Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska
Kenai Peninsula Borough is a borough of the U. S. state of Alaska. As of the 2010 census, the population was 55,400; the borough seat is Soldotna. The borough includes the entirety of the Kenai Peninsula and a few areas of the mainland of Alaska on the opposite side of Cook Inlet; the borough has a total area of 24,752 square miles, of which 16,075 square miles is land and 8,677 square miles is water. Bethel Census Area, Alaska - northwest Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska - north Municipality of Anchorage, Alaska - north Valdez-Cordova Census Area, Alaska - east Lake and Peninsula Borough, Alaska - west Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska - south Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Chiswell Islands Tuxedni Wilderness Chugach National Forest Katmai National Park and Preserve Katmai Wilderness Kenai Fjords National Park Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Kenai Wilderness Lake Clark National Park and Preserve Lake Clark Wilderness Bear Lake, Tutka Bay, the Trail Lakes, have been the site of salmon enhancement activities.
All three sites are managed by the Cook Inlet Aquaculture Association Some of the fish hatched at these facilities are released into the famous Homer fishing hole. Cook Inlet Keeper and the Cook Inlet Regional Citizen's Advisory Council are groups that attempt to influence public policy on the use of the areas resources; as of the census of 2000, there were 49,700 people, 18,400 households, 12,700 families residing in the borough. The population density was 1/km². There were 24,900 housing units at an average density of 2 per square mile; the racial makeup of the borough was 86% white, 7% Native American, 2% Hispanic or Latino, 4% from two or more races. Black or African Americans and Pacific Islanders each were less than 1% of the population. Just under 1% were from other races combined. 1.92 % reported speaking Russian at home. There were 18,400 households out of which 38% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55% were married couples living together, 9% had a female householder with no husband present, 31% were non-families.
25% of all households were made up of individuals and 5% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.6 and the average family size was 3.2. In the borough the population was spread out with 30% under the age of 18, 7% from 18 to 24, 30% from 25 to 44, 26% from 45 to 64, 7% who were 65 years of age or older; the median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 109 males. There is a borough-wide government based in Soldotna, consisting of a strong mayor and an assembly of representatives from all areas of the borough, they collect sales and property taxes and provide services such as road maintenance, waste collection facilities, emergency services and major funding for public schools, along with mitigation of damage from spruce bark beetles that infested the borough in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Incorporated towns have their own local governments and city councils; the Alaska Department of Corrections operates the Spring Creek Correctional Center near Seward and the Wildwood Correctional Complex near Kenai.
Homer Kachemak Kenai Seldovia Seward Soldotna Jakolof Bay Kachemak Selo Lawing Razdolna Voznesenka 2006 Arctic Winter Games Kalgin Island List of airports in the Kenai Peninsula Borough State parks on the Kenai Peninsula Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska at Curlie Borough map, 2000 census: Alaska Department of Labor Borough map, 2010 census: Alaska Department of Labor
Logging
Logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used narrowly to describe the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest a sawmill or a lumber yard. In common usage, the term may cover a range of forestry or silviculture activities. Illegal logging refers to, it can refer to the harvesting, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. The harvesting procedure itself may be illegal, including using corrupt means to gain access to forests. Clearcut logging is not considered a type of logging but a harvesting or silviculture method, is called clearcutting or block cutting. In the forest products industry logging companies may be referred to as logging contractors, with the smaller, non-union crews referred to as "gyppo loggers". Cutting trees with the highest value and leaving those with lower value diseased or malformed trees, is referred to as high grading, it is sometimes called selective logging, confused with selection cutting, the practice of managing stands by harvesting a proportion of trees.
Logging refers to above-ground forestry logging. Submerged forests exist on land, flooded by damming to create reservoirs; such trees are by the lowering of the reservoirs in question. Ootsa Lake and Williston Lake in British Columbia, Canada are notable examples where timber recovery has been needed to remove inundated forests. Clearcutting, or clearfelling, is a method of harvesting that removes all the standing trees in a selected area. Depending on management objectives, a clearcut may or may not have reserve trees left to attain goals other than regeneration, including wildlife habitat management, mitigation of potential erosion or water quality concerns. Silviculture objectives for clearcutting, a focus on forestry distinguish it from deforestation. Other methods include shelterwood cutting, group selective, single selective, seed-tree cutting, patch cut, retention cutting; the above operations can be carried out by different methods, of which the following three are considered industrial methods: Trees are felled and delimbed and topped at the stump.
