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ScholarWorks@UA is University of Alaska's institutional repository created to share research and works by UA faculty, students, and staff.
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Wildfire Exposure and Risk Assessment for Dillingham, Aleknagik, and Igiugig, AlaskaThe purpose of this report is to assess present-day (2024) and future (2054) wildfire hazard, exposure, and vulnerability within the Bristol Bay region. We also provide a wildfire risk assessment for Dillingham, Igiugig, and Aleknagik. These three communities were included explicitly because they are updating their Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) and/or provided support for this project.
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Demand for Natural Gas in Southcentral AlaskaHouseholds and businesses in Southcentral Alaska have relied on Cook Inlet natural gas as their primary energy source for decades, but as utilities face rising costs to secure that gas they are evaluating a portfolio of alternatives, including LNG imports, potential North Slope supplies, alternative fuels for electricity generation, and demand-side management, weighing each along dimensions of cost, timing, quantity, reliability, and long-term economic sustainability. Although technically recoverable gas remains in the Cook Inlet, it will likely be available only at increasingly higher prices, and the gap between lower-cost local supply and regional demand is expected to widen over time; currently identified alternative energy projects (particularly if limited to a narrower set of wind, solar, and geothermal developments) are insufficient on their own to close that deficit. Electrification of residential and commercial heating could reduce direct gas use but would raise electricity demand, potentially increasing gas consumption at gas-fired generators unless additional non-gas generation is developed, meaning the net gas savings are uncertain even though households and businesses may independently adopt such investments. Given these constraints, it is difficult to construct near-term scenarios that avoid LNG imports, while over the medium to long term a broader set of options, including expanded renewables and possible North Slope gas delivery, could partly or fully reduce reliance on imported LNG.
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Supply of Natural Gas in Southcentral AlaskaCook Inlet has been the primary source of natural gas for Southcentral Alaska for more than half a century, but while substantial gas remains in the subsurface, the portion that is physically, technically, economically, and socially available at prevailing prices is considerably smaller. This report evaluates regional availability using a four-dimensional resource framework, reconciles competing estimates of remaining reserves and resources, and considers implications for future supply security, with particular emphasis on economic availability and the prices required to make extraction profitable. Estimates from the Alaska Department of Natural Resources suggest that developing reserves in the near to medium term will require substantially higher prices than those seen today. Using historical production costs, this report constructs an illustrative cumulative availability curve showing that the basin’s lowest-cost gas has already been developed and that each additional unit of production will be progressively more expensive. As a result, the region is entering a transitional period in which imports (either piped gas from the North Slope or liquefied natural gas) may soon be more cost-competitive than new local development, even though large volumes of prospective gas remain and uncertainty about their recoverability and cost poses significant planning and investment risk.
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Minerals, Critical Minerals, and Strategic Minerals in Alaska: Challenges and OpportunitiesThis report examines the challenges and opportunities involved in increasing Alaska’s role in the U.S. critical minerals industry. It describes how critical minerals are defined, and which of those have been mined today, have been mined in the past or are likely to be mined in the near future. It describes how market conditions and geology affect Alaska’s opportunities to increase critical mineral production. It also describes how Alaska’s benefits from critical mineral production are the same as those from any mineral production: jobs, income, and taxes. Finally, the report makes recommendations for expanding critical mineral production.
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Alaska Earthquake Center Quarterly Review July-September 2025This series of technical quarterly reports from the Alaska Earthquake Center (AEC) includes detailed summaries and updates on Alaska seismicity, the AEC seismic network and stations, fieldwork, our online presence, public outreach, and lists publications and presentations by AEC staff. Multiple AEC staff members contributed to this report.
