Alaska has more water stored in glaciers than anywhere outside of Greenland and Antarctica.
As much of Alaska’s landmass crosses the magical temperature threshold that turns ice and snow into water, it’s time to consider the state’s richness in a resource more essential to humans than oil or gas.
Clear as gin, brown as iced tea or tinted aquamarine by glacial dust, Alaska’s freshwater supply is so abundant the numbers are hard to comprehend.
“With an annual runoff of 650 million acre-feet (plus 150 million acre-feet inflow from Canada) Alaska has about one-third the total . . . of the entire United States,” wrote Charles Hartman and Philip Johnson, editors of the 1978 Environmental Atlas of Alaska. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons, the amount of water it takes to cover 1 acre to a depth of 1 foot.
Continue reading at University of Alaska Fairbanks
Image via University of Alaska Fairbanks