The log is transported to the landing, where it is bucked and loaded on a truck. This leaves the slash in the cut area, where it must be further treated if wild land fires are of concern. Trees and plants are felled and transported to the roadside with top and limbs intact. There have been advancements to the process which now allows a logger or harvester to cut the tree down and delimb a tree in the same process; this ability is due to the advancement in the style felling head. The trees are delimbed and bucked at the landing; this method requires. In areas with access to cogeneration facilities, the slash can be chipped and used for the production of electricity or heat. Full-tree harvesting refers to utilization of the entire tree including branches and tops; this technique removes both nutrients and soil cover from the site and so can be harmful to the long term health of the area if no further action is taken, depending on the species, many of the limbs are broken off in handling so the end result may not be as different from tree-length logging as it might seem.
Cut-to-length logging is the process of felling, delimbing and sorting at the stump area, leaving limbs and tops in the forest. Harvesters fell the tree and buck it, place the resulting logs in bunks to be brought to the landing by a skidder or forwarder; this method is available for trees up to 900 mm in diameter. Harvesters are employed in level to moderately steep terrain. Harvesters are computerized to optimize cutting length, control harvesting area by GPS, use price lists for each specific log to archive most economical results during harvesting. Felled logs are generally transported to a sawmill to be cut into lumber, to a paper mill for paper pulp, or for other uses, for example, as fence posts. Many methods have been used to move logs from where they were cut to a rail line or directly to a sawmill or paper mill; the cheapest and most common method is making use of a river's current to float floating tree trunks downstream, by either log driving or timber rafting. To help herd the logs to the mill, in 1960 the Alaskan Lumber and Pulp Mill had a specially designed boat, constructed of 1 1⁄2 inch steel.
In the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, the most common method was the high-wheel loader, a set of wheels over ten feet tall that the log or logs were strapped beneath. Oxen were at first used with the high-wheel loaders. In 1960 the largest high wheel loader was built for service in California. Called the Bunyan Buggie, the unit was self-propelled and had wheels 24 feet high and a front dozer blade, 30 feet across and 6 feet high. Log transportation can be challenging and costly since trees are far from roads or watercourses. Road building and maintenance may be restricted in National Forests or other wilderness areas since it can cause erosion in riparian zones; when felled logs sit adja
Porcupine caribou
The Porcupine caribou or Grant's caribou is a subspecies of the reindeer found in Alaska, United States, adjacent parts of Canada. It is sometimes included in it. Migratory caribou herds are named after their birthing grounds, in this case the Porcupine River, which runs through a large part of the range of the Porcupine herd. Though numbers fluctuate, the herd comprises about 218,000 animals, they migrate over 1,500 mi a year between their winter range and calving grounds at the Beaufort Sea, the longest land migration route of any land mammal on Earth. Their range spans the Alaska/Yukon border and is a valued resource cooperatively managed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Canadian wildlife agencies and local aboriginal peoples; the caribou are the primary sustenance of the Gwichʼin, a First Nations/Alaska Native people, who traditionally built their communities to align with the caribou's migration patterns. They are routinely hunted by other indigenous peoples, including the Inupiat, the Inuvialuit, the Hän and the Northern Tutchone.
By July 2017, the Porcupine herd had reached a record high of about 202,000 to 235,000 animals. Sixteen years earlier, in 2001 the same herd was only half as large. While other barren-ground caribou herds have declined by 90%, the Porcupine herd has remained stable; the Porcupine caribou known as Grant's caribou, is a subspecies of the caribou found in Alaska, United States and adjacent parts of Canada. It is sometimes included in the subspecies called the barren-ground caribou; the Porcupine herd range covers 1,500 mi migrating annually from the calving grounds and birthing grounds, the Porcupine River after which they are named, to "the river valleys and slopes in the Ogilvie and Richardson Mountains in the Yukon and the southern Brooks Range in Alaska in the winter. The calving area is located on 1.5 million acres in the Porcupine River coastal region of the Beaufort Sea known as the 1002 area, part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The area runs through a large part of the range of the Porcupine herd.
