The Alexander Archipelago was named by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1867 to honor Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. It is a group of about 1,100 islands (actually the tops of a submerged section of the Coast Ranges) off the coast of southeastern Alaska. The Alexander Archipelago is lapped by Pacific waves and washed by coastal rains. When the glaciers retreated from the North Pacific Coast ten thousand years ago, the level of the sea dropped, exposing a maze of islands separated by wide straits and narrow passages. The archipelago a world unto itself, separated from the rest of the North American Continent. To the east it is flanked by ragged, perennially snow-capped Coastal Mountains. These are the mountains that the people of the Northwest call Cascadia. …show more content…
Deep, fjord-like channels separate the islands and cut them off from the mainland. All the islands are rugged, densely forested, and have an abundance of wildlife. The Tlingit are native to the area. The archipelago is sparsely inhabited and often obscured by fog, with its mountains sheared off by low lying clouds. The Alexander Archipelago is a coastal temperate rain forest. It draws nourishment from the cycling of water between land and sea. Pacific weather fronts bumping up against the Coast Mountains spend themselves as rain at lower elevations and as snow in the high country. Some parts of the forest receive more than 200 inches of rain each year. The forest that grew up on these islands is a mosaic of muskeg, alpine scrub and lichen-draped conifer rainforest. It is dominated by x Gustav Tjgaard western hemlock, interspersed with Sitka spruce and small amounts of western red cedar and prized Alaska yellow cedar. The forest floor is a nearly impenetrable jumble of toppled trees, spiky Devil’s club and densely matted berries and forbs. Until the 1970s, scientists spent little time studying the temperate rain forest. The world’s attention was focused on