About the cover

Looking south from Grinnell Mountain to Upper Grinnell Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana. Photo credit: Dan Fagre, USGS

The Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, Volume 52, cover photograph of Glacier National Park, Montana, was taken during fieldwork by Daniel Fagre of the U.S. Geological Survey from a ridge near the summit of Grinnell Mountain overlooking Grinnell Glacier. As viewed in the photograph, Grinnell Glacier terminates in the proglacial lake with Salamander Glacier in the foreground (center right). Gem Glacier sits on the arête known as Garden Wall (upper center in photo). The perennial snowfield on Mt. Gould (upper left) likely has an ice core but very low mass.

The photo captures many attributes of this alpine landscape that have been the subject of research for several decades. Recent research products include an article in the current Volume 52 on alpine plant community diversity by George Malanson et al. (2020) and a Volume 51 article on glacier recession since the Little Ice Age by Chelsea Martin-Mikle and Daniel Fagre (2019).

Glacier National Park has long been a valuable research site for understanding the complexities of mountain ecosystems and their responses to climate change. Its relatively large size of over 4,000 km², early establishment as a national park in 1910, isolation from urban areas, and a buffer zone of natural landscapes, e.g., national forests, make Glacier National Park a protected and relatively pristine ecosystem that can act as a baseline for assessment of climate change impacts.