Outline of Alaska
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the U. S. state of Alaska: Alaska – most extensive, westernmost, second newest, least densely populated of the 50 states of the United States of America. Alaska occupies the westernmost extent of the Americas, bordering British Columbia and the Yukon, is detached from the other 49 states; the summit of Denali at 6194 meters is the highest point of North America. Names Common name: Alaska Pronunciation: Official name: State of Alaska Abbreviations and name codes Postal symbol: AK ISO 3166-2 code: US-AK Internet second-level domain:.ak.us Nicknames Great Land Land of the Midnight Sun The Last Frontier Seward's Folly Seward's Ice Box, Polaria and Johnson's Polar Bear Garden were satirical names coined by members of the U. S. Congress during debate over the Alaska Purchase Adjectivals Alaska Alaskan Demonym: Alaskan Geography of Alaska Alaska is: a U. S. state, a federal state of the United States of America Location: westernmost North America Northern and Western Hemisphere Americas North America Anglo America Northern America United States of America Alaska Time Zone Population of Alaska: 710,231 Area of Alaska: Atlas of Alaska Places in Alaska Historic places in Alaska Ghost towns in Alaska National Historic Landmarks in Alaska National Register of Historic Places listings in Alaska Bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Alaska National Natural Landmarks in Alaska National parks in Alaska – see List of areas in the United States National Park System.
Denali National Park and Preserve Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve Katmai National Park and Preserve Kenai Fjords National Park Kobuk Valley National Park Lake Clark National Park and Preserve Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve State parks in Alaska Climate of Alaska Protected areas in Alaska State forests of Alaska Superfund sites in Alaska Wildlife of Alaska Fauna of Alaska Birds of Alaska Mammals of Alaska List of reservoirs and dams of Alaska Trans-Alaska Pipeline System Islands of Alaska Lakes of Alaska Mountains of Alaska Mountain peaks of Alaska Highest mountain peaks of Alaska Volcanic craters in Alaska Rivers of Alaska Waterfalls in Alaska Alaska Interior Alaska North Slope Alaska Panhandle Arctic Alaska Kenai Peninsula Matanuska-Susitna Valley Seward Peninsula Southcentral Alaska Southwest Alaska Alaska Peninsula Tanana Valley The Bush Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Boroughs and census areas of the state of Alaska Municipalities in Alaska Cities in Alaska State capital of Alaska: Juneau Largest city in Alaska: Anchorage City nicknames in Alaska Native tribal entities Towns in Alaska List of boroughs in Alaska Aleutians East Borough Anchorage Borough Bristol Bay Borough Fairbanks North Star Borough Haines Borough Juneau Kenai Peninsula Borough Ketchikan Gateway Borough Kodiak Island Borough Lake and Peninsula Borough Matanuska-Susitna Borough North Slope Borough Northwest Arctic Borough Sitka Borough Skagway Borough Unorganized Borough Wrangell Yakutat City and Borough Demographics of Alaska Alaska locations by per capita income Politics of Alaska Form of government: U.
S. state government United States congressional delegations from Alaska Alaska State Capitol Elections in Alaska Electoral reform in Alaska Legal status of Alaska Political party strength in Alaska Political scandals Alaska political corruption probe Government of Alaska Governor of Alaska Lieutenant Governor of Alaska State departments Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development Alaska Department of Corrections Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Alaska Division of Juvenile Justice Alaska Permanent Fund Alaska Volcano Observatory Alaska Department of Education & Early Development Alaska Department of Fish and Game Alaska Department of Natural Resources Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Alaska State Medical Board Alaska State Pension Investment Board Alaska Legislature Upper house: Alaska Senate Lower house: Alaska House of Representatives Alaska Legislative Council List of Alaska State Legislatures Courts of Alaska Alaska Court System Supreme Court of Alaska United States District Court for the District of Alaska List of United States federal courthouses in Alaska Cannabis in Alaska Capital punishment in Alaska: none.
Alaska abolished the death penalty prior to statehood, eight men were executed by the earlier territorial government and earlier "Miner's Courts" executed a number of men in the 19th century. See Capital punishment in the United States. Constitution of Alaska Crime in Alaska Gun laws in Alaska Law enforcement in Alaska Law enforcement agencies in Alaska Alaska State Troopers Penal system in Alaska Alaska Department of Corrections Prisons in Alaska Same-sex marriage in Alaska Alaska National Guard Alaska Air National Guard Alaska Army National Guard Alaska State Defense Force Assembly of the City and Borough of Juneau, Alaska History of Alaska Prehistory of Alaska History of slavery in Alaska Russian Alaska, 1741 – 1867 Great Northern Expedition, 1733 – 1743 Spanish expeditions to Alaska, 1744 – 1791 U. S. Department of Alaska, 1867 – 1884 Alaska Purchase, treaty signed on March 30, 1867 Gold mining in Alaska Klondike Gold Rush, 1896 – 1899 Alaska boundary dispute, 1896 – 1903 District of Alaska, 1884 – 1912 Hay-Herbert Treaty, arbitration committee resolution occurred October 20, 1903 Ter
Princess Royal Channel
Princess Royal Channel is a channel in the North Coast region of the Canadian province of British Columbia, separating Princess Royal Island from the mainland. The southern half of the channel is called Graham Reach, the northern half Fraser Reach; the southern half of the channel was first charted by George Vancouver in 1793 with his ships Discovery and Chatham, which anchored about mid-way up the channel.