In the spring the pregnant cows move "northeast from the Alaskan winter ranges or north and northwest from the Canadian winter ranges. If snowmelt is early, they will move westward along the north slope of the Brooks Range into Alaska." Most Porcupine caribou calves are born in the first week of June and they are at their most vulnerable from their primary predators on the calving ground - golden eagles, grizzly bears and wolves - during the first three weeks when they are dependent on milk from their mothers. About one quarter of them die during this period, their 1,500 miles annual land migration between their winter range in the boreal forests of Alaska and northwest Canada over the mountains to the coastal plain and their calving grounds on the Beaufort Sea coastal plain, is the longest of any land mammal on earth. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Canadian wildlife agencies, local aboriginal peoples cooperatively manage the Porcupine herd; the Porcupine Caribou Management Board advisory board was established under the Porcupine Caribou Management Agreement in 1985, whose members include representatives from the Gwich'in Tribal Council, Na-cho Nyäk Dün, Vuntut Gwitchin, Government of Yukon, Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, Inuvialuit Game Council, the Government of Canada.
The PCMB publish an annual Porcupine Caribou Harvest Report. In their February 2018 report they recorded that a 2017 photocensus estimated a mean of 218,457 caribou caribou, indicative of an increasing trend from 2010 to 2017, from 169,000 to about 218,000. On July 17, 1987, the United States and the Canadian government signed the "Agreement on the Conservation of the Porcupine Caribou Herd" a treaty designed to protect the subspecies from damage to its habitat and migration routes. Both the Ivvavik National Park and Vuntut National Park border the ANWR; the treaty required an impact assessment and required that where activity in one country is "likely to cause significant long-term adverse impact on the Porcupine Caribou Herd or its habitat, the other Party will be notified and given an opportunity to consult prior to final decision". This focus on the Porcupine caribou led to the animal becoming a visual rhetoric or symbol of the drilling issue much in the same way the polar bear has become the symbol of global warming.
Climate change and the increased frequency of extreme weather events, such as unprecedented late slow melting, negatively affect the Porcupine herd. As a result there was "very high early calf mortality." The primary predators for calves are grizzly bears and wolves. "Caribou exposed to industrial development shift away from the pipelines and roads." The passage of the provision opening ANWR's 1002 to oil and gas drilling is considered to be a threat. In 2001, some biologists feared development in the Refuge would "push caribou into the foothills, where calves would be more prone to predation." In their 2005 report, Russell and McNeil reiterated concerns that new calving areas would make the herd more vulnerable, as area 1002 provides a much higher quality of diet conditions than the alternatives in Canada. The Porcupine caribou are a valued resource as primary sustenance to indigenous peoples in Alaska and northern Canada. Gwichʼin, a First Nations/Alaska Native people traditionally built their communities to align with the caribou's migration patterns.
The Inupiat, the Inuvialuit, the Hän and the Northern Tutchone hunt caribou from this herd on a
Alaska
Alaska is a U. S. state in the northwest extremity of North America, just across the Bering Strait from Asia. The Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon border the state to the east and southeast, its most extreme western part is Attu Island, it has a maritime border with Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas—southern parts of the Arctic Ocean; the Pacific Ocean lies to southwest. It is the largest U. S. state by the seventh largest subnational division in the world. In addition, it is the most sparsely populated of the 50 United States. Half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska's economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, oil industries, resources which it has in abundance. Military bases and tourism are a significant part of the economy; the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for 7.2 million U. S. dollars at two cents per acre. The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912.
It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula, it was derived from an Aleut-language idiom. It means object to which the action of the sea is directed. Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America. It is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use. S. called "the Lower 48". The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system; the state is bordered by Yukon and British Columbia in Canada, to the east, the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest, the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, Chukchi Sea to the west and the Arctic Ocean to the north.
Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only 3 miles apart. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, the next largest state. Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the combined area of the next three largest states: Texas and Montana, it is larger than the combined area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. There are no defined borders demarcating the various regions of Alaska, but there are six accepted regions: The most populous region of Alaska, containing Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Rural unpopulated areas south of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains fall within the definition of South Central, as do the Prince William Sound area and the communities of Cordova and Valdez.
Referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States. As such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase; the region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. It contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, Ketchikan, at one time Alaska's largest city; the Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area, as only three communities enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system. Designated in 1963; the Interior is the largest region of Alaska. Fairbanks is the only large city in the region. Denali National Park and Preserve is located here. Denali is the highest mountain in North America. Southwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some 500 miles inland from the Bering Sea. Most of the population lives along the coast.
