Happy Holidays OGI supporters and friends!
We would like to thank you for your support in 2021 (we provide a brief overview of our activities below) and ask for your further support in 2022. Given the few remaining days in the calendar year, please donate at our website with a link at the top of the page: www.orglaciersinst.org. Or if physical checks are preferred, please make to Oregon Glaciers Institute and mail to 6025 NW Rosewood Drive, Corvallis, OR 97330. As we are a 501 (c) (3), all donations are tax deductible.
2021 was our first full year in existence and despite obvious complications from the on-going pandemic, it was an exciting year, including the growth of people actively supporting OGI both financially and in conducting research. We began 2021 with a feature article on OGI’s work in Backcountry Magazine. OGI received subsequent news coverage for our discovery of a new glacier on South Sister volcano in the central Cascades. The 2021 heatwave of late June/early July then hit and we wrote an op-ed in the Oregonian on the impact the heatwave had on snow and glaciers. OGI also acted as an info source for media outlets during the event. Then we finalized our glacier census, demonstrating that of the 50 glaciers in the Oregon Cascades that existed in the 1950s only 27 remain, which garnered further media coverage. The census information is available on OGI’s website here: https://www.orglaciersinst.org/or-glaciers OGI teamed up with light physicists at the University of Oregon to document the reflectivity of glaciers, findings that will be used for satellite observations of glacier change around the world. We also worked with a journalist on the meaning of glacier loss and the resultant grief as one watches the landscape fundamentally change in front of one’s eyes. Lastly, we published a pop piece on what is a glacier in the Mazama Bulletin, which is freely available to the public, and gave numerous presentations to the general public, interest groups, and government agencies. OGI also liaised extensively with regional and local newspapers, TV channels and on-line news platforms about glacier change and its attendant consequences, raising awareness about this critical part of our ecosystem in the PNW. In 2022 with your support, our goals are to document the specific impacts the 2021 heatwave had on individual glaciers in Oregon and update our census as the heatwave could have caused several more glaciers to die in the central Cascades. We will also relate the change in glaciers since the 1950s to regional temperature and snowpack changes of the last 70 years. Our work on glacier mass changes due to seasonal weather will continue. We have two new projects that will be kicked off as well: 1) examine the extent and number of snowfields in the Wallowas and their significance, and 2) begin to document glacier changes and their causes from 1850 up to 1950. Sincerely, The OGI Team!
