In the southeastern reaches of Alaska, landscapes are being dramatically reshaped as ice gives way to water.

Recent images released by the NASA Earth Observatory reveal striking changes to the region’s proglacial lakes, formed as glaciers retreat and meltwater pools at their fronts.

Over the past four decades, three lakes—Harlequin, Alsek and Grand Plateau—have grown at an astonishing pace, transforming the region into a burgeoning “lake district.”

The trio of glaciers feeding these lakes—Yakutat, Alsek and Grand Plateau—descend from Alaska’s inland mountains to the coastal plain southeast of Yakutat borough.

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Glaciers are massive, slow-moving rivers of ice formed from compacted layers of snow that accumulate over centuries, flowing under their own weight and reshaping the landscapes they traverse.

An analysis by glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College highlights the dramatic retreat of these glaciers between 1984 and 2024.

During this time, Yakutat Glacier’s main arm retreated 4.3 miles, and Alsek Glacier’s northern and southern arms retreated 3.3 miles and 3.4 miles, respectively.

Grand Plateau Glacier’s northern arm saw the most significant change, retreating 4.8 miles.

These changes were captured in a pair of satellite images from the Landsat 5 and Landsat 8 satellites in the summers of 1984 and 2024, revealing how water now fills the void left by ice. Together, the three lakes almost doubled in size over the 40-year period.

In 1984, the lakes spanned about 50 square miles. By 2024, they covered 90 square miles—an area larger than New York’s Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes also carved by ancient glaciers.

“The lakes that are forming in this region are immense, starting at the mountains and spreading toward the coast, making this a new lake district that is unique in our nation,” Pelto said in a statement.

Pelto suggested this lake system could represent the fastest-growing collection of lakes in the U.S. in this century, reflecting the accelerated retreat of Alaska’s glaciers due to climate change.

The lakes are not only expanding but also undergoing noticeable transformations.

Alsek Lake, for instance, appears much bluer in the 2024 image compared to 1984. This shift suggests that the lake is receiving less “glacial flour”—fine-grained sediment carried by meltwater streams, according to a NASA Earth Observatory article.

As sediment levels drop, the lake’s water will continue to darken, allowing more light to penetrate and potentially fostering aquatic life and fishery development.

The pattern is one that is repeating across Alaska and the Arctic more broadly.

According to the National Park Service, glaciers within Alaska national parks shrank by 8 percent between the 1950s and the early 2000s. This pace ticked upward, with 13 percent lost from 1985 to 2020.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about glaciers? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — In the remotest reaches of Alaska, there’s no relying on DoorDash to have Thanksgiving dinner — or any dinner — delivered. But some residents living well off the grid nevertheless have turkeys this holiday, thanks to the Alaska Turkey Bomb.

For the third straight year, a resident named Esther Keim has been flying low and slow in a small plane over rural parts of south-central Alaska, dropping frozen turkeys to those who can’t simply run out to the grocery store.

Alaska is mostly wilderness, with only about 20% of it accessible by road. In winter, many who live in remote areas rely on small planes or snowmobiles to travel any distance, and frozen rivers can act as makeshift roads.

When Keim was growing up on an Alaska homestead, a family friend would airdrop turkeys to her family and others nearby for the holidays. Other times, the pilot would deliver newspapers, sometimes with a pack of gum inside for Keim.

Her family moved to more urban Alaska nearly 25 years ago but still has the homestead. Using a small plane she had rebuilt with her father, Keim launched her turkey delivery mission a few years back after learning of a family living off the land nearby who had little for Thanksgiving dinner.

“They were telling me that a squirrel for dinner did not split very far between three people,” Keim recalled. “At that moment, I thought … ‘I’m going to airdrop them a turkey.’”

She decided not to stop there. Her effort has grown by word of mouth and by social media posts. This year, she’s delivering 32 frozen turkeys to people living year-round in cabins where there are no roads.

All but two had been delivered by Tuesday, with delivery plans for the last two birds thwarted by Alaska’s unpredictable weather.

Among the beneficiaries are Dave and Christina Luce, who live on the Yentna River about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage. They have stunning mountain views in every direction, including North America’s tallest mountain, Denali, directly to the north. But in the winter it’s a 90-minute snowmobile ride to the nearest town, which they do about once a month.

“I’m 80 years old now, so we make fewer and fewer trips,” Dave Luce said. “The adventure has sort of gone out of it.”

They’ve known Keim since she was little. The 12-pound (5.44-kilogram) turkey she delivered will provide more than enough for them and a few neighbors.

“It makes a great Thanksgiving,” Dave Luce said. “She’s been a real sweetheart, and she’s been a real good friend.”

Keim makes 30 to 40 turkey deliveries yearly, flying as far as 100 miles (161 kilometers) from her base north of Anchorage toward Denali’s foothills.

Sometimes she enlists the help of a “turkey dropper” to ride along and toss the birds out. Other times, she’s the one dropping turkeys while her friend Heidi Hastings pilots her own plane.

Keim buys about 20 turkeys at a time, with the help of donations, usually by people reaching out to her through Facebook. She wraps them in plastic garbage bags and lets them sit in the bed of her pickup until she can arrange a flight.

