Bureau of Land Management
The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior that administers more than 247.3 million acres of public lands in the United States which constitutes one eighth of the landmass of the country. President Harry S. Truman created the BLM in 1946 by combining two existing agencies: the General Land Office and the Grazing Service; the agency manages the federal government's nearly 700 million acres of subsurface mineral estate located beneath federal and private lands severed from their surface rights by the Homestead Act of 1862. Most BLM public lands are located in these 12 western states: Alaska, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming; the mission of the BLM is "to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations." BLM holdings were described as "land nobody wanted" because homesteaders had passed them by. All the same, ranchers hold nearly 18,000 permits and leases for livestock grazing on 155 million acres of BLM public lands.
The agency manages 221 wilderness areas, 27 national monuments and some 636 other protected areas as part of the National Conservation Lands, totaling about 36 million acres. In addition the National Conservation Lands include nearly 2,400 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers, nearly 6,000 miles of National Scenic and Historic Trails. There are more than 63,000 gas wells on BLM public lands. Total energy leases generated $5.4 billion in 2013, an amount divided among the Treasury, the states, Native American groups. The BLM's roots go back to the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787; these laws provided for the survey and settlement of the lands that the original 13 colonies ceded to the federal government after the American Revolution. As additional lands were acquired by the United States from Spain and other countries, the United States Congress directed that they be explored and made available for settlement. During the Revolutionary War, military bounty land was promised to soldiers who fought for the colonies.
After the war, the Treaty of Paris of 1783, signed by the United States, England and Spain, ceded territory to the United States. In the 1780s, other states relinquished their own claims to land in modern-day Ohio. By this time, the United States needed revenue to function. Land was sold. In order to sell the land, surveys needed to be conducted; the Land Ordinance of 1785 instructed a geographer to oversee this work as undertaken by a group of surveyors. The first years of surveying were completed by error. In 1812, Congress established the General Land Office as part of the Department of the Treasury to oversee the disposition of these federal lands. By the early 1800s, promised bounty land claims were fulfilled. Over the years, other bounty land and homestead laws were enacted to dispose of federal land. Several different types of patents existed; these include cash entry, homestead, military warrants, mineral certificates, private land claims, state selections, town sites, town lots. A system of local land offices spread throughout the territories, patenting land, surveyed via the corresponding Office of the Surveyor General of a particular territory.
This pattern spread across the entire United States. The laws that spurred this system with the exception of the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877 have since been repealed or superseded. In the early 20th century, Congress took additional steps toward recognizing the value of the assets on public lands and directed the Executive Branch to manage activities on the remaining public lands; the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 allowed leasing and production of selected commodities, such as coal, oil and sodium to take place on public lands. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 established the United States Grazing Service to manage the public rangelands by establishment of advisory boards that set grazing fees; the Oregon and California Revested Lands Sustained Yield Management Act of 1937 referred as the O&C Act, required sustained yield management of the timberlands in western Oregon. In 1946, the Grazing Service was merged with the General Land Office to form the Bureau of Land Management within the Department of the Interior.
It took several years for this new agency to reorganize. In the end, the Bureau of Land Management became less focused on land disposal and more focused on the long term management and preservation of the land; the agency achieved its current form by combining offices in the western states and creating a corresponding office for lands both east of and alongside the Mississippi River. As a matter of course, the BLM's emphasis fell on activities in the western states as most of the mining, land sales, federally owned areas are located west of the Mississippi. BLM personnel on the ground have been oriented toward local interests, while bureau management in Washington are led by presidential guidance. By means of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, Congress created a more unified bureau mission and recognized the value of the remaining public lands by declaring that these lands would remain in public ownership; the law directed that these lands be managed with a view toward "multiple use" defined as "management of the public lands and their various resource values so that th
Fairbanks, Alaska
Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U. S. state of Alaska. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska. 2016 estimates put the population of the city proper at 32,751, the population of the Fairbanks North Star Borough at 97,121, making it the second most populous metropolitan area in Alaska. The Metropolitan Statistical Area encompasses all of the Fairbanks North Star Borough and is the northernmost Metropolitan Statistical Area in the United States, located 196 driving miles south of the Arctic Circle. Fairbanks is home to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the founding campus of the University of Alaska system. Though, as of yet, there is not a known permanent Alaska Native settlement at the site of Fairbanks, Athabascan peoples have used the area for thousands of years. An archaeological site excavated on the grounds of the University of Alaska Fairbanks uncovered a Native camp about 3,500 years old, with older remains found at deeper levels.