Kodiak Island is located in Southwest. The massive Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, is here. Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of Southwest, with the remaining portions included with the Aleutian Islands; the North Slope is tundra peppered with small villages. The area is known for its massive reserves of crude oil, contains both the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field; the city of Utqiagvik known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and is located here. The Northwest Arctic area, anchored by Kotzebue and containing the Kobuk River valley, is regarded as being part of this region. However, the respective Inupiat of the No
Sockeye salmon
Sockeye salmon called red salmon, kokanee salmon, or blueback salmon, is an anadromous species of salmon found in the Northern Pacific Ocean and rivers discharging into it. This species is a Pacific salmon, red in hue during spawning, they can weigh 2.3 to 7 kg. Juveniles remain in freshwater until they are ready to migrate to the ocean, over distances of up to 1,600 km, their diet consists of zooplankton. Sockeye salmon are semelparous; some populations, referred to as kokanee, do not migrate to the ocean and live their entire lives in freshwater. Sockeye salmon is the third-most common Pacific salmon species, after chum salmon. Oncorhynchus comes from the Greek ὄγκος meaning "barb", ῥύγχος meaning "snout". Nerka is the Russian name for the anadromous form; the name "sockeye" is an anglicization of suk-kegh, its name in Halkomelem, the language of the indigenous people along the lower reaches of the Fraser River. Suk-kegh means "red fish"; the sockeye salmon is sometimes called red or blueback salmon, due to its color.
Sockeye are blue tinged with silver in color while living in the ocean. When they return to spawning grounds, their bodies become their heads turn green. Sockeye can weigh from 2.3 to 7 kg. Two distinguishing features are their long, serrated gill rakers that range from 30 to 40 in number, their lack of a spot on their tail or back. Sockeye salmon range as far south as the Columbia River in the eastern Pacific and in northern Hokkaidō Island in Japan in the western Pacific, they range as far north as the Bathurst Inlet in the Canadian Arctic in the east and the Anadyr River in Siberia in the west. The farthest inland sockeye salmon travel is to Redfish Lake, over 900 miles from the ocean and 6,500 feet in elevation. Landlocked populations of the same species are known; some sockeye live and reproduce in lakes and are called kokanee, red-fish name in the Sinixt Interior Salish language and silver trout in the Okanagan language. They are much smaller than the anadromous variety and are over 35 cm long.
In the Okanagan Lake and many others, there are two kinds of kokanee populations – one spawns in streams and the other near lake shores. Landlocked populations occur in the Yukon Territory and British Columbia in Canada, as well as, in Alaska, Oregon, New York, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming in the United States. Nantahala Lake is the only place in North Carolina; the fish, native to western North America, was stocked in Nantahala Lake in the mid-1960s by the NC Wildlife Resources Commission in an attempt to establish the species as a forage fish for other predator fishes in the lake. This stock has become a favorite target for anglers. In Japan, a landlocked variety termed black kokanee, or "kunimasu" in Japanese, was deemed to be extinct after 1940, when a hydroelectric project made its native lake in northern Akita Prefecture more acidic; the species seems to have been saved by transferring eggs to Saiko Lake, 500 kilometers to the south, however. This fish has been treated as a subspecies of sockeye Oncorhynchus nerka kawamurae, or an independent species Oncorhynchus kawamurae.
Sockeye salmon use patterns of limnetic feeding behavior, which encompasses vertical movement, diel feeding chronology, zooplankton prey selectivity. They can change their position in the water column and length of feeding, school formation, choice of prey to minimize the likelihood of predation; this ensures they still get at least the minimum amount of food necessary to survive. All of these behaviors contribute to the survivability, therefore fitness of the salmon. Depending on location and threat of predation, the levels of aggressive feeding behavior can vary. Sockeye salmon, unlike other species of Pacific salmon, feed extensively on zooplankton during both freshwater and saltwater life stages, they tend to feed on small aquatic organisms such as shrimp. Insects are part of their diets at the juvenile stage. Sockeye salmon exhibit many different life histories with the majority being anadromous where the juvenile salmon migrate from freshwater lakes and streams to the ocean before returning as adults to their natal freshwater to spawn.
