The Brooks Range ( Gwich'in: ''Gwazhał'') is a mountain range in far northern

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

stretching some from west to east across northern Alaska into Canada's Yukon Territory. Reaching a peak elevation of on Mount Isto, the range is believed to be approximately 126 million years old. In the United States, these mountains are considered a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, whereas in Canada they are considered separate, as the northern border of the Rocky Mountains is considered to be the

Liard River The Liard River of the North American boreal forest flows through Yukon, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, Canada. Rising in the Saint Cyr Range of the Pelly Mountains in southeastern Yukon, it flows southeast through British Co ...

far to the south in the province of British Columbia. While the range is mostly uninhabited, the Dalton Highway and Trans-Alaska Pipeline System run through the

Atigun Pass Atigun Pass ( Atigun Pass, after an avalanche
), elevation , is a high

oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...

s at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's

North Slope North Slope can refer to: * Alaska North Slope, a region encompassing the northernmost part of the U.S. state of Alaska * North Slope Borough, Alaska, a borough in Alaska whose boundaries roughly coincide with that of the region * North Slope, Tac ...

. The

Alaska Native Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a numbe ...

villages of Anaktuvuk and Arctic Village, as well as the very small communities of

Coldfoot Coldfoot is a census-designated place (CDP) in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. The population was 34 at the 2020 census. It is said that the name was derived from travelers getting "cold feet" about making the 240-some- ...

, Wiseman, Bettles, and Chandalar, are the range's only settlements. In the far west, near the Wulik River in the De Long Mountains is the

Red Dog mine The Red Dog mine is a large zinc and lead mine in a remote region of Alaska, about north of Kotzebue, which is owned and operated by the Canadian mining company Teck Resources. It is located within the boundaries of the Red Dog Mine censu ...

, the largest zinc mine in the world. The range was named by the

United States Board on Geographic Names The United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN) is a federal body operating under the United States Secretary of the Interior. The purpose of the board is to establish and maintain uniform usage of geographic names throughout the federal governm ...

in 1925 after

Alfred Hulse Brooks Alfred Hulse Brooks (July 18, 1871 – November 22, 1924) was an American geologist who served as chief geologist for Alaska for the United States Geological Survey from 1903 to 1924. He is credited with discovering that the biggest mountain rang ...

, chief USGS geologist for Alaska from 1903 to 1924. Various historical records also referred to the range as the Arctic Mountains, Hooper Mountains, Meade Mountains and Meade River Mountains. The Canadian portion of the range is officially called the

British Mountains The British Mountains are a mountain range in Yukon Territory, Canada. They constitute some of the largest unglaciated mountain areas in Canada.https://yukon.ca/sites/yukon.ca/files/emr/emr-british-richardson-mountains.pdf References

. Ivvavik National Park is located in Canada's British Mountains.

Peaks

* Mount Isto * Mount Hubley * Mount Chamberlin * Mount Michelson at 8,855 ft (2,699 m) * The Gates of Kiev at 7,775 ft (2,370 m), the highest point in the central part of the range * Black Mountain at 5,020 ft (1,530 m), the highest point in the far western part of the range. *

Mount Doonerak Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest. Mount or Mounts may also refer to: Places * Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England * Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, ...

* Mount Igikpak * Frigid Crags West Gate *

Boreal Mountain Boreal may refer to: Climatology and geography *Boreal (age), the first climatic phase of the Blytt-Sernander sequence of northern Europe, during the Holocene epoch *Boreal climate, a climate characterized by long winters and short, cool to mild ...

East Gate * Limestack Mountain *

Cockedhat Mountain Cockedhat Mountain is a mountain in the U.S. state of Alaska, and is one of the tallest mountains in the central Brooks Range. Located in the midst of the protected wilderness of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Cockedhat Mounta ...

History

Bob Marshall explored the North Fork Koyukuk River area of the range in 1929. He named Mount Doonerak, explaining "the name Doonerak I took from an Eskimo word which means a spirit or, as they would translate it, a devil." Marshall described the mountain as, a "towering, black, unscalable-looking giant, the highest peak in this section of the Brooks Range."

Ecology

The Brooks Range forms the northernmost drainage divide in North America, separating streams flowing into the Arctic Ocean and the North Pacific. The range roughly delineates the summer position of the Arctic front. It represents the northern extent of the tree line, with little beyond isolated balsam poplar stands occurring north of the continental drainage divide. Trembling aspen and white spruce also occur north of the Brooks Range, though they are limited to sites that have been disturbed by human activity. Southern slopes have some cover of

black spruce ''Picea mariana'', the black spruce, is a North American species of spruce tree in the pine family. It is widespread across Canada, found in all 10 provinces and all 3 territories. It is the official tree of the province of Newfoundland and Labra ...

, '' Picea mariana'', marking the northern limit of those trees. As the global mean temperature increases, tree line has been observed to move further north, changing the boundaries of where these trees are found. An increase in shrub abundance is also being experienced in areas which were previously dominated by tundra, impacting the ecology of the area. As one of the most remote and least-disturbed wildernesses of North America, the mountains are home to Dall sheep,

grizzly bear The grizzly bear (''Ursus arctos horribilis''), also known as the North American brown bear or simply grizzly, is a population or subspecies of the brown bear inhabiting North America. In addition to the mainland grizzly (''Ursus arctos horri ...

s, black bear,

gray wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly ...

