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  • A small community seen from the air is located in the fringes of an estuary along the Lynn Canal part of the Inside Passage. The intertidal or littoral zone in Alaska's Southeast maintains a balance between the land and the sea. The habitat of fresh and salt water is harsh and critical for marine life and birds.
    MM7258_20060729_18732.tif
  • Estuaries seen from the air along the Lynn Canal are shrouded in morning fog. The intertidal or littoral zone maintains a balance between the land and the sea. The shoreline is along the Inside Passage in Alaska's Southeast is a combination of saltwater and freshwater, a hostile environment but a habitat refuge for some species.
    MM7258_20060729_18629.tif
  • Cradling his puppy, “Meatball,” a youth hangs out on the dock of the float house. The family built their home off the coast of Prince of Wales Island which is only accessible by float plane or by boat. The houses are characteristic of Southeast Alaska, tied down with ropes and floating on the water in an isolated bay.<br />
Life in remote Alaska offers adventures and an atypical lifestyle rich in experiences.
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  • Peaks of the Alaska Range rise beyond the Maclaren River.
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  • Rugged limestone tors make Alaska's White Mountains distinguishable.
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  • A bulldozer works in a slurry of mud pushing rock that is washed at a gold mine near Coldfoot, Alaska. Gold was discovered in 1899 and prosoectors abandoned it five years later. The area was used as a service stop for trucks for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline beside the "haul road" or Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay in the North Slope.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705769.jpg
  • Fog shrouds steep cliffs in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Fog shrouds steep cliffs in Southeast Alaska.
    MELISSA FARLOW_RF4115_1114709.jpg
  • Seaplanes land in the wilderness regions of Alaska.
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  • A pilot boards a float plane, a common mode of travel in Alaska.
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  • Views along the Dalton highway reveal the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). The oil transportation system spanning 800 miles across Alaska lies partly in the foothills of the Brooks Range. It includes the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, running through Alaska's wilderness to the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is elevated and cooled by refrigeration coils to keep the warmed oil from melting the permafrost. Completed in 1977, it is one of the world's largest pipeline systems.
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  • Views along the Dalton highway reveal the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), an oil transportation system spanning Alaska that includes the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, running through Alaska's wilderness to the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is elevated and cooled by refrigeration coils to keep the warmed oil from melting the permafrost. It is one of the world's largest pipeline systems.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705684.jpg
  • The Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs through the Alaskan wilderness connecting the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska, U.S., with the harbor at Valdez, 800 miles to the south. Half of the pipeline is elevated to prevent the heated oil in it from thawing the permafrost and to allow wildlife to pass more easily under it. The pipeline is also cooled by refrigerant coils that keep them from transmitting heat into the thaw-sensitive permafrost. The pipeline pumps 47,000 gallons of oil a month.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM6659_705772.jpg
  • In spite of the 200 inches of rain the area receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage, the route through a network of passages between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
One of the stops in Alaska’s Panhandle is the former logging town of Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
    MM7258_20050819_07149.tif
  • Father and daughter share a tender moment on their boat which is home for the family during fishing season off the coast of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska’s Southeast. When not the fishing for salmon, the family lives on nearby Marble Island and the children are home schooled.<br />
Alaska’s largest and most valuable fisheries target salmon, pollock, crab, herring, halibut, shrimp, sablefish, and Pacific cod.<br />
The total value of Alaska’s commercial fisheries is $1.5 billion for the fishermen, with a wholesale value of $3.6 billion. Economists estimate the commercial seafood industry contributes $5.8 billion and 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy. Fisheries management in Alaska is based on scientific assessments and monitoring of harvested populations and is regarded as a model of successful natural resource stewardship.
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  • Cruise ships dock at Ketchikan's harbor, while another waits its' turn. In spite of the 200 inches of rain the region receives every year, nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops and as many as 500 a year. The Inside Passage is a network of channels between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry.<br />
The former logging town of Ketchikan, now relies on tourism. Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
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  • LeConte Glacier issues from the air in the Stikine Icefield. It is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago.<br />
<br />
 LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere. Since first charted in 1887, it has retreated almost 2.5 miles but is considered stable.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075058.jpg
  • Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. As many as six cruise ships make daily stops in Ketchikan - and as many as 500 a year - bringing tourists on the Inside Passage. Viewed from the air when landing a float plane, the ship is docked near sunset.<br />
<br />
Tourism is Southeast Alaska’s fastest growing industry. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former logging town.
