By BECKY BOHRER

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A retreating glacier revealed a new island in Alaska this summer, as lake water filled in to surround a land mass once hugged by ice.

Mauri S. Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College in Massachusetts, had anticipated for some time that the Alsek Glacier in southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve would detach from the land mass referred to as Prow Knob. As the glacier has retreated, it has eroded a basin now filled by Alsek Lake, which is fed by the nearby Alsek River, glacier melt and icebergs, he said.

Pelto for years has used satellite imagery as part of his work chronicling changes in glaciers, and he had been checking images of the area at least once a month as he watched for the separation to occur, he said. It appears to h

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