Kenai Peninsula Overview
The Kenai Peninsula is a very special place. People come from all over the world to see the spectacular mountains, glaciers, bays, lakes, rivers, fish and wildlife that we take for granted.
Fish are a vital resource on the peninsula. Healthy fish populations create abundance throughout the food chain from the smallest zooplankton to the biggest bears and our own dinner tables. People depend on the fish here, but our dependence is not enough to sustain their numbers, as demonstrated by dwindling stocks in other parts of the country. The fish need us to protect their habitat. We must make sure that our activities don’t block their passage up and down streams, warm the water, clog spawning gravel with sediment, or otherwise degrade the streams and rivers that the fish depend on in order to reproduce profusely and successfully.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough lies directly south of Anchorage, the State's principal population center. The waters of the Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound border the borough on the south and east with the dramatic Chigmit Mountains of the Alaska Range rimming the borough to the west. The Cook Inlet divides the borough into two land masses. The peninsula itself encompasses 99 percent of the borough's population and most of the development. The Kenai Mountains run north and south through the peninsula, contrasting to the lowlands lying to their west. The west side of the Inlet is sparsely inhabited, with the village of Tyonek being the largest populated settlement. The boundaries of the borough encompass a total of 25,600 square miles, of which 15,700 square miles are land. In comparision, the total land mass of the borough equals that of Massachusetts and New Jersey combined. However, the total borough population is less than 1/400th of that same area.
The Kenai Peninsula is a very watery place. Surrounded by saltwater, it is practically an island. The connection between the peninsula and the mainland is only nine miles wide. The land itself, with an area of almost 9,500 square miles, contains plentiful fresh water in the form of wetlands, streams, rivers, lakes and glaciers.
Geology
Alaska is made up of a complex variety of terranes. The bedrock in the Chugach Mountain Range and the Kenai Mountains arrived in Alaska around 140 million years ago. The rock was part of an oceanic plate which collided with the North American continental plate. The oceanic plate subducted, or slid under, the lighter continental plate at a rate of two to three inches a year. During that slow process, sedimentary and igneous rocks were scraped off and subjected to enormous pressure as they were folded, squeezed and heaved up into mountain ranges.
The Kenai Peninsula is still in one of the most tectonically active parts of the world. The Pacific plate is subducting under the North American plate right beneath our feet. Most of the action is underwater in the Gulf of Alaska and deep underground. Above ground we can easily observe the evidence of plate movement in the string of volcanoes that begins northwest of the Kenai Peninsula across Cook Inlet and extends all the way out the Aleutian chain.
An additional effect of the plate subduction here is that Cook Inlet and the western Kenai Peninsula are slowly sinking down into the Earth. This area lies between two terranes. For 65 million years it was a big valley, not part of the ocean, that drained the surrounding mountains and interior Alaska. As the underground plate movement pulled the basin downward, sediments filled in until now they are over 20,000 feet deep. Plants, algae and other organic materials were buried in this process and gradually transformed into coal, gas and oil deposits.
Ice on the Kenai Peninsula shaped many of our watersheds and supplies much of the water we see in our streams and rivers. The Kenai Peninsula has several ice fields covering hundreds of square miles of high mountains. As the ice accumulates at the head of valleys, gravity starts pulling it down and it becomes a glacier. Glaciers move, or fall, at various (slow) rates, eroding and transporting rock and debris as they go.
Today, the glaciers here are in retreat, meaning they are melting more in the summer than they are accumulating snow in the winter. The Kenai Peninsula lowlands, to the west of the mountains, are littered with glacial debris that created most of the topography we see today.
The retreat of the ice age glaciers generated huge rivers of meltwater in their time. Most of our river valleys, from the Anchor to the Kenai, are bigger than they need to be for the size of the rivers today. That tells us that much larger flows of water shaped those watersheds in the past.
Climate & Weather
The Kenai Peninsula straddles two different climate zones. Warm ocean currents in the Pacific create a maritime climate on the outside coast with mild temperatures and lots of moisture. Inland, across the mountains, you find a continental climate typical of interior Alaska. This zone has less precipitation and more extreme temperatures; it is colder in the winter and warmer in the summer.
