Alaska is a U.S. state in the Western United States, on the northwest extremity of the country's west coast. A semi-exclave of the U.S., it borders the Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon to the east and has a maritime border with Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug to the west, just across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas of the Arctic Ocean, while the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest.
The term "United States", when used in the geographical sense, is the contiguous United States, the state of Alaska, the island state of Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions. The United States shares land borders with Canada and Mexico and maritime borders with Russia, Cuba, the Bahamas, and other countries, in addition to Canada and Mexico. The northern border of the United States with Canada is the world's longest bi-national land border.
The Tlingit are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language, in which the name means "People of the Tides". The Russian name Koloshi or the related German name Koulischen may be encountered referring to the people in older historical literature, such as Shelikhov's 1796 map of Russian America.
The Steller sea lion, also known as the Steller's sea lion and northern sea lion, is a near-threatened species of sea lion in the northern Pacific. It is the sole member of the genus Eumetopias and the largest of the eared seals (Otariidae). Among pinnipeds, it is inferior in size only to the walrus and the two species of elephant seals. The species is named for the naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, who first described them in 1741. The Steller sea lion has attracted considerable attention in recent decades, owing to significant and largely unexplained declines in their numbers over an extensive portion of their northern range in Alaska.
The Yupik are a group of indigenous or aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat peoples. Yupik peoples include the following:
The Kenai Peninsula is a large peninsula jutting from the coast of Southcentral Alaska. The name Kenai is derived from the word "Kenaitze" or "Kenaitze Indian Tribe", the name of the Native Athabascan Alaskan tribe, the Kahtnuht’ana Dena’ina, who historically inhabited the area. They called the Kenai Peninsula Yaghanen.
The Department of Alaska was the designation for the government of Alaska from its purchase by the United States of America in 1867 until its organization as the District of Alaska in 1884. During the department era, Alaska was variously under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Dept. of the Treasury and the U.S. Navy. The area later became the District of Alaska, then the Territory of Alaska, then the State of Alaska.
The Beaufort Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located north of the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, and Alaska, and west of Canada's Arctic islands. The sea is named after Sir Francis Beaufort, a hydrographer. The Mackenzie River, the longest in Canada, empties into the Canadian part of the Beaufort Sea west of Tuktoyaktuk, which is one of the few permanent settlements on the sea's shores.
A coastal plain is flat, low-lying land adjacent to a sea coast. Some of the largest coastal plains are in Alaska and the southeastern United States. The Gulf Coastal Plain of North America extends northwards from the Gulf of Mexico along the Lower Mississippi River to the Ohio River, which is a distance of about 981 miles (1,579 km).
Machias Seal Island is an island in disputed water between the Gulf of Maine and the Bay of Fundy, about 16 km (10 mi) southeast from Cutler, Maine, and 19 km (12 mi) southwest of Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick. Sovereignty of the island is disputed by the US and Canada. The Canadian Coast Guard continues to staff a lighthouse on the island; the first lighthouse was constructed there in 1832.
The Copper River or Ahtna River, Ahtna Athabascan ‘Atna’tuu, "river of the Ahtnas", Tlingit Eeḵhéeni, "river of copper", is a 290-mile (470 km) river in south-central Alaska in the United States. It drains a large region of the Wrangell Mountains and Chugach Mountains into the Gulf of Alaska. It is known for its extensive delta ecosystem, as well as for its prolific runs of wild salmon, which are among the most highly prized stocks in the world. The river is the tenth largest in the United States, as ranked by average discharge volume at its mouth.
The Gulf of Alaska is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the east, where Glacier Bay and the Inside Passage are found.
The Alaska Peninsula is a peninsula extending about 800 km (497 mi) to the southwest from the mainland of Alaska and ending in the Aleutian Islands. The peninsula separates the Pacific Ocean from Bristol Bay, an arm of the Bering Sea.
The Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge is a United States National Wildlife Refuge comprising 2,400 islands, headlands, rocks, islets, spires and reefs in Alaska, with a total area of 4.9 million acres (20,000 km2), of which 2.64 million acres (10,700 km2) is wilderness. The refuge stretches from Cape Lisburne on the Chukchi Sea to the tip of the Aleutian Islands in the west and Forrester Island in the southern Alaska Panhandle region in the east. The refuge has diverse landforms and terrains, including tundra, rainforest, cliffs, volcanoes, beaches, lakes, and streams.
The Alaska Current is a southwestern shallow warm-water current alongside the west coast of the North American continent beginning at about 48-50°N. The Alaska Current produces large clockwise eddies at two sites: west of the Haida Gwaii and west of Sitka, Alaska.
Bering Glacier is a glacier in the U.S. state of Alaska. It currently terminates in Vitus Lake south of Alaska's Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, about 10 km (6.2 mi) from the Gulf of Alaska. Combined with the Bagley Icefield, where the snow that feeds the glacier accumulates, the Bering is the largest glacier in North America. The glacier is named after Vitus Bering.
Tugidak Island is an island of the Kodiak Archipelago in Kodiak Island Borough, Alaska, United States. It lies southwest of the southern tip of Kodiak Island in the western part of the Gulf of Alaska. Sitkinak Island lies to its east. The two islands are the largest components of the Trinity Islands of Alaska. The Trinity Islands, and thus Tugidak, are part of the Gulf of Alaska unit of Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Tugidak Island has a land area of 173.142 km² and no resident population. The most prominent feature of the island is the large shallow lagoon near its northeastern end. This part of the island was established as the Tugidak Island Critical Habitat Area by the state of Alaska in 1998 as a wildlife conservation area, and is managed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The island has historically been known as a nesting spot for harbor seals as well as many species of marine birds.
Alaska occupies the northwestern portion of the North American continent and is bordered only by Canada on the east. It is one of two U.S. states not bordered by another state; Hawaii is the other. Alaska has more ocean coastline than all of the other U.S. states combined. About 500 miles (800 km) of Canadian territory separate Alaska from Washington state. Alaska is thus an exclave of the United States that is part of the continental U.S. and the U.S. West Coast, but is not part of the contiguous U.S. Alaska is also the only state, other than Hawaii, whose capital city is accessible only via ship or air, because no roads connect Juneau to the rest of the continent.
The Izembek National Wildlife Refuge is the smallest of the National Wildlife Refuges located in the U.S. state of Alaska. It lies on the northwest coastal side of central Aleutians East Borough. Almost all of the refuge was designated as wilderness in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The refuge is administered from offices in Cold Bay.
