The Oregon Cascade Mountain Range divides the state between the dry east and wet west. This mountain range hosts crucial water resources for Oregonians in the form of snowpack and glaciers. While snowpack varies year to year, Cascade glaciers act as a reliable water resource every year. These glaciers also interacted with volcanic eruptions that helped shape the range itself. However, global warming is driving an unprecedented retreat and disappearance of glaciers, threatening a vital water resource, and serving as visual indicators of how human greenhouse gas emissions are changing the landscape and environment of Oregon. This course will examine Oregon Cascade glaciers and their history from the Ice Ages and volcanic eruptions, to a threatened water resource and explore how we can work together to solve the climate crisis and protect our Oregon environment. The course will include an optional field trip. On day one we will visit glacial landforms and volcanic features of the Ice Ages to see how our landscape was created by these two otherwise opposed forces. On day two, we will hike to glaciers on Broken Top to see the current impacts of global warming on Cascade glaciers, a vital water resource to the region including Bend.
Topics include:
·What a glacier is and its role as a water resource
·Ice Ages and Oregon glacier variability
·Fire & Ice: how volcanoes and glaciers made the Cascades of today
·Global warming and Oregon glaciers
·Potential futures for Oregon glaciers and solutions to our climate crisis