Why alaska is important

Home Milestones Purchase of Alaska, Milestones: — For more information, please see the full notice. Purchase of Alaska, The purchase of Alaska in marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region. What do we need to know to better understand the role of Alaska given future scenarios?

Finally, we summarize priority research that is needed to improve understanding of how policy and management prescriptions are likely to influence the role Alaska plays in global climate stabilization and adaptation.

Alaska is globally significant for its large tracts of intact habitats and their role in conserving biodiversity and storing carbon while supporting traditional and cultural uses Kofinas et al.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of ANCSA established twelve later thirteen Alaska Native regional corporations and over local village corporations, representing a total of 44 million acres 17, km 2 of land Figure 1.

Alaska is home to federally recognized tribes and it is the United States state with the highest proportion of American Indian and Alaska Native people 1.

Most of Alaska far exceeds landscape condition values of even the most protected places in the contiguous United States Reynolds et al. Figure 2. Landscape condition of Alaska; data from Trammell and Aisu Landscape condition uses a method developed by Hak and Comer but was modified to better represent the effect of human development on systems in Alaska.

Each type of human footprint e. This is meant to represent the physical impact of human activities to the landscape, not necessarily all the ecological impacts. Likewise, cultural and economic climate change impacts across Alaska have been reviewed elsewhere e.

With reference to these previous reviews, this analysis focuses on carbon dynamics and ecosystem integrity. Figure 3. Northern permafrost soils contain almost two times the amount of stored carbon as that found within the atmosphere. However, soil carbon concentrations will change with the melting of permafrost Hugelius et al. The decomposition of permafrost carbon could accelerate climate warming through the loss of stored carbon, and methane releases have been widely documented from warming lakes Jorgenson et al.

The interaction of marine and terrestrial systems across seasonal variations makes predicting changes to total carbon storage challenging Parmentier et al. Likewise, as will be discussed, the effects of climate change on the frequency and intensity of wildfires add complexity to issues of carbon balance. Global climate targets have been established in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change, including disruption to weather patterns, extreme heat and flood events, water and food shortages, and loss of biodiversity and essential ecosystem services IPCC, Naturally functioning ecosystems are critical for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and meeting global climate targets via both protecting existing carbon stocks and new sequestration Griscom et al.

These natural-climate solutions NCS include proforestation allowing forests to continue to grow , which is the most rapid means to accumulate additional carbon in forests and out of the atmosphere Law et al. Significantly, much of the land essential to achieving carbon storage objectives is also essential for protecting biodiversity Dinerstein et al. Protection of intact and low human-impact forests is one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate climate change.

A large portion of this carbon is found in the globally important forest and wetland areas of the tropics and boreal region Bradshaw and Warkentin, Though the impacts to Alaska systems from climate change are well established, there has been little focus on the potential contribution of Alaska land and water management to climate stabilization Zhu and McGuire, We synthesize existing literature and provide expert input to answer three primary questions: Why is Alaska globally meaningful for biodiversity and climate?

Why should Alaska be a key element of a climate stabilization and biodiversity conservation strategy for the United States? What do we need to know to better understand the role Alaska will play in climate stabilization and resilience given projected changes?

Alaska is recognized for its naturally functioning ecosystems, undammed rivers, complete wildlife assemblages, and healthy populations of fish and wildlife. Much of this is attributed to its large tracts of intact or undeveloped habitat, which are important for sustaining ecological and evolutionary processes central to the long-term persistence of biodiversity Figure 2 ; Locke et al.

Ecologically intact ecosystems are becoming increasingly limited on the planet, making their identification and conservation an important priority Plumptre et al.

These remaining intact landscapes contain the last strongholds for many imperiled species Watson et al. In Alaska, they also support Alaska Native peoples, who currently and historically maintain complex and vibrant traditions of subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering.

These traditions are key to not only the cultures and people themselves, but also to public policy Wheeler and Thornton, Alaska is the only location in the United States outside of the Yellowstone Ecosystem that has landscapes with their full roster of historically present AD large mammals Morrison et al.

