Greenland – Surface Surveys

Greenland Ice Sheet – Greenland

The Ilulissat Icefjord was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest body of ice in the world and comprises an area of nearly 650,000 square miles. Its ice ranges between 1-2 miles thick and is estimated that some is 100,000 years old. The transition from green land to a large mass covered in ice began about 3 million years ago as a result of a decline within the area’s atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The ice sheet contains invaluable records of past climates and attracts climatologists and researchers world-wide. Many scientists who study ice depletion in Greenland believe that an increase in temperature of two or three degrees Celsius would result in a complete melting of Greenland’s ice, raising global sea levels by 24 feet.

Greenland is one of six individual studies in a series of protected desert physiographies titled Surface Surveys. Each survey embodies the planet’s natural, essential expression, and underscores the ethereal nature of wild lands in our current, anthropocentric age.