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  • Aerial view of a cruise ship that docks at Ketchikan's harbor bringing a city full of tourists for shopping and sightseeing. The once logging town is dependent on the growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Alaska, sometimes doubling a town’s population on a summer day. <br />
The ships travel the Inside Passage, a network of waterways between islands along the coast of Alaska, British Columbia and Washington state. <br />
Travelers can shop for native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush. The Misty Fjords National Monument is one of the area’s major attractions.
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  • Islands surrounded by icy waters are seen from the air near Glacier Bay National Park. The wilderness contains rugged mountains, glaciers, rainforest and wild coastlines with sheltered fjords in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A commercial fishing boat loaded with nets departs in calm waters through Frederick Sound in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Wilderness islands off Prince of Wales Island at the Dixon Entrance of the Inside Passage seen in an aerial view.<br />
Tongass National Forest covers 16.7 million acres stretching over mountains, bays, glaciers, 1,000 islands, 18,000 miles of coastline, and almost all of mainland Southeast Alaska. Approximately 94% of Southeast Alaska is federally managed lands, and of that, 60% is set aside as Congressionally-designated Wilderness, National Parks, and National Monuments.
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  • The Taku River flows out of the Coastal Range in British Columbia to 100 miles northeast of Juneau, Alaska. <br />
A world-class wilderness, the Taku River watershed contains some of the richest wildlife habitat in North America and is teeming with grizzlies, wolves, Stone’s sheep, moose, woodland caribou, migratory birds, and abundant populations of salmon.  The Taku is southeast Alaska’s top salmon-producing river with nearly 2 million wild salmon returning to the river annually.
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  • The Inside Passage is a draw for cruise ship passengers to shop and sightsee in Ketchikan. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores.<br />
Once a logging town, the city now depends on a growing tourism industry. Nearly a million cruise ship passengers visit Southeast Alaska every year—sometimes doubling a town’s population in one day.
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  • Crew members from a family fishing operation land approximately 1,000 Coho salmon in the boat from a purse seine in waters near Craig, Alaska.<br />
Alaska’s fisheries are some of the richest in the world, with fishermen harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of salmon, crab, herring, halibut, pollock, and groundfish every year. However, overfishing, exploitation, and poor fisheries management in the ‘40s and ‘50s took a heavy toll on the industry. The state adopted drastic measures that saved the fishing industry from collapse. Tough times again hit the fishermen in the 1970s as the number of boats grew and increasingly efficient gear depleted catch levels to record lows.<br />
Permit systems and reserves helped the commercial industry recover in the late ‘70s—a trend that has continued to the present because of cooperation between scientists and fishermen.<br />
Fishermen and loggers rank in the top two spots for most dangerous jobs. Both are common lines of work for people in the Alaskan outdoors. Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking fatal occupational injuries in 1980, there were 4,547 fatal work injuries in 2010, and fatality rates of some occupations remain alarmingly high.
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  • Crew members refer to this maneuver as the  "fish walk" when they slide across a boat's deck to push pink salmon into the ice storage area. The fishermen were seining in the waters in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Alaska’s fisheries are some of the richest in the world, with fishermen harvesting hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of salmon, crab, herring, halibut, pollock, and groundfish every year. However, overfishing, exploitation, and poor fisheries management in the ‘40s and ‘50s took a heavy toll on the industry. The state adopted drastic measures that saved the fishing industry from collapse. Tough times again hit the fishermen in the 1970s as the number of boats grew and increasingly efficient gear depleted catch levels to record lows.<br />
<br />
Permit systems and reserves helped the commercial industry recover in the late ‘70s—a trend that has continued to the present because of cooperation between scientists and fishermen.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075032.jpg
  • Store window reflections mirror cruise ships arriving to unload shoppers and sightseers in the former logging town of Ketchikan located in Alaska’s Panhandle. Travelers can shop for Native art and souvenirs or diamonds in one of many jewelry stores along what was a former red-light district during the Gold Rush.