Over the past 50 years the average annual temperature on the Kenai Peninsula has increased four degrees Fahrenheit. That is the average but when you look at each season separately there is surprising variation. The greatest change has been in winter where the average temperature has increased by seven degrees.
Water
Our fresh water on the Kenai Peninsula comes from rain and snow. Much of our precipitation is stored in ice fields and glaciers and is released during the summer melting period. Glacial melt provides the majority of water for many of the Kenai Peninsula river systems. As a result, the volume of water in glacial lakes and rivers changes significantly during the year with the highest level occurring in August or September. Rivers that do not flow from glaciers, including the Anchor, Ninilchik and Swanson Rivers, normally have the most flow during the spring when the snow is melting.
Floods are normal and inevitable. Kenai Peninsula rivers flood as a result of high storm runoff, rapid snow melt, the sudden release of a glacially dammed lake or ice-jam flooding. We generally know where flood waters will go when it happens; many floodplains are mapped and more are being mapped.
Public Lands
In the late 1800s the Kenai Peninsula was identified by big game hunters and other naturalists as a place with very special wildlife populations. Giant moose and brown bears and beautiful Dall sheep thrived in the peninsula’s hills, swamps and mountains. Trophy hunters and museum collectors came here from all over the world. Many of them understood how vulnerable game animals were to over-hunting and habitat disturbance and they began to lobby the federal government for protection for the peninsula’s wildlife.
In 1907 the Chugach National Forest was created, stretching along the Alaska coast from the Copper River, across Prince William Sound, to the Kenai Peninsula. Today the Chugach National Forest encompasses the rugged northeast corner of the peninsula. Mining, hunting, trapping and all kinds of recreational activities are enjoyed on National Forest lands all year long.
In 1941 the Kenai National Moose Range was created. The name was later changed to Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in recognition of all of the birds, fish and animals that also benefit. While most commercial activities are restricted in the Refuge, fishing, hunting, trapping and recreational opportunities abound.
The gulf coast of the Kenai Mountain Range has always impressed people with its dramatic natural beauty and rich marine life. A large section of the coast was given the highest honor possible for land in America when it was designated as Kenai Fjords National Park in 1980. Congress’s stated purpose for the park included the following: “To maintain unimpaired the scenic and environmental integrity of the Harding icefield, its outflowing glaciers, and coastal fjords and islands in their natural state; and to protect seals, sea lions, other marine mammals, and marine and other birds, and to maintain their hauling and breeding areas in their natural state...” Hundreds of thousands of visitors to the park every year bear witness to its recreational and educational value.
The Kenai Peninsula has over a dozen state park units, many of which provide camping facilities. Kachemak Bay State Park was the very first state park created in Alaska at the suggestion of local residents. Most of the Kenai River was designated a state park unit in 1984. The popularity of the river for fishing was recognized as a threat to its ability to keep producing salmon so the state legislature established the Kenai River Special Management Area in an effort to provide comprehensive protection.
People on the Kenai Peninsula
The Athabaskan Indians, among the first inhabitants of the area, founded a land which offered a rich bounty of fish and game. Russian fur traders, in the 1700's, settled along the shore of the Cook Inlet and the Gulf of Alaska, amassing a harvest of sea otters year after year.
By the turn of the 19th Century, seekers of new wealth flocked to Alaska, some settling on the Kenai Peninsula. Miners journeyed north in search of gold and founded several borough communities. Fisherman settled near the Cook Inlet to reap the harvest from the sea. Today's residents base their livelihood on development of vast and diverse resources which continue to bring people to the area
Since Alaska acquired statehood and the oil industry boomed, the population of the Kenai Peninsula has increased dramatically. Residents have enjoyed greater opportunity and affluence as a result.
The peninsula has a diverse economy spread over oil and gas extraction and production, commercial fishing, tourism, government, manufacturing, retail, transportation and warehousing and services (like health care). The natural resources - oil, gas and fish - are still the primary source of new dollars coming into the economy.
Both commercial fishing and tourism depend on wild fish. Fish are a sustainable resource. The population of fish naturally replenishes itself, as long as it has everything it needs in its environment to spawn and hatch and grow. Since the early 1980’s, biologists have been increasingly concerned about the damage humans are causing to fish habitat in the Kenai Peninsula’s watersheds.