Talk:Ice field

Kluane Icecap - ???
I put the term in here but I'm pretty sure it's not quite right; St. Elias Icefield or ?? Thing is many of the subareas of the overall icecap have "Icefield" names. Kluane seemed to be the most natural name to use, but then I'm Canadian and am more familiar with that name; perhaps Chugach-Saint Elias would be more appropriate (it's a combination of the names of the two major mountain groupings between the Copper River and the Chllkoot Pass). Anyone have any suggestions, or know if there's a proper name for the whole? Chilkat Icefield maybe?

I'm hunting around trying to find area statistics, maybe water-volume statistics too, in order to rank them. Maybe on some climate-change scientific site somewhere, huh? And eventually the specifics on the major Andes and Asian and European etc icefields (I think there's even a small one in the Caucasus - ??). Kamchatka? I'm not talking glaciers here, but big honking icefields in subarctic or lower latitudes. Maps and photos sure, but the idea is a listing that's searchable and where some groupos of or major individual icefields and glaciers have their own pages; because of some uniqueness or historical relevance or other notable aspect.

Part of the concept here is to build family-tree patterns off each main icecap, i.e. each main branch glacier coming out of it, most of which are named (especially in the Chugach and Saint Elias ranges, but also throughout the Boundary and Pacific Ranges - less so in the Kitimat Ranges), except for the Howson Icefield. I've used an indent pattern for this thing in laying out the fjords of the BC Coast, to show where the leg bone is connected to the foot bone, as it were, without a map. Same idea with the icefields; off the Kluane Icecap (so-called) there are maybe ten major named icefields, and I'd bet up to a hundred individual glacier names (these names are searchable on www.topozone.com, so a list can easily be compiled; the trick is sorting it by parent-icefield/glacier; lot of time poking around on online maps, which I don't have (time) right now. Skookum1 23:53, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've only ever seen it called Kluane Icefield or Kluane Icefields, not icecap, usually with the brag about the largest non-polar icefield in the world. Looking at an air navigation map (that only goes dwon to the 60th parallel and a little west of the Alaska border), there are no separate icefield names, just glaciers (such as the Hubbard Glacier and the Seward Glacier that start in the middle of the icefield. But Alaska has a Bagley icefield which I think is connected to the Kluane. I don't think there is anywhere near 100 individual galciers coming off the icefield, probably more like 20 or 30. Luigizanasi 07:29, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Seems like more. I did a lot of voluneteer work for the CME http://bivouac.com charting digital infrastructure and, among my last exhausted duties after a few years of this...was asked to get the Chugach Mountains done, and I wound up doing a lot of the western Alaska Range as well. Bivouac doesn't chart glaciers except for large icefields so what I was doing was working my way through the prominence structure, which meant exploring the online digital maps (Bivouac has a few different systems; can't remember the one I was using; NatGeog's maybe) and there were glacier names all over the place. AND also many glaciers with no names at all, including large icefields - even in southerly areas of the Alaska Panhandle/Boundary Ranges. Anyway, there's lots; I was just wondering about a hierarchy-tree, i.e. the names of smaller glaciers spilling out of a higher glacier or icefield; Glacier Bay is especially full of named glaciers, but even around the Juneau and Stikine Icefields most of the offshoot glaciers have names; not all - it's big country. Some of them are important historically, like the Malaspina at Yakutat Bay (ever read P. Berton's "Klondike?"...the Malaspina Expedition'll give you chills) and some of them are just, well, named - often way out in the middle of nowhere. Those one's don't need pages; but their presence on the page if someone does a search for that glacier-name (for whatever crazy reason, be it only local interest) they'll at least find a link to the icefield or mountain range or whatever it's attached to.

I did this hierarchy thing as an experiment (hope that was OK, um...I just kinda get going at the writing, y'know; do the best I can with required format but relying on experience and education to help me do it better); have a look at British Columbia Coast listing of inlets and waterways (the waterways is very incomplete; the inlets section covers all important/large inlets in order). There's the makings of this re glaciers on Pacific Ranges for the series of icefields there, but I didn't put in the name-subdirectory for glaciers because, well, there aren't that many named glaciers on some of those icefields.

And yeah, the Bagley Icefield's connected to the Kluane and there's another icefield name in there somewhere, as well as many glacier names. The Juneau Icefield and Stikine Icefield/Icecap (I think it's Icefield on the maps I found recently but I'd have to go look) are officially named; none of the St Elias-Kluane-Chugach-and beyond icefields have formal names except maybe one or two I've forgotten - I've "walked" with my mouse and patient website-loads for days exploring the region; some glaciers have names, but none of the big icefields. There's a couple of other big ones in the Panhandle that don't have group names, including the icemass that stands from the mouth of the Iskut/Tatshenshini all the way east to the Kelsall River, almost to the Chilkoot Pass. It's huge; but broken up and not one large icemass like the Stikine, Juneau, Homathko or Silverthrone.