From evidence gathered at the site, archaeologists surmise that Native activities in the area were limited to seasonal hunting and fishing as fridge temperatures precluded berry gathering. In addition, archeological sites on the grounds of nearby Fort Wainwright date back well over 10,000 years. Arrowheads excavated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks site matched similar items found in Asia, providing some of the first evidence that humans arrived in North America via the Bering Strait land bridge in deep antiquity. Captain E. T. Barnette founded Fairbanks in August 1901 while headed to Tanacross, where he intended to set up a trading post; the steamboat on which Barnette was a passenger, the Lavelle Young, ran aground while attempting to negotiate shallow water. Barnette, along with his party and supplies, were deposited along the banks of the Chena River 7 miles upstream from its confluence with the Tanana River; the sight of smoke from the steamer's engines caught the attention of gold prospectors working in the hills to the north, most notably an Italian immigrant named Felice Pedroni and his partner Tom Gilmore.
The two met Barnette where he convinced him of the potential of the area. Barnette set up his trading post at the site, still intending to make it to Tanacross. Teams of gold prospectors soon congregated around the newly founded Fairbanks. After some urging by James Wickersham, who moved the seat of the Third Division court from Eagle to Fairbanks, the settlement was named after Charles W. Fairbanks, a Republican senator from Indiana and the twenty-sixth Vice President of the United States, serving under Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. In these early years of settlement, the Tanana Valley was an important agricultural center for Alaska until the establishment of the Matanuska Valley Colonization Project and the town of Palmer in 1935. Agricultural activity still occurs today in the Tanana Valley, but to the southeast of Fairbanks in the communities of Salcha and Delta Junction. During the early days of Fairbanks, its vicinity was a major producer of agricultural goods. What is now the northern reaches of South Fairbanks was the farm of Paul J. Rickert, who came from nearby Chena in 1904 and operated a large farm until his death in 1938.
Farmers Loop Road and Badger Road, loop roads north and east of Fairbanks, were home to major farming activity. Badger Road is named for Harry Markley Badger, an early resident of Fairbanks who established a farm along the road and became known as "the Strawberry King". Ballaine and McGrath Roads, side roads of Farmers Loop Road, were named for prominent local farmers, whose farms were in the immediate vicinity of their respective namesake roads. Despite early efforts by the Alaska Loyal League, the Tanana Valley Agriculture Association and William Fentress Thompson, the editor-publisher of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, to encourage food production, agriculture in the area was never able to support the population, although it came close in the 1920s; the construction of Ladd Army Airfield starting in 1939, part of a larger effort by the federal government during the New Deal and World War II to install major infrastructure in the territory for the first time, fostered an economic and population boom in Fairbanks which extended beyond the end of the war.
In the 1940s the Canol pipeline extended north from Whitehorse for a few years. The Haines - Fairbanks 626 mile long 8" petroleum products pipeline was constructed during the period 1953-55; the presence of the U. S. military has remained strong in Fairbanks. Ladd became Fort Wainwright in 1960. Fairbanks suffered from several floods in its first seven decades, whether from ice jams during spring breakup or heavy rainfall; the first bridge crossing the Chena River, a wooden structure built in 1904 to extend Turner Street northward to connect with the wagon roads leading to the gold mining camps washed out before a permanent bridge was constructed at Cushman Street in 1917 by the Alaska Road Commission. On August 14, 1967, after record rainfall upstream, the Chena began to surge over its banks, flooding the entire town of Fairbanks overnight; this disaster led to the creation of the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project, which built and operates the 50-foot-high Moose Creek Dam in the Chena River and accompanying 8-mile-long spillway.
The project was designed to prevent a repetition of the 1967 flood by being able to
Yukon–Koyukuk School District
Yukon–Koyukuk School District is a school district headquartered in College, a census-designated place in Fairbanks North Star Borough, Alaska. It serves the Yukon–Koyukuk area. Allakaket School Gladys Dart School Andrew K. Demoski School Jimmy Huntington School Kaltag School Merreline A. Kangas School Minto School Johnny Oldman School Ella B. Vernetti School Students may receive services from the Raven Homeschool statewide homeschooling program. Closed schools: Bettles - Bettles Field School Coldfoot Wiseman Yukon–Koyukuk School District website
Donny Olson
Donald C. "Donny" Olson is a Democratic member of the Alaska Senate, representing the T district since 2001. He was appointed to the Alaska State Medical Board by Governor Tony Knowles in 1995 where he would serve until he was sworn into the Alaska Senate in 2001. Olson caucused with the Republicans in the majority during the 28th Senate, from 2013 to 2014, but he was not invited to participate in the organization of the majority caucus for the 29th Senate, he is a member of the Democratic minority caucus. Media related to Donny Olson at Wikimedia Commons Alaska State Legislature - Senator Donald Olson official AK Senate website Project Vote Smart - Representative Donald Olson profile Follow the Money - Donald Olson 2006 2004 2000 Senate campaign contributions 2006 Lieutenant Governor campaign contributions Donny Olson at 100 Years of Alaska's Legislature
Precipitation
In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls under gravity. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, sleet, snow and hail. Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor, so that the water condenses and "precipitates", thus and mist are not precipitation but suspensions, because the water vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate. Two processes acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated: cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Short, intense periods of rain in scattered locations are called "showers."Moisture, lifted or otherwise forced to rise over a layer of sub-freezing air at the surface may be condensed into clouds and rain. This process is active when freezing rain occurs. A stationary front is present near the area of freezing rain and serves as the foci for forcing and rising air.