Similar to most Pacific salmon, sockeye salmon are semelparous, meaning they die after spawning once. Some sockeye, called kokanee, do not migrate to the ocean and live their entire lives in freshwater lakes; the majority of sockeye spawn in rivers near lakes and juveniles will spend one to two years in the lake before migrating to the ocean, although some populations will migrate to saltwater in their first year. Adult sockeye will spend two to three years in the ocean before returning to freshwater. Females will spawn in 3–5 redds over a period of several days; the eggs hatch within six to nine weeks and the fry rear in lakes before migrating to the ocean. Males partake in competitive and sneaking tactics, formation of hierarchies, non-hierarchical groupings around females who are ready to mate. Reproductive success varies more in males than females; the greater variability in male reproduction is associated with the greater average size and exaggerated shape of males. Reproductive success in females is determined by the number of eggs she lays, her bo
Tsuga heterophylla
Tsuga heterophylla, the western hemlock or western hemlock-spruce, is a species of hemlock native to the west coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on the Kenai Peninsula and its southeastern limit in northern Sonoma County, California. Tsuga heterophylla is an integral component of Pacific Northwest forests west of the Coast Ranges, where it is a climax species, it is an important timber tree throughout the region, along with many of its large coniferous associates. Western hemlock is a large evergreen coniferous tree growing to 165–230 ft tall, exceptionally 273.42 ft, with a trunk diameter of up to 9 ft. It is the largest species of hemlock, with the next largest reaching a maximum of 194 ft; the bark is brown and furrowed. The crown is a neat broad conic shape in young trees with a drooping lead shoot, becoming cylindric in older trees. At all ages, it is distinguished by the pendulous branchlet tips; the shoots are pale buff-brown white, with pale pubescence about 1 mm long.
The leaves are needle-like, 5–23 mm long and 1.5–2 mm broad flattened in cross-section, with a finely serrated margin and a bluntly acute apex. They are mid to dark green above, they are arranged spirally on the shoots but are twisted at the base to lie in two ranks on either side of the shoot. The cones are small, slender cylindrical, 14–30 mm long and 7–8 mm broad when closed, opening to 18–25 mm broad, they have 15 -- 25 flexible scales 7 -- 13 mm long. The immature cones are green; the seeds are brown, 2–3 mm long, with a slender, 7–9 mm long pale brown wing. Western hemlock is associated with temperate rain forests, most of its range is less than 100 km from the Pacific Ocean. There is however an inland population in the Columbia Mountains in southeast British Columbia, northern Idaho and western Montana, it grows at low altitudes, from sea level to 600 m, but up to 1,800 m in the interior part of its range in Idaho. It is a shade-tolerant tree. Young plants grow up under the canopy of other conifers such as Sitka spruce or Douglas-fir, where they can persist for decades waiting to exploit a gap in the canopy.
They replace these conifers, which are shade-intolerant, in climax forest. However and wildfires will create larger openings in the forest where these other species can regenerate. Initial growth is slow. Once established, saplings in full light may have an average growth rate of 50–120 cm annually until they are 20–30 m tall, in good conditions still 30–40 cm annually when 40–50 m tall; the tallest specimen, 82.83 m tall, is in California. It is long-lived, with trees over 1200 years old known. Western hemlock forms ectomycorrhizal associations with some well-known edible fungi such as chanterelles, it is capable of associating with wood-decay fungi in addition to soil fungi. Western hemlock is the state tree of Washington. Western hemlock is cultivated as an ornamental tree in gardens in its native habitats and along the U. S. Pacific Coast, where its best reliability is seen in wetter regions. In dry areas, as at Victoria, British Columbia, it is exacting about soil conditions, it needs a high level of organic matter, in a acidic soil.
It is cultivated in temperate regions worldwide. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit; when planted well upon the banks along a river, western hemlock can help to reduce erosion. Outside of its native range, western hemlock is of importance in forestry, for timber and paper production, it is used for making doors and furniture, it can be an ornamental tree in large gardens, in northwest Europe and southern New Zealand. It has naturalised in some parts of Great Britain and New Zealand, not so extensively as to be considered an invasive species, but an introduced species tree; the edible cambium can be collected by scraping slabs of removed bark. The resulting shavings can be eaten or can be dried and pressed into cakes for preservation; the bark serves as a source of tannin for tanning. Tender new growth needles can be chewed directly or made into a bitter tea, rich in vitamin C. Western hemlock boughs are used to collect herring eggs during the spring spawn in southeast Alaska.
The boughs provide an collectible surface for the eggs to attach to as well as providing a distinctive taste. This practice originates from traditional gathering methods used by Native Alaskans from southeast Alaska the Tlingit people
