ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA: AN ASSESSMENT THROUGH REPEAT PHOTOGRAPHY FROM FIRE LOOKOUTS

Abstract

This paper describes a largely unrecognized source of panoramic photographs from the 1930s for fire lookouts in the American West, and uses a set of those photographs from Glacier National Park (GNP), Montana, to illustrate landscape changes through rephotography. We rephotographed 360° panoramas from nine of the same fire lookouts and qualitatively and quantitatively compared the nature and amount of landscape change from 1935 to the late 1990s. Notable changes included drastic glacial recession, infilling of snow-avalanche paths, forest succession as a result of fire-suppression policies, upward advance of treeline, and pressures on the Park periphery resulting from anthropogenic developments. Geomorphic changes in general were less distinct than biogeographic changes. [Key words: Repeat photography, environmental change, Glacier National Park (GNP), Rocky Mountains, Montana.]