Provided necessary and sufficient atmospheric moisture content, the moisture within the rising air will condense into clouds, namely stratus and cumulonimbus. The cloud droplets will grow large enough to form raindrops and descend toward the Earth where they will freeze on contact with exposed objects. Where warm water bodies are present, for example due to water evaporation from lakes, lake-effect snowfall becomes a concern downwind of the warm lakes within the cold cyclonic flow around the backside of extratropical cyclones. Lake-effect snowfall can be locally heavy. Thundersnow is possible within lake effect precipitation bands. In mountainous areas, heavy precipitation is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation. On the leeward side of mountains, desert climates can exist due to the dry air caused by compressional heating. Most precipitation is caused by convection; the movement of the monsoon trough, or intertropical convergence zone, brings rainy seasons to savannah climes.
Precipitation is a major component of the water cycle, is responsible for depositing the fresh water on the planet. 505,000 cubic kilometres of water falls as precipitation each year. Given the Earth's surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres, but over land it is only 715 millimetres. Climate classification systems such as the Köppen climate classification system use average annual rainfall to help differentiate between differing climate regimes. Precipitation may occur on other celestial bodies, e.g. when it gets cold, Mars has precipitation which most takes the form of frost, rather than rain or snow. Precipitation is a major component of the water cycle, is responsible for depositing most of the fresh water on the planet. 505,000 km3 of water falls as precipitation each year, 398,000 km3 of it over the oceans. Given the Earth's surface area, that means the globally averaged annual precipitation is 990 millimetres. Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective and orographic rainfall.
Convective processes involve strong vertical motions that can cause the overturning of the atmosphere in that location within an hour and cause heavy precipitation, while stratiform processes involve weaker upward motions and less intense precipitation. Precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice. Mixtures of different types of precipitation, including types in different categories, can fall simultaneously. Liquid forms of precipitation include drizzle. Rain or drizzle that freezes on contact within a subfreezing air mass is called "freezing rain" or "freezing drizzle". Frozen forms of precipitation include snow, ice needles, ice pellets and graupel; the dew point is the temperature to which a parcel must be cooled in order to become saturated, condenses to water. Water vapor begins to condense on condensation nuclei such as dust and salt in order to form clouds. An elevated portion of a frontal zone forces broad areas of lift, which form clouds decks such as altostratus or cirrostratus.
Stratus is a stable cloud deck which tends to form when a cool, stable air mass is trapped underneath a warm air mass. It can form due to the lifting of advection fog during breezy conditions. There are four main mechanisms for cooling the air to its dew point: adiabatic cooling, conductive cooling, radiational cooling, evaporative cooling. Adiabatic cooling occurs when air expands; the air can rise due to convection, large-scale atmospheric motions, or a physical barrier such as a mountain. Conductive cooling occurs when the air comes into contact with a colder surface by being blown from one surface to another, for example from a liquid water surface to colder land. Radiational cooling occurs due to the emission of infrared radiation, either by the air or by the surface underneath. Evaporative cooling occurs when moisture is added to the air through evaporation, which forces the air temperature to cool to its wet-bulb temperature, or until it reaches saturation; the main ways water vapor is added to the air are: wind convergence into areas of upward motion, precipitation or virga falling from above, daytime heating evaporating water from the surface of oceans, water bodies or wet lan
Koyukuk River
The Koyukuk River' is a 425-mile tributary of the Yukon River, in the U. S. state of Alaska. It is the last major tributary entering the Yukon before the larger river empties into the Bering Sea. Rising at the confluence of the North Fork Koyukuk River with the Middle Fork Koyukuk River, it flows southwest to meet the larger Yukon River at Koyukuk; the river, with headwaters above the Arctic Circle in the Endicott Mountains of the Brooks Range, drains an area north of the Yukon River that includes part of the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, as well as Kanuti National Wildlife Refuge and Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge. The main stem of the river is lined by the communities of Evansville, Alatna, Allakaket and Huslia before reaching Koyukuk, its headwaters tributaries include the Koyukuk's south and north forks, the Alatna River, the John River. Major tributaries further downstream include the Kanuti, Hogatza, Dulbi and Gisasa rivers. Of these, the Alatna and North Fork are National Wild and Scenic Rivers, as is the Tinayguk River, a tributary of the North Fork.
