Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Geographic factors as retardants to the development of Alaska's mineral industries

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  • The various elements of physical geography are commonly entertained as factors retarding the mineral industries of Alaska. It has been shown by numerous writers that the mineral industries of Alaska are, indeed, in a difficult situation. Only the petroleum industry and sand and gravel for construction are of much significance to the Alaskan economy. Alaska's location makes it difficult to use domestic markets and turns the attention of all the resource-based primary industry toward the Orient. Though close to Europe, Alaskan trade across the Arctic Ocean yet awaits future transportation developments. The strategic position of Alaska has very significantly affected Alaska's primary industries by imposing stifling inflation on the state through emergency military activity little concerned with economics. Statehood and increased concern with the economy of Alaska by the Federal government promises to improve Alaska's locational problems. Alaska's size to some extent limits accessibility to the interior, but it also provides Alaska with a high mineral resource potential of great diversity and a very diverse landscape. The diversity of the land is a retardant to the extent that complexity of environment is a characteristic of Alaskan operations requiring a wide range of field experience and field equipment. Experience in all Alaskan terrain is quite rare. The topography of Alaska limits the development of new transportational routes to the interior from the south coast. It does not appreciably affect operational costs on existing roads and rails. Low terrain subject to frost action is a greater operational problem. As an underdeveloped land, Alaska is not unusually disadvantaged by topography; it does, in fact, have some advantages. A great hydroelectric potential exists in Alaska, but there is little chance that it will be of any great value to the mineral industries at this stage. Alaska has many diverse climates. South coastal Alaska has a climate similar enough to southern climates to be considered insignificant as a retardant to the mineral industries. In providing frozen coasts to western and northern Alaska, climate seriously retards development in these areas. Permafrost is a climatic resultant offering some considerable but yet largely undetermined effect on the mineral industries. The colder parts of Alaska have their biggest effect on the mineral industries in being different and, consequently, foreign and discouraging to southern people. The inherent disadvantage of cold is still largely obscured by blundering and inefficiency. Alaska has a considerable and diverse mineral resource that can, at this time, only be inferred. The unknown of Alaskan geology is its most striking feature. Exploration in all aspects is seriously discouraged by the economy and the obscuration of bed rock. Geophysical and geochemical prospecting has met with little success. It is felt that the lack of knowledge of and experience with the land is the biggest retardant to Alaska's mineral industries. The land is not inherently hostile, but rather it is different from that familiar to most of the people on it. A two-pronged attack on ignorance of the land is suggested, one to disseminate present knowledge and the other to seek out the unknown. When Alaska acquires a people familiar with and fully oriented toward the land, the effect of the geographic factors presently retarding the mineral industries will be greatly reduced.
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