| About Alaska - Alaska Land |
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The state of Alaska is a land of extremes. Being first in size, shoreline, and many natural resources are only a few of the many unique qualities of the Alaskan land.
Alaska is roughly 530,000 square miles, three times the size of California and larger than all but 18 of the world’s nations. If superimposed over the lower 48, Alaska would reach from San Francisco, California to Jacksonville, Florida. Alaska spans five time zones, though only two are observed. If not for this special consideration the American day would both start and end in Alaska as the Aleutian Islands run past 180 degrees latitude.
Alaska is covered by a variety of landforms. The well known Mt. McKinley has an elevation of 20,320 feet at its summit. Also known as Denali, meaning “the great one” in the Dena’ina language, Mt. McKinley is the largest mountain in North America. Denali’s bulk and rise are greater than Mt. Everest’s, which sits atop the 17,000 foot tall Tibetan Plateau giving it a height of only around 12,000 feet. In addition, Alaska hosts 19 “Fourteeners” (mountains over 14,000 ft in height).
Glaciers and permafrost cover roughly 200,000 square miles of Alaska. Though estimates place the total number of glaciers over 100,000, there are 616 named glaciers in the state.
The state is surrounded by water on three sides which means Alaska has the longest shoreline in the United States. In fact, the Alaskan shoreline is longer than the all of the lower 48 combined. Part of this shoreline, the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet just south of Anchorage, experiences one of the largest tidal changes in North America and is known to experience the rare tidal bore (or eagre) phenomenon.
The United States Bureau of Land Management estimates that two-thirds of Alaska is owned by the U.S. Federal government. This land is made up of national forests, parks, and wildlife refuges. The amount of Alaska’s land committed to preservation is without question the most substantial in the nation. For instance, 68% of acreage held in national parks and 83% of the land designated as national wildlife refuge is in Alaska. The Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest, is three times larger than Chugach National Forest, the next largest forest, which is also in Alaska.
The climate of Alaska is as varied and extreme as the terrain. The state is generally divided into three climate zones: maritime, interior, and arctic. The maritime zone covers Southeast Alaska and the islands of the southwest. These areas, especially Southeast Alaska, experience high precipitation and mild temperatures. Precipitation amounts and temperatures decrease moving north. Barrow, the northern-most city in the United States, sees just over 4 inches of precipitation annually while Ketchikan, in the southeast, averages over 137 inches. Fairbanks, located in the interior of the state, has temperatures ranging from 50 F below zero to as high as the 90s F above.
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