Traversing Alaska for Big Trees
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:50 am
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by: Don Bertolette, Alaska Big Tree Coordinator
http://www.americanforests.org/our-prog ... th/alaska/
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.In the early 1990s when I moved to Alaska, there were several words and phrases that were explained to me that have withstood the test of time. Most visitors and/or first-timers to Alaska are known as a “cheechakos,” and a cheechako quickly learns that Things Are Different in Alaska (TADIA)...
...Though retired in Alaska, I wasn’t ready to withdraw from my life’s work and was very pleased when contacted by American Forests to take on the role of Alaska’s Big Tree Coordinator. One of the first things I learned through my Geographic Information System training was TADIA. Unlike the lower 48, Alaska’s USGS topographic maps aren’t to a 1:24,000 scale, but to a 1:63,360 scale — meaning Alaska’s a lot bigger than some people think. Despite the projections that most maps featuring the lower-48 states use, Alaska is not the little state you see in the corner of the weather page. If Alaska were overlaid onto the lower 48, three of Alaska’s four corners would extend beyond that of the contiguous U.S.