Koyukuk was derived from the Central Yup'ik phrase kuik-yuk, meaning a river. The Koyukuk River was given this generic C. Yup'ik name by Russian explorer Petr Vasilii Malakhov, because he did not know the local Koyukon name for it; the Western Union Telegraph Expedition used the spelling of Coyukuk before the United States Board on Geographic Names settled on Koyukuk. The Russian Petr Vasilii Malakhov reached the river at its confluence with the Yukon in 1838; the United States acquired Alaska after the American Civil War, but it was 1885 before US representatives Lieutenant Henry Allen and Private Fred Fickett of the United States Army ascended and explored the river. The discovery of gold deposits by Johnnie Folger on the Middle Fork in 1893 on The Tramway bar led to a gold rush in 1898. In 1929, Robert "Bob" Marshall explored the North Fork of the Koyukuk River while studying plant life in the region for his PhD, he gave the name Gates of the Arctic to the high Brooks Range along the river.
In 1980 the United States Congress designated 100 mi of the North Fork of the Koyukuk River in the Brooks Range as the Koyukuk Wild and Scenic River, which authorized certain levels of protection for the habitat. In 1994 the river flooded, sweeping away three villages, forcing the wholesale relocation of the population. Vegetation along the Koyukuk River, sparse along the upper reaches, consists of tundra plants such as dwarf willows and other shrubs and lichens. Further downstream at lower elevations and boreal forest plants are common except in the Koyukuk Flats near the mouth, where sedges and other herbaceous plants dominate the poorly drained muskeg. Trees found in more well-drained areas along the river include mountain alder, trembling aspen and black spruce. Fish species frequenting the lower Koyukuk include Arctic sockeye salmon; the sockeye and other salmon species, including Chinook and chum thrive along the upper reaches and tributaries. Caribou migrate across the upper part of the Koyukuk watershed.
Other major vertebrates in the region include bald eagles and black bears, beaver and river otter. Beluga whales sometimes visit the lower Koyukuk. Moose herds, which thrive in parts of the watershed in riparian zones downstream of Hughes, attract local and non-local hunters and wolves. A consortium of moose hunters and state wildlife officials work to keep the moose population at sustainable levels. Through 2005, no one had published a study of invertebrates of the Koyukuk or its larger tributaries. General information included in a study related to pipeline construction through the watershed suggested the presence of a variety of true flies, black flies, mayflies and caddisflies. List of rivers of Alaska List of National Wild and Scenic Rivers Reuben D'Aigle Benke, Arthur C. ed. and Cushing, Colbert E. ed.. "Chapter 17: Yukon River Basin" in Rivers of North America. Burlington, Massachusetts: Elsevier Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-088253-1. OCLC 59003378. NPS: Koyukuk Wild and Scenic River Koyukuk National Wildlife Refuge Koyukuk River Floods in Alaska History in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve
Hughes, Alaska
Hughes is a city in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, United States. The population was 77 at the 2010 census, down from 78 in 2000. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.1 square miles, all of it land. Hughes first appeared on the 1920 U. S. Census as an unincorporated village, it did not appear on the 1930 census, but returned in 1940. It formally incorporated in 1973; the majority of the town's population are ethnic Koyukon, Alaskan Athabaskans. Some of the town's population, as of the 1970s, spoke the Central Dialect of the Koyukon language; as of the census of 2000, there were 78 people, 26 households, 17 families residing in the city. The population density was 25.2 people per square mile. There were 39 housing units at an average density of 12.6 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 10.26% White, 78.21% Native American, 10.26% from other races, 1.28% from two or more races. 10.26% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 26 households out of which 50.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 34.6% were married couples living together, 26.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 30.8% were non-families.
30.8% of all households were made up of individuals and none had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.00 and the average family size was 3.67. In the city, the age distribution of the population shows 39.7% under the age of 18, 9.0% from 18 to 24, 23.1% from 25 to 44, 19.2% from 45 to 64, 9.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 26 years. For every 100 females, there were 110.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 123.8 males. The median income for a household in the city was $24,375, the median income for a family was $33,125. Males had a median income of $90,957 versus $0 for females; the per capita income for the city was $10,193. There were 21.1% of families and 28.0% of the population living below the poverty line, including 28.6% of under eighteens and 28.6% of those over 64. The Yukon–Koyukuk School District operates the Johnny Oldman School in Hughes
