<\/a>The Yukon River flows toward Circle, Alaska. Two-thirds of all the flowing water in Alaska makes its way into the Yukon (Courtesy Photo \/ Ned Rozell)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
The writers of the environmental atlas also pointed out that Alaska has 94 freshwater lakes with a surface area of 10 square miles or more.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Iliamna Lake attracts red torpedoes of sockeye salmon up the Kvichak River in southern Alaska. It is 988 feet deep, spreads over more than 1,000 square miles of the Alaska map and is America’s 10th-largest lake.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Becharof Lake — which I had to look up despite the fact that it almost cuts the Alaska Peninsula in half — is the 14th largest lake in the country, just after Lake Champlain (which I did not have to look up, because I grew up in New York).<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Apologies to Minnesota, but Alaska license plates could read “Land of 3 million lakes.” A vast majority of those dark-water basins are unnamed.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
True, most of Alaska’s lakes aren’t so good for swimming; swamps surround them and mosquitoes lord over them. But billions of songbirds are now on their way to feast there, where few people dare to venture.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Alaska has more water stored in glaciers than anywhere outside of Greenland and Antarctica. If you could airlift Alaska’s thousands of glaciers and set them down on top of Maine, that state would very much resemble Greenland — an ice cap circled by a thin ring of rock.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Each summer, Alaska’s glaciers raise the level of the planet’s oceans with staggering amounts of meltwater, unlocked after hundreds and thousands of years as blue ice. That liquid is one of Alaska’s underrated resources.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Alaska has a tremendous water crop,” Hartman and Johnson concluded in their report 44 years ago. “Essentially none is used at present.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t