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Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve is the biggest unit of the National Park System: 5,332,053 hectares (13,175,791 acres), including 9.6 million acres of designated wilderness, where four mountain ranges — the Alaska, Chugach, St. Elias and Wrangell — come together. It has the largest assemblage of glaciers and the greatest collection of peaks over 16,000 feet in the park system, and researchers come from around the world to study its volcanoes, glaciers and tectonics.
The Nabesna Glacier. Image from the National Park Service's Geologic Resources Inventory.
The park
The park and preserve lie about 275 km (170 miles) east of Anchorage on the border with Canada. Proclaimed Wrangell-St. Elias National Monument on December 1, 1978, they were established as a park and preserve on December 2, 1980. Its natural and cultural riches were recognized as a World Heritage Site in 1979. Together with Canada's Kluane National Park, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, and British Columbia's Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, it forms the world's largest World Heritage Site, some 28 million acres.
A patchwork of terranes
The region is one of the most geologically active in North America, shaped by volcanism, subduction and the uplift of huge mountain ranges. Like much of Alaska, it is a patchwork of accreted terranes — pieces of crust added to the continent by plate tectonics, each bounded by faults and each with its own structures, fossils and sediments. Most of the rocks are Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary and igneous units; some of the oldest are late Paleozoic metamorphic complexes.
Record-setting features
| Feature | Why it stands out |
|---|---|
| Nabesna Glacier | The world's longest interior valley glacier, over 75 miles |
| Malaspina Glacier | North America's largest piedmont glacier, nearly 40 miles across |
| Hubbard Glacier | Alaska's longest tidewater glacier, over 76 miles, with a calving face over 6 miles wide |
| Bagley Icefield | The largest subpolar icefield in North America |
| Mount Wrangell | An active volcano in the Wrangell Volcanic Field, one of the largest andesitic volcanoes in the world |
| Chitistone and Nizina Canyons | Many of eastern Alaska's geologic features and processes in a small area |
| Thermal features | Active mud volcanoes and thermal springs |
| Kennecott | Major historic copper-mining features, among others |
The Nizina River. Image from the National Park Service's Geologic Resources Inventory.
Maps and inventories
The Park Service's Geologic Resources Inventory, which produces digital geologic maps and reports for more than 270 natural resource parks, has products for Wrangell-St. Elias, and a Soil Resources Inventory has been completed; both are on the NPS DataStore.
Sources
Based on "NPS Geodiversity Atlas—Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve, Alaska," National Park Service Geologic Resources Inventory, which cites National Park Service (2016); a work of the United States government in the public domain.
В изданияхWrangell - St Elias National Park & Preserve
Лицензия: CC0 1.0 (общественное достояние) · По материалам www.nps.gov
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