Rocklin, Calif.- During the past two centuries, mountain glaciers around the world have shrunk, thinned and, in some cases, disappeared – all at alarming rates.
The Sierra Nevada is among the western mountain systems that have experienced some of the most dramatic loss of glacial ice. Sierra College’s Natural History Museum and the Sierra College Press have collaborated to make two related lectures available that explain glacial systems in the Sierra Nevada, how they were formed, how they sculpted the state’s great granitic spine and how they are currently being affected by climate change.
“Glaciers: Going, going, gone?”
Geologist Dick Hilton will lead off with a lecture entitled “How the Sierra Obtained its Beauty” on Friday evening, October 26. Hilton will discuss the geological and geographic mechanics of how glaciers have formed and sculpted the Sierra, numerous times, over millions of years – leaving us with the classic and spectacular rugged landscape of the high country. Hilton has studied the geology of the Sierra Nevada for decades and has taught at Sierra College since 1981. Hilton has been the chair of the Geology and Earth Sciences Department and is currently chairperson of the Natural History Museum.
Tim Palmer, writer and photographer of more than twenty books about the American landscape, will follow Hilton’s lecture on Saturday evening, October 27.
Palmer will discuss California Glaciers, his most recent book. Palmer spent the greater part of a year photographing and researching the book, co-published by Sierra College Press and Heyday (Berkeley). California Glaciers is an elegantly rendered farewell that describes the raw power and beauty of luminous icescapes in the Sierra and the irreversible effects of climate change.
