Winner, 2017 Lane Anderson Award for Best Canadian Science Writing

This remarkable and beautifully illustrated book chronicles the history of Canada’s western mountain glaciers through stunning photography, personal reflection and the most recent scientific research.

Written by one of the most respected experts in water and water-associated climate science and featuring stunning photography collected over the past four decades, Our Vanishing Glaciers explains and illustrates why water is such a unique substance and how it makes life on this planet possible.

Focusing on the Columbia Icefield, the largest and most accessible mass of ice straddling the Continental Divide in western North America, and featuring photographs, illustrations, aerial surveys and thermal imaging collected over more than 40 years of the author's personal observations, the book reveals the stunning magnitude of glacial ice in western Canada.

Citing evidence to suggest that in the Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks alone, as many as 300 glaciers may have disappeared since 1920, this large-format, fully illustrated coffee table book graphically illustrates the projected rate of glacier recession in the mountain West over the rest of this century and serves as a profound testament to the beauty and importance of western Canada's water, ice and snow.

Robert William Sandford is the EPCOR Chair of the Canadian Partnership Initiative in support of the United Nations "Water for Life" Decade and also sits on the Advisory Committee for the prestigious Rosenberg International Forum on Water Policy. He is a director of the Western Watersheds Climate Research Collaborative, an associate of the Centre for Hydrology at the University of Saskatchewan and a fellow of the Biogeoscience Institute at the University of Calgary. As well, he sits on the advisory board of Living Lakes Canada and is co-chair of the Forum for Leadership on Water and a member of the Advisory Panel for the RBC Blue Water Project. In 2011 he was invited to be an advisor on water issues by the InterAction Council, a global public policy think tank composed of more than 20 former national leaders, including Jean Chrétien, Bill Clinton and Vicente Fox.

Robert is the author of some 20 books on the history, heritage and landscape of the Canadian Rockies, including Water, Weather and the Mountain West (RMB, 2007), The Weekender Effect: Hyperdevelopment in Mountain Towns (RMB, 2008), Restoring the Flow: Confronting the World's Water Woes (RMB, 2009), Ethical Water: Learning to Value What Matters Most (RMB, 2011), Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Fresh Water (RMB, 2012), Saving Lake Winnipeg (RMB, 2013), Flood Forecast: Climate Risk and Resiliency in Canada (RMB, 2014), and Storm Warning: Water and Climate Security in a Changing World (RMB, 2015). He is also the co-author of The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer (RMB, 2015) and The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity (RMB, 2015). Robert lives in Canmore, Alberta.

Robert William Sandford's profile page

• Winner, Lane Anderson Award

"Our Vanishing Glaciers is an informed and compelling siren, framed in an aesthetic yet judicious manner, and should be standard reading for Canadians concerned with the future of the mountain climate and the place of humanity in such a delicate yet real changing world."

Canadian Alpine Journal

"We need to take a collective possession of our vanishing glaciers if we are to turn things around. No matter that we are late to the game, Sandford’s book imparts knowledge and inspiration to help us begin the process."

Crowfoot Media

Our Vanishing Glaciers is an informed and compelling siren call book, framed in an aesthetic yet judicious manner, and should be standard reading for Canadians (and others, of course) concerned with the future of the climate, water, glaciers, icefields and the place of humanity in such a delicate yet real changing world.

Ron Dart, Clarion Journal of Spirituality and Justice

"In an era where climate change feels unavoidable...Our Vanishing Glaciers: The Snows of Yesteryear and the Future Climate of the Mountain West offers some much needed hope."

Rocky Mountain Outlook