Juneau, Alaska
The City and Borough of Juneau known as Juneau, is the capital city of Alaska. It is a unified municipality on Gastineau Channel in the Alaskan panhandle, it is the second largest city in the United States by area. Juneau has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of what was the District of Alaska was moved from Sitka as dictated by the U. S. Congress in 1900; the municipality unified on July 1, 1970, when the city of Juneau merged with the city of Douglas and the surrounding Greater Juneau Borough to form the current municipality, larger by area than both Rhode Island and Delaware. Downtown Juneau is nestled across the channel from Douglas Island; as of the 2010 census, the City and Borough had a population of 31,276. In 2014, the population estimate from the United States Census Bureau was 32,406, making it the second most populous city in Alaska after Anchorage. Fairbanks, however, is the state's second most populous metropolitan area, with 100,000 residents. Juneau's daily population can increase by 6,000 people from visiting cruise ships between the months of May and September.
The city is named after a gold prospector from Quebec, Joe Juneau, though the place was for a time called Rockwell and Harrisburg. The Tlingit name of the town is Dzántik'i Héeni, Auke Bay just north of Juneau proper is called Áak'w in Tlingit; the Taku River, just south of Juneau, was named after the cold t'aakh wind, which blows down from the mountains. Juneau is unusual among U. S. capitals in that there are no roads connecting the city to the rest of Alaska or to the rest of North America. The absence of a road network is due to the rugged terrain surrounding the city; this in turn makes Juneau a de facto island city in terms of transportation, since all goods coming in and out must go by plane or boat, in spite of the city being on the Alaskan mainland. Downtown Juneau sits at sea level, with tides averaging 16 feet, below steep mountains about 3,500 feet to 4,000 feet high. Atop these mountains is the Juneau Icefield, a large ice mass from which about 30 glaciers flow; the Mendenhall glacier has been retreating.
The Alaska State Capitol in downtown Juneau was built as the Federal and Territorial Building in 1931. Prior to statehood, it housed the federal courthouse and a post office, it housed the territorial legislature and many other territorial offices, including that of the governor. Today, Juneau remains the home of the state legislature and the offices of the governor and lieutenant governor; some other executive branch offices have moved elsewhere in the state. Recent discussion has been focused between relocating the seat of state government outside Juneau and building a new capitol building in Juneau. Long before European settlement in the Americas, the Gastineau Channel was a favorite fishing ground for the Auke and Taku tribes, who had inhabited the surrounding area for thousands of years; the A'akw Kwáan had a burying ground here. In the 21st century it is known as Indian Point, they annually harvested herring during the spawning season, celebrated this bounty. Since the late 20th century, the A'akw Kwáan, together with the Sealaska Heritage Institute, have resisted European-American development of Indian Point, including proposals by the National Park Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
They consider it sacred territory, both because of the burying ground and the importance of the point in their traditions of gathering sustenance from the sea. They continue to gather clams, gumboots and sea urchins here, as well as tree bark for medicinal uses; the city and state supported Sealaska Heritage Institute in documenting the 78-acre site, in August 2016 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "It is the first traditional cultural property in Southeast Alaska to be placed on the register."Descendants of these indigenous cultures include the Tlingit people. Native cultures have rich artistic traditions expressed in carving, orating and dancing. Juneau has become a major social center for the Tlingit and Tsimshian of Southeast Alaska. Although the Russians had a colony in the Alaska territory from 1784 to 1867, they did not settle in Juneau, they conducted extensive fur trading with Alaskan Natives of the Aleutian Islands and Kodiak. Some ships explored this area, but did not record it.