Alaska is also a priority for conserving the increasingly rare phenomenon of mass migration of large terrestrial mammals, with a number of significant caribou migrations occurring throughout the region Harris et al. Alaska hosts a number of globally significant sites for large aggregations of breeding shorebirds. Concentrations of over one million birds each occur at ten key migration or stopover sites in Alaska 3.

Salmon-producing regions of Alaska are highly diverse, ranging from rainforest, to boreal forest, to Arctic tundra lowlands. Salmon are known to use approximately 36, km of streams in the state, which equates to nearly three trips around the globe; and cataloging of salmon occurrence in Alaska is incomplete and ongoing due, in part, to insufficient funding. No other place on Earth has as many healthy and diverse populations of wild salmon.

In Alaska, large tracts of intact habitat support multiple runs of salmon. Maintaining multiple populations with diverse responses to environmental fluctuations within a landscape provides greater ecological resilience to threats and stochastic events Schindler et al. The Tongass and Chugach National Forests in southeastern and southcentral Alaska represent some of the largest tracts of intact rainforest in the world Orians and Schoen, and these forests support diverse and productive Pacific salmon fisheries Johnson et al.

Intact landscapes support habitat diversity allowing, for instance, the peak migration timing of the same species in nearby streams to vary by 3 weeks or more due in part to temperature differences.

This variability allows trout, bears, and various birds e. Diversity in the timing of migration can also extend fishing seasons and improve food security for Indigenous and other people Nesbitt and Moore, Further, salmon provide a bridge between marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems, enriching adjacent forests through nutrient transfer that enhances tree growth Quinn et al.

These watershed ecosystems represent not just ecological communities, seral stage distributions, and carbon stores in their historic proportions and configurations on the landscape, but also are more likely to maintain the hydrological, geomorphic, and other physical processes that sustain the ecosystems over time. These undeveloped watersheds represent a globally rare and significant, process-based conservation opportunity.

The temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, including those in the southeast of Alaska, contain the most extensive examples of undeveloped and semi-natural temperate rainforest remaining globally, and are recognized for their significance in storing large amounts of carbon Hudiburg et al.

Trees in the Pacific Northwest often live for years or more, storing carbon in boles and roots for that length of time, and they continue to accumulate carbon annually Hudiburg et al. Protecting more forest carbon on public lands, lengthening harvest cycles, and reforestation contribute the most to increase forest carbon storage and sequestration Law et al.

These findings led to the promotion of proforestation, or letting forests grow, as a high priority climate mitigation strategy globally Moomaw et al. The rainforests of southeast Alaska are notable for supporting large tracts of old growth forest, where tree size and biomass are higher than in younger forests.

There is more old-growth than young forest area in Alaska Pan et al. Protecting forests with old trees will also confer co-benefits to wildlife, biodiversity, and other ecosystem services including the provision of microclimate buffering under future extreme climate conditions and various cultural ecosystem services Sutherland et al. The boreal forest biome, which covers much of interior Alaska, is increasingly recognized for the important role it plays in carbon storage Dinerstein et al.

The forests in Alaska have relatively low carbon density in living vegetation compared with coastal forests Domke et al. The boreal forests of Alaska show growth increases in productivity at the boreal-tundra ecotones where it is colder and sparsely forested, and drought-induced declines in productivity throughout interior Alaska, indicating a biome shift is underway Beck et al.

These forests also lose a substantial amount of carbon in wildfires, primarily from the burning of soils and duff Goetz et al. Figure 4.

Figure 5. Median total carbon distribution in the Nearctic realm [from Dinerstein et al. Disturbances reduce the net carbon sink, yet have been challenging to quantify in this region.

This indicates that the above ground carbon of these forests was still a net carbon sink after accounting for disturbance losses from primarily wildfires and harvest.

On an area basis, harvest impacts on above ground carbon were nearly two times larger than from wildfire Wang et al. While the forests of Alaska are globally significant carbon storehouses, the vast majority of carbon in Alaska is stored in undisturbed soils. Due to rising temperatures, permafrost is thawing rapidly and is thus altering carbon storage dynamics with potentially dire consequences.

But as new unfrozen peatlands form, more carbon may be taken from the atmosphere due to increased plant growth. The carbon balance of these peatlands is changing rapidly with as yet unknown consequences for carbon storage and hence the global climate McGuire et al.