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  • Passengers line up under the starts to wait to board a cruise ship after a rainy afternoon in the dry season in Alaska's Southeast. Tourism is once again a growing business driving the economy in coastal communities.
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  • A young girl investigates sea life at low tide on Moser Island in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075155.jpg
  • Two girls beach-comb near the water's edge investigating crabs and other sea life at low tide in Southeast Alaska.<br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075154.jpg
  • A kayaker carries his boat to higher ground to explore the wilderness in Southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Tidal changes are extreme along islands in the Inside Passage.
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  • A camper juggles outside a cabin to pass time before a trek into the wilderness to explore and survey old growth forests in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • A hiker explores an ice cave recently revealed at Mendenhall Glacier. As the glaciers in southeast Alaska melt, ice is exposed thousands of years after being buried. Some tunnels in the 1,500-square-mile Juneau Icefield are connected to ice caves, which formed as the glacier moved across uneven surfaces.<br />
During the Pleistoncene Great Ice Age several climate fluctuations created glacial advance and retreat, and vast sheets of ice covered nearly a third of the Earth’s land mass and one half of Alaska. As the climate warmed during the Holocene, ice retreated remaining in Alaskan at high elevations. The most recent variation in advance and retreat created the Juneau Icefield formed 3,000 years ago and ending in the 1700’s. Mendenhall Glacier has flowed for 250 years for 13 miles ending in a lake at its’ base.
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  • Equiped with crampons and emergency equipment, a hiker crawls through a blue ice tunnel formed in the Mendenhall Glacier. As the glaciers in southeast Alaska melt, ice is exposed thousands of years after being buried. Some tunnels in the 1,500-square-mile Juneau Icefield are connected to ice caves, which formed as the glacier moved across uneven surfaces.<br />
<br />
During the Pleistoncene Great Ice Age several climate fluctuations created glacial advance and retreat, and vast sheets of ice covered nearly a third of the Earth’s land mass and one half of Alaska. As the climate warmed during the Holocene, ice retreated remaining in Alaskan at high elevations. The most recent variation in advance and retreat created the Juneau Icefield formed 3,000 years ago and ending in the 1700’s. Mendenhall Glacier has flowed for 250 years for 13 miles ending in a lake at its’ base.
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  • A rustic, float house, characteristic in Southeast Alaska, is reflected in the waters at dusk. The structure is tied off in a protected cove and accessible only by boat or float plane. Swede and his dog stand on the dock and watch for the evening guests' arrival.
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  • A colorful entrance to a Native Alaskan clan house greets visitors at Totem Bight State Historical Park. It is a replica of a community house representing of those in early nineteen-century native villages of Southeast Alaska. Tlingit or Haida chieftain’s dwelling also housed several families.
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  • LeConte Glacier is marked by granite peak formations such as Devis Thumb in the background in the Stikine Icefield seen in an aerial view.<br />
It is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago. LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.<br />
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075093.jpg
  • Family and friends clean crabs to prepare for dinner at their float house on Piggy Cove in Southeast Alaska.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075079.jpg
  • Estuaries shrouded in morning fog are revealed in the intertidal region of the Southeast Alaskan coast along the Lynn Canal in Alaska's Southeastas seen in an aerial view.
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  • Water flows off the tail of a diving humpback whale  (Megaptera novaeangliae). Studies show the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • A few cars make a traffic jam on a rainy afternoon at the main intersection in Coffman, Cove, Alaska, population 200.<br />
What began as a logging town on Prince of Wales Island is mostly made up of people who stayed on when the industry declined. Boats and off road vehicles are plentiful and a road connects the community to other parts of the island.
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  • Fog drifts over a secluded estuary and the Thorne River on Prince of Wales Island seen from the air in Southeast Alaska. The main island includes hundreds of adjacent smaller islands—a total of more than 2,600 square miles with 990 miles of coastline and countless bays coves, inlets, and points.<br />
Fjords, steep-sided mountains, and dense forests characterize the island. Extensive tracts of limestone include karst features.
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  • Fog-draped forest wilderness and rugged mountains are typical in Southeast Alaska where the 17 million acre Tongass National Forest receives an average of 200 inches of precipitation a year.