The first European to see the Juneau area is recorded as Joseph Whidbey, master of the Discovery during George Vancouver’s 1791–95 expedition. He and his party explored the region in July–August 1794. Early in August he viewed the length of Gastineau Channel from the south, noting a small island in mid-channel, he recorded seeing the channel again, this time from the west. He said. After the California gold rush, miners migrated up the Pacific Coast and explored the West, seeking other gold deposits. In 1880, Sitka mining engineer George Pilz offered a reward to any local chief in Alaska who could lead him to gold-bearing ore. Chief Kowee arrived with some ore, several prospectors were sent to in
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 165,250,000 square kilometers in area, this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth's land area combined; the centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific, its mean depth is 4,000 meters. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 meters; the western Pacific has many peripheral seas. Though the peoples of Asia and Oceania have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the eastern Pacific was first sighted by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great "southern sea" which he named Mar del Sur.
The ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favorable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means "peaceful sea". Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. About 3000 BC, the Austronesian peoples on the island of Taiwan mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves and their languages south to the Philippines and maritime Southeast Asia. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean; the first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.
The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters; the ocean was called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. Although Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521, Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, Papua New Guinea.
In 1542–43 the Portuguese reached Japan. In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century, Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, establishing the Spanish East Indies; the Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the quest for Terra Australis, Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, discovered the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Dutch explorers, sailing around southern Africa engaged in discovery and trade.
In the 16th and 17th centuries Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers. As the only known entrance from the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western side of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines; the 18th cen
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound along the northwestern coast of the U. S. state of Washington, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, part of the Salish Sea. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and two minor connections to the open Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and Deception Pass and Swinomish Channel being the minor. Water flow through Deception Pass is equal to 2% of the total tidal exchange between Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Puget Sound extends 100 miles from Deception Pass in the north to Olympia, Washington in the south, its average depth is 450 feet and its maximum depth, off Jefferson Point between Indianola and Kingston, is 930 feet. The depth of the main basin, between the southern tip of Whidbey Island and Tacoma, Washington, is 600 feet. In 2009, the term Salish Sea was established by the United States Board on Geographic Names as the collective waters of Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Strait of Georgia.
Sometimes the terms "Puget Sound" and "Puget Sound and adjacent waters" are used for not only Puget Sound proper but for waters to the north, such as Bellingham Bay and the San Juan Islands region. The term "Puget Sound" is used not just for the body of water but the Puget Sound region centered on the sound. Major cities on the sound include Seattle, Tacoma and Everett, Washington. Puget Sound is the third largest estuary in the United States, after Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia, San Francisco Bay in northern California. In 1792 George Vancouver gave the name "Puget's Sound" to the waters south of the Tacoma Narrows, in honor of Peter Puget, a Huguenot lieutenant accompanying him on the Vancouver Expedition; this name came to be used for the waters north of Tacoma Narrows as well. A different term for Puget Sound, used by a number of Native Americans and environmental groups, is Whulge, an anglicization of the Lushootseed name x̌ʷə́lč, which means "sea, salt water, ocean, or sound".
The USGS defines Puget Sound as all the waters south of three entrances from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The main entrance at Admiralty Inlet is defined as a line between Point Wilson on the Olympic Peninsula, Point Partridge on Whidbey Island; the second entrance is at Deception Pass along a line from West Point on Whidbey Island, to Deception Island to Rosario Head on Fidalgo Island. The third entrance is at the south end of the Swinomish Channel, which connects Skagit Bay and Padilla Bay. Under this definition, Puget Sound includes the waters of Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, Possession Sound, Saratoga Passage, others, it does not include Bellingham Bay, Padilla Bay, the waters of the San Juan Islands or anything farther north. Another definition, given by NOAA, subdivides Puget Sound into regions. Four of these correspond to areas within the USGS definition, but the fifth one, called "Northern Puget Sound" includes a large additional region, it is defined as bounded to the north by the international boundary with Canada, to the west by a line running north from the mouth of the Sekiu River on the Olympic Peninsula.
Under this definition significant parts of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Strait of Georgia are included in Puget Sound, with the international boundary marking an abrupt and hydrologically arbitrary limit. According to Arthur Kruckeberg, the term "Puget Sound" is sometimes used for waters north of Admiralty Inlet and Deception Pass for areas along the north coast of Washington and the San Juan Islands equivalent to NOAA's "Northern Puget Sound" subdivision described above. Kruckeberg uses the term "Puget Sound and adjacent waters". Continental ice sheets have advanced and retreated from the Puget Sound region; the most recent glacial period, called the Fraser Glaciation, stades. During the third, or Vashon Glaciation, a lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, called the Puget Lobe, spread south about 15,000 years ago, covering the Puget Sound region with an ice sheet about 3,000 feet thick near Seattle, nearly 6,000 feet at the present Canada-U. S. border. Since each new advance and retreat of ice erodes away much of the evidence of previous ice ages, the most recent Vashon phase has left the clearest imprint on the land.
