How glaciers impact community | M Jackson

so a couple years ago I was doing research in Iceland and one day this guy knocks on my door and he asks me if I want to see something and I say yes so we drive for an hour and we get out and we put on harnesses and helmets and crampons and we hike across a local glacier to a Moulin a hole in the surface ice and we climb down and we wait and one minute it's dark and the next minute it's not the sky it starts to blaze with the Northern Lights the aurora borealis and the glacier glows refracts light like a chandelier and were enveloped above and below with light and ice incredible unforgettable this moment for it's a part of who I am it's unforgettable it's also part of a growing realization the glaciers influence people just as much as people influence glaciers today we have over 400,000 glaciers ice fields ice sheets valley glaciers Tidewater glaciers Piedmont glaciers glacier rats Rock glaciers that's a glacier we have glaciers growing worldwide in the Arctic Antarctica in the Middle East in Central Africa along the equator and everywhere each glacier grows it grows within inhabited and historic environments where there are glaciers there are people and the two have been influencing each other for the entirety of human history but today we know very little about people and ice because in science we have continuously separate the two glaciology today largely focuses on measuring and predicting ice on the physics and chemistry of a glacier and this gives us valuable information like ice mass recession rates but it has also contributed to glaciers today being isolated from people from environments from socio political cultural processes what we need today is a more inclusive whole picture approach where we understand people and ice as integrated environmental communities because if we want to understand and respond to what is happening to our world today to us and this planet we live on as our ice is melting we need to start looking for the whole picture for example in Iceland the whole picture shows us how disappearing ice transforms cultural identity young ice lenders they ask can I be an Icelander if my ice is gone or how disappearing ice generates economic stability through glacier tourism or how older ice lenders feel safer as the ice recedes because it can no longer flood or surge over their homes or how glacier change challenges boundaries what do you do when the property line for your firm or your national park or the barrier separating your flocks of sheep disappears this is happening across the cryosphere in India and Pakistan villages with climate change exacerbated water shortages are reviving centuries-old glacier breeding practices they're making brand-new glaciers to supply agricultural water throughout the dry season when we look at people and ice together through different times and scales and geographies we start to see immense glacier diversity influencing immense human diversity we start to get a whole new pick sure of our history our adaptability and our future thank you very much