Reimagination - Reimagining, exploring and celebrating the changes in infrastructure, politics and culture that will help us live in harmony with each other and the earth now and in the future.
Ecological Regions with a focus on the
Coastal Plain and Foothills
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which exists entirely north of the Arctic Circle, is
an intact continuum of six different ecological zones spanning some 200 miles north to south.
Such a diverse spectrum of habitats and associated fish and wildlife populations within a single
conservation area is unparalleled in the circumpolar north.
Much of the Refuge north of the mountains incorporates the 1.5 million acre coastal plain
(referred to as the 1002 area), which comprises only 3.2% of the Arctic Coastal Plain
and 4.6% of the Arctic Foothills ecological zones found in Alaska. The physical and biological
components of this area are unique compared to the rest of northern Alaska.
The terrain of the 1002 area includes mostly foothills and low relief coastal plain, with few
lakes and ponds; areas to the west have extensive wetlands, including large lakes. The distance
from the mountains to the coast in the Refuge also is several times smaller than it is farther
west. This relative compactness of habitats provides for a greater degree of ecological
diversity than any other similar sized area of Alaska's north slope.
Those who campaigned to establish the Arctic Refuge recognized its wild qualities and the
significance of these spatial relationships. Here lies an unusually diverse assemblage of
large animals and smaller, less-appreciated life forms, tied to their physical environments
and to each other by natural and completely undisturbed ecological and evolutionary processes.
Note: This is the MapCruzin.com archive of the FWS Arctic National Wildlife Refuge website. In December, 2001 FWS took this website offline, making it unavailable to the public. It includes 90 plus pages of information and many maps. As of 2006 the important information contained in this, the original "unsanitized" version of the FWS website, has yet to return to the internet, so we will continue to maintain it here as a permanent archive to help inform activists and concerned citizens. If you find any broken links, please report them to me at mike@learn2map.com and I will attempt to make the repairs. January, 2008 update - A small part of the original information that was present in 2001 has made it back into the current ANWR website. There is also an archive that contains a small amount of the original information, but it is not readily available from the main website.
Click here to visit our homepage. Click here for NRDC's message about ANWR from Robert Redford.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2001. Potential impacts of proposed oil and gas
development on the Arctic Refuge’s
coastal plain: Historical overview and
issues of concern. Web page of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge,
Fairbanks, Alaska.
17 January 2001. http://arctic.fws.gov/issues1.html
MapCruzin.com is an independent firm
specializing in the publication of
educational and research resources.
We created the first U.S. based
interactive toxic chemical facility
maps on the internet in 1996 and we
have been online ever since. Learn more about us and view some of our projects and services.
January 29, 2008: 