While long-term warming will likely restructure Arctic tundra, there are multiple lines of evidence of Arctic greening and increasing productivity Berner et al. In the Tongass National Forest, 26 percent is stored in live vegetation Leighty et al.

Maps of total biomass carbon, which integrate above and below ground sources, indicate that nearly all of Alaska is above the global median Figures 4 , 5. Protecting these carbon-storing intact systems in Alaska is important because the ability of these ecosystems to recover carbon once lost is very slow Goldstein et al. It takes hundreds to thousands of years to accumulate carbon in trees and soils to their ecological potential, respectively, and it takes that long to regain that amount of carbon once removed, if ever Sun et al.

In a recent global analysis of remaining intact habitats and essential places to conserve to stabilize climate and avoid species extinctions, Besides the existing protected areas IUCN Category I-VI designations , the role of intact areas and high carbon storage areas were central to Alaska featuring prominently in this analysis Dinerstein et al. Intact large mammal assemblages-places where rosters of the historically present as of AD large mammals still remain-occur across much of Alaska Morrison et al.

Presence of healthy populations of large mammals contributes to healthy ecosystem functioning and carbon storage Ripple et al. Conserving and restoring robust populations of large mammals that occur in Alaska is an opportunity to maximize carbon storage, as well as to confer other benefits that the presence of large mammals brings for Indigenous, local, and visiting human communities Colt, ; Colt et al. Blue carbon refers to the carbon stored in coastal wetlands and estuaries.

Seagrass and salt marshes can store up to 2. Alaska has among the largest eelgrass beds in the world Ward et al. Though the blue carbon potential of peatlands, wetlands, and coastal estuaries has been studied in the Pacific coast region of Washington State Kauffman et al.

Wildfire is the dominant driver of ecosystem change in much of Alaska, particularly the boreal region, and is strongly linked to climate. The area that burns in Alaska has increased significantly in recent decades Kasischke et al.

Recent large burns put Alaska as contributing to approximately half of United States fire carbon emissions in certain years Veraverbeke et al. As the changes in future climate will affect the landscape configuration of vegetation types throughout fire-initiated secondary succession, there are potential feedbacks to the fire regime and hence differences in modeled projections Wolken et al. In some cases, such as in white spruce forests of south-central and interior Alaska, old forests are better able to withstand fire than young forests due to their higher water content, taller canopies and thicker bark.

However, in black spruce forests, old stands are highly fire prone. The extent to which mature forest stands can escape or withstand fire and other disturbances will therefore be a key factor in determining their near-term climate-change resilience. Hotter and more intense fires are also likely to burn more of the organic layer, further increasing emissions. Despite short-term releases of carbon due to more intense and more frequent fires, shifts in dominant plant species catalyzed by severe fire could mitigate feedback to climate warming if future deciduous-dominated boreal forests are managed to reduce fire activity.

Fast-growing deciduous trees that replace slow-growing black spruce following severe boreal forest burns has been shown to result in a net increase in carbon storage by a factor of five over the disturbance cycle Mack et al. A thorough review of baseline and projected future carbon storage and greenhouse-gas fluxes in Alaska was done by Zhu and McGuire They found that across upland and wetland ecosystems, Alaska will likely see substantial increases in carbon sequestration potential between now and This is due primarily to increases in net primary productivity and is predicted despite likely and substantial increases in carbon emissions due to wildfire.

The temperate forests in south-central and southeast coastal Alaska, which store significant carbon in live and dead tree biomass, are also projected to increase storage potential. Susceptibility to climate change in lowland shrub tundra ecotypes is significant due to large amounts of soil organic carbon becoming available for loss by decomposition.

It should be noted, however, that systems that are more intact and less disturbed are expected to maintain higher carbon storage levels Martin and Watson, These systems provide services directly essential to human health, including provisioning of clean air and water. Globally, intact ecosystems are especially important for many Indigenous communities Watson et al. In Alaska, dependence on wild resources is cultural, social, and economic across communities.

Rural residents harvest about 18, tons of wild foods each year, with fish making up about 56 percent of this harvest 5. Rural communities in Alaska are geographically isolated by waterways, varied and steep terrain, and lack of road infrastructure, and hence are particularly reliant on wild foods. For Indigenous peoples in particular, wild foods such as salmon are a central facet of culture and social relationships as well as subsistence 6. Even elsewhere in the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, many critical resources for these communities have become dramatically reduced in abundance, negatively impacting the resilience of human communities e.