Some times the glacier/icefield name thing is arbitrary, by the way; the Silverthrone Glacier in the Pacific Ranges is also - and now officially - known as the Ha-Iltzuk Icefield, a term which also includes the "smaller" Klinaklini Glacier and which is the source or the river of that name. Silverthrone/Ha-Iltzuk is one crazy high ice cream cone of icefield; same as the Homathko, although the Homathko has no discernible peak; the Lillooet Crown and Waddington Range icefields have many named glaciers; the Homathko has maybe one or two, in the area of Mount Queen Bess. So while it's called the Silverthrone Glacier, it's a huge icefield - and also the largest of the whole group and the largest south of the Stikine, but it's only got three named glaciers. And is a glacier itself, while smaller things are called icefields. Go figure.Skookum1 09:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Ice field/Icefield and Ice cap|Icecap
Separate subject: in trying to find this page again I wound up at the ice cap page, which like this one has what to me is one word as two words. Is this the standard US or standard British usage? I'm Canadian and haven't seen in that way much; never on maps. Also a) shouldn't these two (ice field/ice cap) be combined and one made a redirect? and b) currently neither one is on the ice page. Any chance they're on the glacier page?Skookum1 00:07, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I think ice cap should be combined into icefield...just my opinion.Jarfingle 02:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's "icefield", without a space in the name. Though, "ice cap" does have a space.  Also, there is a technical distinction between what an ice cap is and an icefield.  It has to do with whether  or not the surface ice topography reflects the underlying topgraphy (thus influencing ice flow).  I would have to consult paper-based sources to give further explanation of the difference between the two. -- Aude  ( talk   contribs ) 18:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * As far as I know; an ice field is a contigous body of ice that covers less than 50 000 km², can not be classified as a single valley glacier and its topography is determined by shape of the sorrounding landsforms in contrasts an ice cap has its own forms that overides everything else much like an icesheet but smaller. Icefields and icecaps are two different things with dirent ice dynamics, topography and hydrology. Dentren  |  Ta lk  15:51, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Formal defintions are all fine and dandy if they work right; but in application the definitions you field don't coincide with specific toponymies - Juneau Icefield and Homathko Icefield are clearly icecaps by your definition; the Lillooet Icecap is more of an icefield by the definition you've provided, the ha-Iltzuk Icefield could maybe be taken as either; the Stikine Icecap does seem to be more of an icecap than icefield, at least. I haven't applied the km2 definition here, only the verbal description....eyeballing that 50 000 km2 that's 500km x 100km, in which case neither the Stikine nor Kluane nor Lillooet Icecaps would fit under that definition, which seems only applicable to Greenland and Antarctica and, maybe, Ellesmere...maybe Baffin but I doubt it....Skookum1 (talk) 23:26, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Yolyn Am
One unexpected ice field is located in Yolyn Am, a mountain valley located in the northern end of the Gobi Desert.

It would appear to me, based on the description at the Yolyn Am article, that the ice feature in Yolyn Am isn't an ice field in the technical sense, since it "reaches several meters thick by the end of winter" (i.e., not thick enough for glacial flow) and since "in past years it remained year round, but the modern ice field tends to disappear by September." Sounds like a seasonal ice/snow patch to me. Figure it's safe to delete it? 206.208.105.129 (talk) 17:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Europe
''The only large ice fields in continental Europe are in Norway (e.g., Dovre and Jotunheimen), but these are much smaller than their Canadian or Alaskan counterparts. There are a handful of small ice fields, also, in the southern Alps. Iceland also features a large ice field that covers a high percentage of the island.''

This is inaccurate or misleading on several counts. First, the Dovrefjell region does have some glaciers, but they're pretty small glaciers and not closely enough packed to constitute a real ice field. The Jotunheimen does have contiguous enough glaciers that one might consider it to be an ice field, but it's not as large as some of the ice fields of the Alps. Norway DOES have larger bodies of ice, such as the Jostedalsbreen, but I'm not sure whether Jostedalsbreen (or the associated smaller glaciers around it) would count as an ice field--I believe it's more of an ice cap with valley glaciers radiating out from it. As for the Alps, I wonder why we stipulate "southern" Alps. The largest glacial complex in the Alps is probably the Aletsch-Jungfrau ice field; I tend to think of it as being pretty much smack dab in the center of the range. As for Iceland, its largest ice bodies are ice caps, not ice fields, and the very largest one covers 8% (hardly "a high percentage") of the island.

Anyone care to propose an alternate wording?

206.208.105.129 (talk) 18:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

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