At its maximum extent the Vashon ice sheet extended south of Olympia to near Tenino, covered the lowlands between the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges. About 14,000 years ago the ice began to retreat. By 11,000 years ago it survived only north of the Canada–US border; the melting retreat of the Vashon Glaciation eroded the land, creating a drumlin field of hundreds of aligned drumlin hills. Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish, Hood Canal, the main Puget Sound basin were altered by glacial forces; these glacial forces are not "carving", as in cutting into the landscape via the mechanics of ice/glaciers, but rather eroding the landscape from melt water of the Vashon Glacier creating the drumlin field. As the ice retreated, vast amounts of glacial till were deposited throughout the Puget Sound region; the soils of the region, less than ten thousand years old, are still characterized as immature. As the Vashon glacier receded a series of proglacial lakes formed, filling the main trough of Puget Sound and inundating the southern lowlands.
Glacial Lake Russell was the first such large recessional lake. From the vicinity of Seattle in the north the lake extended south to the Black Hills, where it drained south into the Chehalis River. Sediments from Lake Russell form the blue-gray clay identified as the Lawton Clay; the second
Day
A day is the period of time during which the Earth completes one rotation around its axis. A solar day is the length of time which elapses between the Sun reaching its highest point in the sky two consecutive times. In 1960, the second was redefined in terms of the orbital motion of the Earth in year 1900, was designated the SI base unit of time; the unit of measurement "day", was symbolized d. In 1967, the second and so the day were redefined by atomic electron transition. A civil day is 86,400 seconds, plus or minus a possible leap second in Coordinated Universal Time, plus or minus an hour in those locations that change from or to daylight saving time. Day can be defined as each of the twenty-four-hour periods, reckoned from one midnight to the next, into which a week, month, or year is divided, corresponding to a rotation of the earth on its axis; however its use depends on its context, for example when people say'day and night','day' will have a different meaning. It will mean the interval of light between two successive nights.
However, in order to be clear when using'day' in that sense, "daytime" should be used to distinguish it from "day" referring to a 24-hour period. The word day may refer to a day of the week or to a calendar date, as in answer to the question, "On which day?" The life patterns of humans and many other species are related to Earth's solar day and the day-night cycle. Several definitions of this universal human concept are used according to context and convenience. Besides the day of 24 hours, the word day is used for several different spans of time based on the rotation of the Earth around its axis. An important one is the solar day, defined as the time it takes for the Sun to return to its culmination point; because celestial orbits are not circular, thus objects travel at different speeds at various positions in their orbit, a solar day is not the same length of time throughout the orbital year. Because the Earth orbits the Sun elliptically as the Earth spins on an inclined axis, this period can be up to 7.9 seconds more than 24 hours.
In recent decades, the average length of a solar day on Earth has been about 86 400.002 seconds and there are about 365.2422 solar days in one mean tropical year. Ancient custom has a new day start at either the setting of the Sun on the local horizon; the exact moment of, the interval between, two sunrises or sunsets depends on the geographical position, the time of year. A more constant day can be defined by the Sun passing through the local meridian, which happens at local noon or midnight; the exact moment is dependent on the geographical longitude, to a lesser extent on the time of the year. The length of such a day is nearly constant; this is the time as indicated by modern sundials. A further improvement defines a fictitious mean Sun that moves with constant speed along the celestial equator. A day, understood as the span of time it takes for the Earth to make one entire rotation with respect to the celestial background or a distant star, is called a stellar day; this period of rotation is about 4 minutes less than 24 hours and there are about 366.2422 stellar days in one mean tropical year.
Other planets and moons have solar days of different lengths from Earth's. A day, in the sense of daytime, distinguished from night time, is defined as the period during which sunlight directly reaches the ground, assuming that there are no local obstacles; the length of daytime averages more than half of the 24-hour day. Two effects make daytime on average longer than nights; the Sun has an apparent size of about 32 minutes of arc. Additionally, the atmosphere refracts sunlight in such a way that some of it reaches the ground when the Sun is below the horizon by about 34 minutes of arc. So the first light reaches the ground when the centre of the Sun is still below the horizon by about 50 minutes of arc. Thus, daytime is on average around 7 minutes longer than 12 hours; the term comes from the Old English dæg, with its cognates such as dagur in Icelandic, Tag in German, dag in Norwegian, Danish and Dutch. All of them from the Indo-European root dyau which explains the similarity with Latin dies though the word is known to come from the Germanic branch.
As of October 17, 2015, day is the 205th most common word in US English, the 210th most common in UK English. A day, symbol d, defined as 86 400 seconds, is not an SI unit, but is accepted for use with SI; the Second is the base unit of time in SI units. In 1967–68, during the 13th CGPM, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures redefined a second as … the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom; this makes the SI-based day last 794 243 384 928 000 of those periods. Due to tidal effects, the
