ALASKA'S WETLANDS & DEEP-WATER HABITAT.

• Author: GUDDE, LEVI
• Position: Statistical Data Included

According to a 1994 federal government report tided "Status of Alaska Wetlands," complied under the auspices of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Region, more than half of Alaska's entire surface area is, by federal definition, wetland and/or deepwater habitat.

That's amazing. It is even more amazing when compared to all of the Lower 48 contiguous states put together, where wetlands and deepwater habitat occupy only 9.3 percent of the surface area.

While many people know about Alaska's wetlands and deep-water habitat, most have no real concept of just how vast and complex they really are. Just trying to get one's mind wrapped around Alaska's great size of 586,412 square miles, or 365 million acres, is tough enough. Yet, understanding the state's wetlands and deep-water habitat is key to truly understanding Alaska and the problems associated with development of any kind.

Wetlands in Alaska include bogs, muskegs, wet and moist tundra, fens, marshes, swamps, mud flats and salt marshes. Deep-water habitats include lakes, bays, sounds, fjords, lagoons and inlets.

In general terms, wetland is land that is saturation with water, a dominant factor determining the nature of soil development. Wetlands are also defined by the types of plant and animal communities living in the soil and on their surfaces.

Technically speaking, wetlands are lands transitional between terrestrial and aquatic systems where the water table is usually at or near the surface; or land that is covered by shallow water at some time during each year's growing season.

Deep-water habitats are made up of certain permanently flooded lands. For example, in saltwater areas, the separation between wetland and deep-water habitat coincides with the elevation of the extreme low water of spring tide. In lakes and rivers, the separation is at a depth of two meters (6.6 feet) below low water.

Most regions of Alaska have a land surface that includes extensive areas of wetlands. As far back as 1885, 12 years before the great gold rush to Alaska and the Yukon, Lt. Henry T. Allen, Second United States Cavalry, on a little-known yet extraordinary expedition to explore Alaska by raft and on foot, observed, "... the entire face of the country is covered with a deep moss, nearly as thoroughly saturated as a wet sponge, and that but a few inches below this is a bed of rock, frozen ground or ice that prevents the water from sinking."

In the northern and western parts of the state there are great treeless expanses of moist and wet tundra underlain by permafrost or perennially frozen ground. There, wetland conditions occur because the frozen layer traps water at or near the soil surface, a constant problem for many Native villages trying to modernize their communities and install simple sewer and water systems.

In Interior Alaska, where permafrost also plays a, significant role, wetlands comprise millions of acres of black spruce muskeg and floodplain dominated by deciduous shrubs, grasses and sedges.

Wetlands in Alaska can range in elevation from tidal systems at sea level to moist tundra areas in high alpine zones...