfaces were replaced by a sea 

 of crevasses, over which travel was prac- 

 tically impossible. No such sudden 

 change in glacier conditions has ever 

 before been recorded, and the study of 

 the phenomena is therefore a matter of 

 great interest to glacialists. The expla- 

 nation which has been assigned to this 

 change in glacier condition is that during 

 the earthquakes of September, 1899, vast 

 quantities of snow, ice, and stone were 

 avalanched down upon the reservoirs o-f 

 the glaciers, giving such a sudden addition 

 to the glacier supply that a wave of ad- 

 vance was started which, sweeping rap- 

 idly down the glaciers, broke the rigid, 

 stagnant mass into a maze of crevasses 

 and serac — a veritable glacier flood. 



Since only five out of the many gla- 

 ciers of the region had felt the impulse 

 of this glacier flood of 1906, it is consid- 

 ered probable that the effect of the earth- 

 quakes had not yet reached the ends of 