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  • Clearing fog slowly dissipates above islands and the reflective, quiet waters in Sitka Sound. Alexander Archipelago has around 1,100 islands, which are actually the tops of a submerged section of the Coast Ranges in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Heads together, two girl friends beach-comb near the water's edge investigating sea life at low tide in Southeast Alaska. <br />
Scientists have counted at least 170 species of macroscopic invertebrates in the rich marine intertidal zones.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075009.jpg
  • A detail showing a brown bear’s paws and claws while he is tranquilized to be radio-collared by state biologists.  <br />
Grizzly bears, as they are commonly known, are found in most of Alaska from the islands of the Southeast to the Arctic. Over 98 percent of the brown bear population resides in Alaska.<br />
The coastal brown bear is the world’s largest carnivorous land mammal. Nearly 45,000 brown bears (Ursus arctos), roam Alaska, weigh up to 1,100 pounds. Salmon is their primary food source.
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  • Rays of sunlight pierce the clouds hanging over Sitka Sound and Baranof Island. Southeast Alaska receives about 200 inches of rain a year creating its moody ambiance.
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  • Workers unload and weigh fish on the dock of a cannery. Petersburg port has the largest home-based halibut fleet in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Peaks of the Alaska Range rise beyond the blue waters of the Maclaren River in the glacially carved valley that is green in the summer months. The Bureau of Land Management oversees the wilderness area along the Denali Highway.
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  • Cannery workers suit up in gloves, masks, hairnets and protective suits to clean seafood. Petersburg, a fishing village in Southeast Alaska, is known for fishing fleets netting large catch for processing.
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  • Harsh winds blow snow across the craggy peaks of the South Chilkat Mountains, illuminating intense, orange colors of a winter sunset.<br />
Photographed from the air, the Coastal Range is directly across the Lynn Canal and the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska.
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  • Dressed in elegant formal wear, a bride and groom walk to the helicopter to fly up onto a glacier for their wedding ceremony in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A bride picks up the groom for the kiss completing the wedding ceremony. The couple strapped on crampons beneath their formal wear and flew by helicopter onto the Mendenhall Glacier for a memorable experience in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A couple arrives by helicopter and carefully negotiates walking on ice onto the Mendenhall Glacier for their wedding ceremony in Juneau, Alaska.
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  • A couple steadies themselves with crampons and kiss while waiting for their wedding on the icy Mendenhall Glacier in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A newly married couple dances while wearing crampons and formal attire as they celebrate on Mendenhall Glacier. Many passengers arrive on cruise ships making tourism the fastest growing industry in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Cody, a timber faller, works alone in the woods at Winter Harbor on Prince of Wales Island. It’s dangerous work, and fallers listen for others’ saws between cuts to make sure a buddy isn't injured. Following his father’s example, Cody wanted to be a timber faller since he was a kid. He got his first chain saw when he was nine and has been working since he turned seventeen.<br />
  He leaves home at 5 a.m. driving an hour to the work site. Carrying a heavy chain saw, he walks with the grace of a ballet dancer on a maze of fallen trees. His shoes, called corks that cost as much as $750, have metal-spiked soles so he is stable on fallen trees.<br />
  Loggers and fishermen rank in the top two spots for most dangerous jobs. Both are common lines of work for people in the Alaskan outdoors. Since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking fatal occupational injuries in 1980, there were 4,547 fatal work injuries in 2010, and fatality rates of some occupations remain alarmingly high.
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  • Cross country skier glides along side his dog as snow falls on frozen Mendenhall Lake surrounded by trees at the base of the glacier in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • Icy winds blow snow clouds blow over the jagged ridges of the South Chilkat Mountains that rise above Southeast Alaska's coast. Weather makes aerial photography a challenge as strong gusting winds force small float planes to land.
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  • A man and his dogs drive by in a pickup truck to check out strangers in Coffman Cove. The community is located in Prince of Wales, Hyder County in Alaska with a 2020 population of 168. It is the 110th largest city in Alaska and the 17,162nd largest city in the United States.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075055.jpg
  • A young girl wears a hair net at lunchtime outside a family take-out restaurant in the small fishing village of Petersburg. Located on Mitkof Island, the community attracted immigrants of Scandinavian origin to the Native Alaskan Tlingit settlement in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • A waterfall flows from a melting glacier in the Stikine icefields near Devils Thumb. The Stikine Icecap, seen from the air, straddles Alaska and British Columbia and is known to climbers for its technically demanding and dangerous peaks and spires of granite.
    MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075027.jpg
  • Crisp winter air clears over freshly snow-dusted trees in Tongass National Forest looking across the Icy Strait in the Inside Passage toward Southeast Alaska’s Chilkat Mountain Range. The region is known for it’s harsh winds and rugged landscape as well as it’s beauty that is seen in this aerial.<br />
Chilkat, in the native Tlingit language, means “storage container for salmon.” The name was given because of warm springs that keep the Chilkat River from freezing during the winter as it flows through the mountain range, thus allowing salmon to spawn late in the season, and creating safe “storage.”
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  • Tourists are drawn to the beauty of Alaska and its glaciers, and some come for the ultimate and most unlikely experience—donning crampons for their wedding on ice.<br />
If the weather cooperates, couples can arrange for a limousine pickup from a cruise ship to the airport for a helicopter flight onto a glacier. They had a traditional ceremony with tuxedo and white wedding dress and extra touches including wedding cake, music, and flowers.<br />
The groom pops the cork on a bottle of champagne provided by the planner who married this couple on the Mendenhall Glacier.
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  • Harsh winds blow snow across the craggy ridges and peaks of the South Chilkat Mountains illuminating intense, orange colors of a winter sunset.<br />
The aerial view of the Coastal Range is directly across the Lynn Canal and the Juneau Icefield in southeast Alaska.
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  • Researchers who study brown bears navigate by boat through driving rain on the Unuk River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. This is the "dry season," and the region receives more than two hundred inches of rain each year.<br />
Brown bears or grizzlies are prevalent in the Tongass, so there is interest in study of their behavior and range. A decline in the lower 48 states has heightened management concern and an increased interest in habitat-related studies in Alaska. <br />
Results show brown bears avoid clearcuts and are more often found in riparian old growth, wetland, and alpine/subalpine habitat because of more nutritious foraging and better cover.<br />
<br />
The Unuk Study Area is part of Misty Fiords National Monument and classified as wilderness. Because of this, no helicopters are allowed, making primary access by boat since no roads exist. Located 100 km northeast of Ketchikan, the Unuk River, which means “Dream River” in the native Tlingit language, flows from the Canadian border to salt water. Although much of the main river channel is too deep and glacial for bears to fish, the river contains several clear tributaries with spawning salmon.
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  • As researchers take measurements to study a brown bear (Ursus arctos) they trapped and tranquilized near the Unuk River, the grizzlies eyes open. They had to work quickly  as the sedative began to wear off.
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  • A tranquilized brown bear (Ursus arctos) creates a problem for Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife researchers. They darted a 16-year-old male in Kingsburg Creek tributary of the Unuk River while studying the grizzly bear range and habitat in southeast Alaska near the Canadian border. <br />
The 600-pound males slipped down the edge of a muddy embankment and was too heavy to move. With only a short time to work before the bear is revived, the two men took their research notes and then quickly built the bear a nest of branches so he wouldn’t fall into the creek upon waking.<br />
Brown bears decline in the range and numbers in the lower 48 states heightened management concern in habitat-related studies. It is believed that brown bears avoid clearcuts and are more often found in riparian old growth, wetlands, and alpine/subalpine habitat because of more nutritious foraging and better cover.
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  • A worker enters the front door of the Umiat Hilton, in the unincorporated community in the North Slope of Alaska that is located on the Colville River. Oil fields near Prudhoe Bay were opened and the Navy built Umiat in 1944. The small lodge located near an airstrip is reputedly the coldest place in Alaska.
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  • Human skull and other bones surfaced from under melting tundra from abandoned sunken houses and boats in what is believed to be a failed sailing expedition. The story goes that ship wrecked explorers built shelters to survive and were poisoned by their lead food containers before they could be rescued. The site is near Barrow but closer to Lonely, Alaska near the DEW line or Distant Early Warning radar station in the far northern Arctic.
