Columbia Icefield

The Columbia Icefield is a large icefield in the Canadian Rockies, spanning Alberta and British Columbia. Its outlet glaciers feed rivers flowing toward the Pacific, Arctic, and Atlantic oceans.

Icefield: A broad area of interconnected glacier ice covering high terrain, without the complete topographic enclosure of an ice cap. This is the landform category that includes the Columbia Icefield.
Athabasca Glacier: An outlet glacier of the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park, Alberta. It is one of the icefield’s most accessible and closely monitored outlet glaciers.
Dome Glacier: An outlet glacier descending from the Columbia Icefield toward the Athabasca River drainage. It illustrates how ice leaves the central icefield through a northern outlet.
Glacier retreat: The long-term recession of a glacier’s terminus as ice losses exceed gains. Retreating margins are a visible response to sustained negative mass balance at the icefield.
Glacier: A persistent body of land ice that moves under its own weight. The icefield’s outlet glaciers are moving tongues of ice, not stationary ice cover.
Saskatchewan Glacier: A major outlet glacier flowing southeast from the Columbia Icefield into Banff National Park. Its meltwater drains toward the Saskatchewan River system and Hudson Bay.
Stutfield Glacier: A glacier on the northeastern side of the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park. Its location shows the icefield’s extensive glacierized terrain beyond the main tourist viewpoints.
Climate change in the Canadian Rockies: Long-term shifts in temperature, precipitation, snowpack, and ecosystems across the Canadian Rockies. Warming and changing snowfall alter the icefield’s accumulation and melt.
Accumulation zone: The part of a glacier where snowfall exceeds annual losses and adds to its ice mass. Snowfall replenishes the high-elevation ice that sustains the icefield.
North Saskatchewan River: A major river in western Canada whose headwaters include meltwater from the Columbia Icefield. It carries icefield runoff eastward toward the Saskatchewan River basin.

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Canadian RockiesBroader topic: It feeds glaciers and rivers on both sides of the continental divide.