Commercial mining began in Alaska almost 150 years ago and has played a significant role in Alaska’s history. Mining has occurred from Bering Sea beaches, throughout the state’s vast Interior to Southeast’s coastal rainforest. Land and resource managers have expressed a need to identify, map, and characterize cumulative mining impacts at watershed scales. Previous mapping attempts have used data surrogates such as mining claims which overestimate actual mining footprints and miss older mines. This
project aims to provide state, federal, and tribal partners a digital, spatial inventory of past and present mining related land disturbance across Alaska and neighboring Canada. This dataset provides land and natural resource managers with information to guide future monitoring, restoration, and conservation efforts.