, moose and porcupine caribou. In Alaska, the Western Arctic Caribou herd (490,000 strong in 2004) traverses the Brooks Range in its annual migration. The smaller Central Arctic

herd A herd is a social group of certain animals of the same species, either wild or domestic. The form of collective animal behavior associated with this is called ''herding''. These animals are known as gregarious animals. The term ''herd'' is ...

(32,000 in 2002), as well as the 123,000 animal Porcupine Caribou herd, likewise migrate through the Brooks range on their annual journeys in and out of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The migration path of the Porcupine Caribou herd is the longest of any terrestrial mammal on earth.

Paleontology

Coral fossils high in the Brooks Range, Alaska

Because the rocks of the range were formed in an ancient seabed, the Brooks Range contains fossils of marine organisms. In addition to the coral fossils shown, trilobites and brachiopods from the middle

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

have been found in the sandy limestones of the Central Brooks Range. Remains of a woolly mammoth that died about 17,100 years ago were found north of the Brooks Range. A research report on its movement range was published in 2021.Woolly mammoth walked far enough to circle Earth twice, study finds
theguardian.com 12 Aug 2021

Climate

While other Alaskan ranges to the south and closer to the coast can receive to of snow, the average snow precipitation on the Brooks Range is reported at to . Due to a changing climate, between the years 1969–2018 the Eastern and Western portions of the Brooks Range have experienced a 17.2% increase in annual precipitation.Thoman, R. & J. E. Walsh. (2019)
Alaska’s changing environment: documenting Alaska’s physical and biological changes through observations.
H. R. McFarland, Ed. International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks. As measured at the Anaktuvuk Pass weather station (elevation ), the average summer temperatures are as a high and as a low. During the winter the average high is while the average low is .

Polar amplification Polar amplification is the phenomenon that any change in the net radiation balance (for example greenhouse intensification) tends to produce a larger change in temperature near the poles than in the planetary average. This is commonly referred to a ...

is a force experienced in this region as global temperatures are rising. The northern and western regions of Alaska, where the Brooks Range lies, is experiencing a warming rate twice that of southeastern Alaska. The Brooks Range has experienced an increase in average summer temperature between 4.2 °F and 5.8 °F between the years 1969–2018. In certain areas of the Brooks Range, year round snow cover or "perennial snowfields", can be found. In 1985, 34 square miles of snowfields were recorded, where as that number has dropped to under four square miles in 2017.

Films

*2007 - ''Gates of the Arctic: Alaska's Brooks Range'' *2008 - ''Alone Across Alaska: 1,000 Miles of Wilderness'' *2011 - ''The Edge of the Earth'' (short film) *2014 - ''The World Beyond the World'' (short film)

Notes

*Allan, C. (2013). ''Arctic citadel : a history of exploration in the Brooks Range region of Northern Alaska.'' Washington, D.C,: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. *Witmer, Dennis "Far to the North: Photographs from the Brooks Range" Far to the North Press (2008) *Kauffmann, John M. "Alaska's Brooks Range: The Ultimate Mountains" (Second Edition) Mountaineers Books (2005) *Brown, William E. "History of the Central Brooks Range: Gaunt Beauty, Tenuous Life" University of Alaska Press (2007) *Cooper, David "Brooks Range Passage" Mountaineers Books (1983) *Dover, J.H., I.L. Tailleur, and J.A. Dumoulin. (2004). ''Geologic and fossil locality maps of the west-central part of the Howard Pass quadrangle and part of the adjacent Misheguk Mountain quadrangle, Western Brooks Range, Alaska'' iscellaneous Field Studies; Map MF-2413 Reston, Va.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *Krumhardt, A.P., A.G. Harris, and K.F. Watts. (1996). ''Lithostratigraphy, microlithofacies, and conodont biostratigraphy and biofacies of the Wahoo Limestone (Carboniferous), eastern Sadlerochit Mountains, northeast Brooks Range, Alaska'' U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1568. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *Marshall, R. (1970). ''Alaska wilderness; exploring the Central Brooks Range'' 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. *Mayfield, C.F. et al. (1984). ''Reconnaissance geologic map of southeastern Misheguk Mountain quadrangle, Alaska'' iscellaneous Investigations Series Map I-1503 Reston, Va.: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *Morin, R.L. (1997). ''Gravity and magnetic maps of part of the Drenchwater Creek stratiform zinc-lead-silver deposit, Howard Pass quadrangle, northwestern Brooks Range, Alaska'' pen-file report 97-705 Menlo Park, CA: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *Morin, R.L. (1997). ''Gravity models of Abby Creek and Bion barite deposits, Howard Pass quadrangle, northwestern Brooks Range, Alaska'' .S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 97-704 Menlo Park, CA: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *Mull, C.G. et al. (1994). ''Geologic map of the Killik River quadrangle, Brooks Range, Alaska'' .S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 94-679 Reston, Va: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *Nelson, P.H. et al. (2006). ''Potential tight gas resources in a frontier province, Jurassic through Tertiary strata beneath the Brooks Range foothills, Arctic Alaska'' U.S. Geological Survey Open-file Report 2006–1172. Reston, VA: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. *U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. (2003). ''The natural dispersal of metals to the environment in the Wulik River-Ikalukrok Creek area, western Brooks Range, Alaska'' U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 107–03. Reston, VA: author. *U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey. (1995). ''Natural environmental effects of silver-lead-zinc deposits in the Brooks Range, Alaska'' U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 092–95. Reston, VA: author. {{Authority control Landforms of Yukon–Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska Mountain ranges of Yukon Mountains of North Slope Borough, Alaska Mountains of Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska Mountains of Unorganized Borough, Alaska