Northern Tree Habitats - Geophysical Institute
Nov 15, 2024 · Northern Tree Habitats. February 25, 1982 / Susan Brook. Interior Alaskan forests have only six native tree species: white spruce, black spruce, quaking aspen, balsam poplar, larch (tamarack) and paper birch. Northern Canadian forests have all of those, plus jack pine, balsam fir and lodgepole pine. Since northern Canada and interior Alaska ...
Cottonwood and Balsam Poplar - Geophysical Institute
Nov 15, 2024 · The Klukwan giant holds the national record for black cottonwood diameter. Its nearest rival, a tree near Salem, Oregon, does hold the national height record. The Klukwan giant belies the belief that trees tend to get smaller the farther north one goes. Both balsam poplar and cottonwood have value for fuel wood, pulp and lumber.
Feltleaf willows: Alaska’s most abundant tree
May 25, 2023 · The most plentiful moose food in the state — and probably Alaska’s most numerous tree — is the feltleaf willow, which was once called the Alaska willow. As its name implies, the feltleaf sprouts canoe-shaped green leaves that feel fuzzy on the underside. Most of the feltleaf willows in Alaska are in areas disturbed by moving rivers ...
More on Why Tree Trunks Spiral - Geophysical Institute
Nov 7, 2024 · More on Why Tree Trunks Spiral. August 25, 1986 / Larry Gedney. In an earlier column , I asked if any readers could explain why the grain in trees seemed to spiral up the trunk-in a clockwise direction. That is, spiral marks in old trees crack open from the upper right to lower left around the trunk. Professor (now Emeritus) Neil Davis, the ...
Tropical Fossils in Alaska - Geophysical Institute
Nov 15, 2024 · Paleobotanist Jack A. Wolfe of the United States Geological Survey at Menlo Park, California, has found a number of tropical rain forest fossils along the eastern Gulf of Alaska. These include several kinds of palms, Burmese lacquer trees, mangroves and trees of the type that now produce nutmeg and Macassar oil.
The Kodiak Treeline - Geophysical Institute
Nov 7, 2024 · Spruce trees planted on the islands by the Russians in 1805 are doing just fine and reseeding themselves naturally, although the total tree population hardly amounts to a forest. In recent years, trees have been planted at military bases along the chain, and the State is now shipping out seedlings for reforestation projects all over Alaska.
Tree line changes on the Kenai Peninsula | Geophysical Institute
Feb 6, 2008 · The gradual change in tree line is one of many that people have noticed on the Kenai Peninsula in recent years. The most obvious is the 1980s-to-1990s Spruce bark beetle invasion, during which the insects killed 30 million mature spruce trees on the Kenai and a wide swath of southern Alaska. Harding Icefield, coating the high country of the ...
Trees as Earthquake Fault Indicators - Geophysical Institute
Nov 7, 2024 · Trees along faults often are killed by drowning because the faults tend to collect normal drainage water. In some instances, there are widespread tree kills caused by general subsidence. Killed by sinking caused in the great 1964 Alaskan earthquake, firmly stark forests of dead trees stand guard around the shore of upper Turnagain Arm, near ...
Burls - Geophysical Institute
Nov 7, 2024 · Burls, spherical woody growths on the trunks of spruce, birch and other trees, are commonly found throughout wooded parts of Alaska. Many are removed from trees and used for furniture making and for decorative roof or mailbox supports or just to set out in the yard as curiosities. A burl begins life as a gall--a tumor on plant tissue caused by ...
Visit to an exotic tree plantation in Alaska
Jun 18, 2021 · The two-acre exotic tree plantation is part of a much-larger “boreal arboretum” on the UAF campus, which mostly consists of native spruce, birch, aspen, poplar and willow trees. Having borrowed the key from a researcher with UAF’s Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, Woodward has invited me to join him inside the chain-link fence.
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