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  • A young girl examines a common sunstar fish or Crossaster papposus that is exposed at low tide on Moser Island. They normally grow nine or ten arms but can have many more. They have a spiny texture and pray on other sea stars, sea urchins, snails, cucumbers and sea anemones living in the intertidal zone in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • A common sunstar fish or Crossaster papposus is exposed at low tide in a rich intertidal zone on Moser Island in Alaska's Southeast. It normally has nine or ten arms but can have many more. They have a piny texture and pray on other sea stars, sea urchins, snails, cucumbers and sea anemones.
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  • A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) surfaces and dives into Stephens Passage. Studies how the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns in the summer to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • Droplets of rain water bead on tall grasses in an uplift meadow on Moser Island in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Sunrise gives a warm glow to morning mist rising over Control Lake framed by the forest on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Conservationists hike through a 600-year old uncut old growth forest of tall trees. It can take a 1000 years for spruce, hemlock and Sitka cedar to grow and tower over a lush forest floor.<br />
Tongass National Forest in Alaska's Southeast  is the world's largest remaining intact coastal temperate rain forest. Nearly 17 million acres provides habitat for the largest population of Bald Eagles in the world.
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  • Loggers compete climbing a 65-foot pole during a logging show that attracts locals to show their skills on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska.
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  • A common sunstar fish or Crossaster papposus is exposed at low tide in the intertidal zone on Moser Island in Southeast Alaska. The sea creature normally has nine or ten arms but like this one growing sixteen, they can have many more. They have a spiny texture and pray on other sea stars, sea urchins, snails, cucumbers and sea anemones.
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  • A timber faller works alone with a chain saw in the forest cutting trees one by one at Winter Harbor on Prince of Wales Island. It is dangerous work.<br />
 The forests in the Tongass can take a 1000 years for spruce, hemlock and Sitka cedar to grow and tower over a lush forest floor in Alaska's Southeast.<br />
Less than 5 percent of the entire Tongass is composed of high-volume old growth. The biggest and best trees, the biological heart of the rainforest, has been cut—much of it for pulp.
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  • Two fishermen net a salmon near Prince of Wales Island in the pristine waters of Southeast Alaska.
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  • A humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) surfaces and dives into Stephens Passage. Studies how the humpback from Southeast Alaska travels mostly to Hawaii to breed and returns to the cold Alaskan waters.
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  • A brown bear (Ursus arctos) stares intently while exploring the intertidal meadow to nearby Pack Creek on Admiralty Island. <br />
With the highest concentration of grizzly bears in all of southeast Alaska, biologists estimate that the Alaskan grizzly population is holding strong at about 45,000 bears -about 40 times the number in the rest of the U.S. The decline in the range and numbers in the lower 48 states has heightened management concern and an increased interest in habitat-related studies. Juvenile grizzly bears usually separate from their mothers when they are two years old.
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  • A young black bear (Ursus americanus) feeds on salmon in Anan Creek. The site is accessible for tourists to view wildlife in Alaska's Tongass National Forest.
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  • Sawdust covers a worker’s boots at a salvage mill on Goose Creek on Prince of Wales Island. Although the timber industry has declined in southeast Alaska, the family operation makes red cedar shakes and cuts boards from salvage after a company is done clear cutting trees.<br />
The small company’s work is considered “value–added,” and is acknowledged as the best way to get the most dollars out of each board foot of timber harvested and processed locally.
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  • Cottongrass in bloom create a fuzzy white blanket near Appleton Cove estuary on Alaska's Baranof Island.<br />
Eriophorum angustifolium is a native grass and part of the sedge family an important food source for some bird species.
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  • Friends come together at The Riggin Shack, a general store that is one of a few businesses in Coffman Cove, Alaska, population 200. The community on Prince of Wales Island was settled as a logging town and people stayed although the industry declined. The community offers services for visitors that include a fuel station, liquor store, lodging, guiding for hunters and fishermen, a library with Internet service and outdoor tours.