Salmon, herring, and other marine foods are iconic in this regard Thornton and Moss, , but access to a diverse array of terrestrial and marine plant and animal foods contribute to nutritional health, cultural continuity, and resilience to modern crises Moss, ; Hunn et al.

Ecologically, Alaska could provide key refugia for species whose distributions will shift northward under climate change. Southeast Alaska will, for example, provide key refugia for temperate rainforest communities of the Pacific Coast DellaSala et al. Land management decisions will affect how species, ecosystems and their services, and the people of Alaska and the nation as a whole, will adapt to climate-related changes.

Conservation and informed management of areas of high refugia potential may help species and ecosystems persist, facilitate adaptation to new conditions, and allow for proactive management. This is consequential as many land managers are struggling to keep up with the accelerating consequences of climate change Stralberg et al. Intact systems and the robust populations of species that occur in them can be viewed as an insurance policy against having to address the problems and associated costs that occur in trying to manage at-risk species in altered habitat in the future.

Leveraging the relatively intact nature of the Kenai peninsula in Alaska, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge KNWR has been actively promoting proactive management to protect future anticipated ecosystem function Magness and Morton, Leveraging climate envelope models developed for the region, managers at the KNWR have developed a portfolio approach that works with climate change trajectories to promote species more suited to future anticipated climates Magness and Morton, Directing ecosystem change, in conjunction with resisting or accepting ecosystem change, is more attainable in intact ecosystems Thompson et al.

Alaska is home to many of the last remaining intact and largely unaltered Pacific salmon genus Oncorhynchus producing ecosystems. The persistence of salmon and their supporting habitats has sustained the connection between Alaskans and salmon for over 10, years Halffman et al. In contemporary times, salmon support multi-billion industries in Alaska through harvest by commercial fishermen and recreational anglers Johnson et al.

Salmon are harbingers of climate change and are increasingly observed in Arctic regions where Indigenous Peoples have little or no experience interacting with salmon Dunmall et al. Although Alaska is in a prolonged period of low abundance of the large-bodied and iconic Chinook salmon O.

Evidence points to major ocean changes as the primary drivers of these shifts in abundance e. Restoring and maintaining intact landscapes and flexible options for salmon to adapt in the future will determine where and how salmon are distributed across the state moving forward.

In the rainforest region of Southeast Alaska, it is a priority to understand the efficacy of forest restoration from historical logging and if and how this can improve. For example, restoration and management to buffer against higher frequency flooding events, drought, and variability has been prioritized by disciplinary experts Shanley et al. Maintaining flexible options for salmon—by maintaining a diversity of habitats and keeping these as intact as possible—will increase the likelihood that salmon productivity can be maintained despite large-scale shifts that will occur Cline et al.

Mitigating climate change and maintaining flexible options into the future will be essential to minimize forced migration of human populations as climate refugees, loss of access to food resources, and other uncertain risks Hamilton et al. This is particularly important in Alaska as communities deriving significant elements of their daily needs from subsistence economies and ecologies are particularly at risk from climate change Savo et al.

Such costs may be borne by United States taxpayers more generally as well as Alaskans. There can be no question that anyone would have been shaken by the events that transpired in the Memphis, Tennessee, home of singer Al Green in the early morning hours of October 18, , when an ex-girlfriend burst in on him in the bath and poured a pot of scalding-hot grits on The show was considered groundbreaking for its realistic portrayal of a working-class family and the issues they faced.

The arrests came at a tempestuous time for the couple. Only days earlier, an announcement was made that Ono was pregnant, creating a scandal because both Lennon and Ono On October 18, , the American philosopher-inventor R. Buckminster Fuller applies for a patent for his Dymaxion Car. On October 18, , Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon complete their survey of the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland as well as areas that would eventually become the states of Delaware and West Virginia.

The Penn and Calvert families had hired Mason and After joining the BEF in , Farr was sent to the front in Live TV. This Day In History.

History Vault. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Alaska Becomes 49th State. Tougher in Alaska: Coffee.