The Extreme Ice Survey, a photographic project that documents the rapid depletion of the world's biggest glaciers, is now the largest visual piece of firsthand evidence of glacial melt on our planet. The EIS is a wide-ranging glacier study that uses real-time, ground-based photography to document the dramatic changes in glacial ice around the world. It began when James Balog, an acclaimed nature photojournalist, was completing a glacier assignment for National Geographic and noticed massive amounts of ice disappearing, rapidly and without explanation. The survey covers sites in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, British Columbia, and Bolivia.
At left, an EIS team member provides scale in a massive landscape of crevasses on the Svínafellsjökull Glacier in Iceland.