“Luckily it’s cold in Alaska, so I don’t have to worry about freezers,” she said.

She contacts families on social media to let them know of impending deliveries, and then they buzz the house so the homeowners will come outside.

“We won’t drop the turkey until we see them come out of the house or the cabin, because if they don’t see it fall, they’re not going to know where to look,” she said.

It can be especially difficult to find the turkey if there’s deep snow. A turkey was once missing for five days before it was found, but the only casualty so far has been a lost ham, Keim said.

Keim prefers to drop the turkey on a frozen lake if possible so it’s easy to locate.

“As far as precision and hitting our target, I am definitely not the best aim,” she joked. “I’ve gotten better, but I have never hit a house, a building, person or dog.”

Her reward is the great responses she gets from families, some who record her dropping the turkeys and send her videos and texts of appreciation.

“They just think it’s so awesome that we throw these things out of the plane,” Keim said.

Ultimately, she hopes to set up a nonprofit organization to solicit more donations and reach people across a bigger swath of the state. And it doesn’t have to stop at turkeys.

“There’s so many kids out in the villages,” she said. “It would be cool to maybe add a stuffed animal or something they can hold.”

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Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska.

PALMER — Every year, Jason Tolstrup flipped the switch on the holiday lights adorning the massive steel Christmas tree along the Glenn Highway as soon as he finished Thanksgiving dinner.

That tradition ended this year. Tolstrup, a 53-year-old longshoreman from Wasilla who became the self-appointed guardian of the Glenn Highway Christmas tree nearly two decades ago, died in a dirt biking crash in April.

It will be Dustin, Tolstrup’s twin brother, lighting the tree on Thursday, with a small group of family and close friends, including Jason’s wife, Kaye, and the four daughters they shared. They will hang ornaments bearing Jason Tolstrup’s photo. Some of his ashes are already hung on the tree.

“When I’m there, I feel closer to Jason,” Kaye Tolstrup said this week, looking ahead to Thursday. “It’s definitely going to be emotionally different and difficult. It’s his tree. It was his pride and joy. He loved to make the public happy. That was all he ever wanted.”

The tree, a roughly 20-foot-tall cone of steel rebar strung with thousands of lights and topped with a star, shines through the winter darkness, ice fog and frigid weather that tends to accompany the drive for tens of thousands of Mat-Su drivers who make the trip to and from Anchorage.

It stays lit from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, rising from a frozen swamp near the Old Glenn Highway overpass just south of the Palmer Hay Flats State Game Refuge.

Kaye Tolstrup said Jason “years and years ago” asked his brother to keep the tree going if anything happened to him.

So Dustin Tolstrup will carry on the family tradition of making sure the tree stays lit with a 6-battery rotation that ensures there are always two working batteries and two charging, along with the two sapped after powering the lights for anywhere from one to three days.

Tolstrup, who for years helped his brother lug batteries, said it was a no-brainer to step in now.

“My brother did it for the people,” he said this week. “I’m doing it for my brother.”

The tree has its own Facebook group, established in 2019, that this week hit 13,000 members from around the world, with followers from countries as far away as Afghanistan. The tree is an Alaska icon, as one fan put it, that’s “come a long way from the scraggly spruce tree that mysteriously lit up year after year around Christmas.”

For years, Jason Tolstrup was the mystery man behind the tree.

He kept his identity secret after he took over from the former treekeeper in 2005. In 2019, when the real tree gave way to the elements, Tolstrup installed the roughly 20-foot-tall metal version in place now. He hauled batteries back and forth, sometimes daily, risking injury and wrapping in the whole family to help.

The twin brothers were on a road trip through Nevada in April when Jason’s fatal crash occurred. Dustin Tolstrup said someone, probably one of the dozen emergency responders who watched him lose his twin brother that day, put balloons at the site of the crash.

Seeing those balloons on a visit to the spot later was a gut punch, he said — but also one of those unexpected gifts that made him realize “how amazing people are.”

Dustin Tolstrup said it’s not hard going out to the tree. He’s seen it out there for decades. What’s hard is going to work at the port in Anchorage where he and his brother loaded cargo together, side by side on cranes, competing to see who was faster. His birthday will be hard. It will be the first in his life he celebrates alone.

Dustin and Kaye Tolstrup trudged out to the tree Monday to test the 800 feet of lights strung on its conical steel frame. The honking started as soon as the lights sprang to life, Kaye Tolstrup said this week.

There’s something about the sight of those red, yellow, purple, green and blue LED lights blazing from the winter landscape that warms your heart, she said.

Kaye, 45 and a PIC at Three Bears, was with Jason for 10 years.

Before that, she was one of those drivers headed back to Mat-Su who appreciated the simple joy of a Christmas tree suddenly appearing in the pitch-black expanse along the highway.

“The first time I remember driving from Anchorage and seeing that tree, it makes you feel like … ‘Oh, I’m home now,’” she said. “It makes you happy. It’s in the middle of nowhere. It’s completely dark and it’s cold. Then you see this tree and it’s just like, everything is good.”