"It´s a very strong feeling to return to a glacier you are familiar with and see it change so dramatically and to see that again partly over a course of decades but even just year after year. It can be quite overwhelming at times and it is sad that some of these places will be unrecognisable after a few decades," says Kieran Baxter, post-doc at the University of Iceland's Research Centre in Höfn á Hornafirði.
Kieran and his colleagues have been working on developing new visualization methods to try to come up with new ways of showing these landscape changes on a large scale. His footage of the rapid melting of Icelandic glaciers has attracted global attention and thus created an opportunity for Kieran to work with the BBC on the popular series the Frozen Planet.
Images from different periods put together in a novel way
Kieran has for a long time been fascinated with glacial landscape. "I really love the feeling of these landscapes and I have a really important story to tell of course, especially at the moment with the accelerated melting that we are seeing. I have thus always wanted to combine the two, visualization and my love for these places and I try to tell the stories that can be found in the landscape," says Kieran about how this project started.
Kieran talks about his research on the University's Youtube channel
To tell these important stories he has been combining methods using art and science through photos, films, drone images, and old aerial photographs from the National Land Survey of Iceland collection. Kieran then puts this material together creating a powerful video showing the rapid melting of glaciers in the South of Iceland in the last decades. "We have also increasingly been putting cameras very close up to the glaciers to try to see these changes close-up as well. We use this technology to capture images we then use to shed light on the processes we know are taking place but become more real when you see them in this way close up," says Kieran who is working on this project with Þorvarður Árnason, director of the University of Iceland's Research Centre in Hornafjörður and other collaborators.
"We have been developing some new methods, particularly with the aerial imagery and this has been a case of combining methods borrowed from film and television, so we are using match moving and 3-D reconstruction from some of the survey photographs. This has been really interesting and interdisciplinary approach where we have been taking media methods and combining that with more scientific methods and we really try to bridge this gap between the scientific understanding and images which make sense to the public," explains Kieran.
Dramatic anthropogenic changes
The imagery reveals drastic changes in the landscape that has been increasingly popular among the tourists visiting Iceland every year. "In this footage we see very dramatic changes now happening in very brief periods of time and this is something which we´re seeing particularly from the mid 1990s to today. We are seeing a sharp uptake in the rates of glacier melts in Iceland and this is something that can only be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions," Kieran points out and adds: "So this is a very important and urgent story and I think the opportunity in Iceland is to use these very dramatic landscapes which really have an impact."
To tell these important stories Kieran has been combining methods using art and science through photos, films, drone images, and old aerial photographs from the National Land Survey of Iceland collection. Kieran then puts this material together creating a powerful video showing the rapid melting of glaciers in the South of Iceland in the last decades. "We have also increasingly been putting cameras very close up to the glaciers to try to see these changes close-up as well.
Involved in the making of Frozen Planet II
Kieran and Þorvaldur have used a variety of methods to present their material, including the documentary After Ice premièred last year. The documentary has been shown in numerous film festivals and received various awards and recognitions.
Kieran says the visual medium and these new methods have proven successful in presenting to the public that our actions have consequences on the environment but also to illustrate scientific results. "This is a really nice way of explaining some of the facts and the figures, which are sometimes quite difficult to digest. We have also been trying to engage with the media as much as possible and creating these moving video sequences and finding new and interesting ways to kind of demonstrate these changes; something we have been able to have picked up and used on different platforms around the world," he says.
Kieran's work with novel three dimensional models of glacier melts has furthermore brought exciting opportunities to reach a large audience. "We have recently been working on this project with the BBC for Frozen Planet II and this was something which came out of the work we were doing here in Iceland. They wanted to illustrate changes across the world, specifically looking at alpine glaciers in this case, and this provided an opportunity to further develop some of our methods to be able to use this platform to demonstrate the changes visually with existing historical photos. In this instance we were also looking at changes from the mid 1990s to today, so this was a unique opportunity to put together images that will reach a wide audience," says Kieran about his work with the BBC
People are often surprised by the extent of the glacial retreat
What is the reaction to this material? "The reaction from people is often one of surprise, of just the pure extent of these landscape changes that we are seeing which of course aren´t visible in a single visit to these landscapes. You need these images and the comparison to realise the scope of these changes and it is of course sad to see how rapidly these beautiful places are retreating. It is difficult to come to terms with the implications of such a dramatic and anthropogenic change. We have to, of course, try to tie this in with a message of hope and there are of course many things we can be doing to try to deal with these environmental challenges we are facing," concludes Kieran Baxter.