Little Ice Age Maximum Glacier Extent, Exit and Paradise Glaciers, Alaska

Mapping of the glacier boundary was based primarily upon interpretation of aerial photographs, satellite images, and hillshaded digital elevation models, mostly viewed at approximately 1:5000 scale. Under ideal circumstances where landforms clearly representative of the maximum glacier advance are clearly visible, accuracy of the line is considered to be +-20 m. In some areas, distinguished by the attribute table as described later in this metadata, landforms representative of the maximum glacier advance were not clearly visible, and accuracy is considered to be +-100 m. Some of the mapped features were probably formed asynchronously, in particular in the Paradise basin. No investigators have directly studied the moraines or glaciers of Paradise basin, and we can only infer that the timing of fluctuations there were broadly similar to those in Exit basin. For the glacier lobe in the western headwaters of Paradise Creek which, like Exit Glacier, drains the northeastern portion of the Harding Icefield, this assumption is probably sound. For the isolated cirque glaciers in the eastern headwaters of Paradise Creek, this assumption is more speculative.