Abstract
Glacier tourism, a multimillion-dollar industry in New Zealand, is potentially under threat by ongoing glacial retreat. Surface morphology changes associated with retreat and thinning result in increasingly difficult access for guided walks on the Franz Josef Glacier, but simultaneously, an enlarging proglacial lake is increasing tourism opportunities at Tasman Glacier. Steepening ice slopes, increased debris cover, and an increase in the rockfall hazard are just some of the challenges glacier tourism operators face as glaciers around the world retreat. To date in New Zealand, glacier tourism has kept pace with ongoing glaciological change, often by increasing mechanized access. Focusing scientific research on short-term process studies—for example, determining thinning rates and assessing hazards—will help tour operators and policy-makers make decisions about future glacier utilization and accessibility.
Highlights
Glaciers are well-recognized indicators of changing climate, and, glaciers in general have been retreating since the end of the Little Ice Age, from the mid-1980s glaciers worldwide have undergone ‘‘drastic’’ retreat (WGMS 2008: 24)
New Zealand has over 3100 glaciers (Chinn 1999), and fewer than 1% of these glaciers are utilized for tourism operations, 3 are intensively utilized: the Tasman, Fox, and Franz Josef Glaciers (Figure 1)
With the establishment of the Hermitage Hotel at Aoraki/Mount Cook, visitors began going for guided glacier walks on the very accessible Tasman Glacier (Figure 2), and guiding services were first advertised in a local newspaper in February 1884 (Pearce 1980; Tourism New Zealand 2001; Langton 2011)
Summary
Open access article: please credit the authors and the full source. A multimillion-dollar industry in New Zealand, is potentially under threat by ongoing glacial retreat. Surface morphology changes associated with retreat and thinning result in increasingly difficult access for guided walks on the Franz Josef Glacier, but simultaneously, an enlarging proglacial lake is increasing tourism opportunities at Tasman Glacier. Steepening ice slopes, increased debris cover, and an increase in the rockfall hazard are just some of the challenges glacier tourism operators face as glaciers around the world retreat. To date in New Zealand, glacier tourism has kept pace with ongoing glaciological change, often by increasing mechanized access. Focusing scientific research on short-term process studies—for example, determining thinning rates and assessing hazards—will help tour operators and policy-makers make decisions about future glacier utilization and accessibility
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