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  • Glaciers hug the granite rocks in the Stikine-LeConte Wilderness near Devils Thumb. Although melting, the Stikine Icecap covers almost 3,000 square miles with many hanging glaciers along the Coastal Mountains in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Warm light of the setting sun highlights jagged peaks of granite cloaked by hanging glaciers in the Stikine Icefield seen from the air. The icecap straddles the US-Canadian border between the Stikine River and Frederick Sound in Alaska's Southeast.
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  • Hatchet in hand, a man steadies his grasp on the handle during a target competition-one of many challenges at a traditional logging show. The Southeast Alaska region's roots are deep in the heyday of a vibrant logging industry when locals come together for fun competing with saws and hatchets, pole climbing and wheel barrow races.
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  • A juvenile grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) frolics  while his mother fishes for salmon at Pack Creek on Admiralty Island. The creek runs through an open intertidal meadow before spilling into the ocean. It has the highest concentration of brown bears in Southeast Alaska. Young brown bears begin life on their own when they are approximately two years old.
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  • Tracy Arm Fjord is formed by a retreating glacier melting between granite walls. Sawyer Glacier calves into the fjord in the heart of the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness seen from the air in Southeast Alaska.
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  • Three caribou walk by storage tanks for oil near Prudhoe Bay where the Central Arctic herd migrates north each summer. After more than 40 years of production, Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America.  Lonely is located to the west and is a DEW line or Distant Early Warning radar station in the far northern Arctic.
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  • A family of trumpeter swans and a cygnet swims in blue waters of Tangle Lakes near Alaska's Denali National Park. Trumpeter Swans forage in shallow water, reaching under the surface to eat aquatic vegetation. Although Trumpeter Swans have been dubbed “a classic conservation success” and numbers have increased, human threats affect the population. The swans are extremely sensitive to human disturbance at their breeding sites and will abandon nests and cygnets if disturbed.
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  • A family of trumpeter swans and a cygnet swims in blue waters of Tangle Lakes near Alaska's Denali National Park. Trumpeter Swans forage in shallow water, reaching under the surface to eat aquatic vegetation. Although Trumpeter Swans have been dubbed “a classic conservation success” and numbers have increased, human threats affect the population. The swans are extremely sensitive to human disturbance at their breeding sites and will abandon nests and cygnets if disturbed.
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  • A family of trumpeter swans and a cygnet swims in blue waters of Tangle Lakes near Alaska's Denali National Park. Trumpeter Swans forage in shallow water, reaching under the surface to eat aquatic vegetation. Although Trumpeter Swans have been dubbed “a classic conservation success” and numbers have increased, human threats affect the population. The swans are extremely sensitive to human disturbance at their breeding sites and will abandon nests and cygnets if disturbed.
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  • A young adult moose forages amid the woodlands stands in tall grass near Anchorage, Alaska. Alces alces gigas is the largest member of the deer family. Adults range in size from 800-1600 pounds and can be 6 feet tall. Antlers are carried by only males.
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  • A family of trumpeter swans and a cygnet swims in blue waters of Tangle Lakes near Alaska's Denali National Park. Trumpeter Swans forage in shallow water, reaching under the surface to eat aquatic vegetation. Although Trumpeter Swans have been dubbed “a classic conservation success” and numbers have increased, human threats affect the population. The swans are extremely sensitive to human disturbance at their breeding sites and will abandon nests and cygnets if disturbed.
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  • A family of trumpeter swans swims in clear waters of Tangle Lakes hiding in the grasses in the shadow of Alaska's Denali National Park. Trumpeter Swans forage in shallow water, reaching under the surface to eat aquatic vegetation. Although Trumpeter Swans have been dubbed “a classic conservation success” and numbers have increased, human threats affect the population. The swans are extremely sensitive to human disturbance at their breeding sites and will abandon nests and cygnets if disturbed.
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  • Three vehicles traverse rolling hills across the green tundra in summer months as the "haul road" runs 414 miles north to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. The Dalton highway was built during construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, mostly gravel highway with a few paved sections. It follows nearby the pipeline through rolling, forested hills, across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean.
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  • A lone truck moves down the Dalton Highway also known as the "haul road" running 414 miles north to the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. Built during construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the 1970s, this mostly gravel highway travels through rolling, forested hills, across the Yukon River and Arctic Circle, through the rugged Brooks Range, and over the North Slope to the Arctic Ocean.
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