North to the Future - The Herbarium (ALA) at the University of Alaska Museum Overview Alaska (U.S.A.) comprises approximately 1,723,344 square km and is by far the largest state in the Union at about one-fifth the size of the entire Lower 48 states (Fig. 1). If you combined the area of the states of Texas, California, and Montana, it would still be less than the size of Alaska. The state is vast, sparsely populated, and still so underexplored botanically that new species and new records are frequently found (Fig. 2, Andrus and Janssens 2003; AlShehbaz et al. 2009; Murray 2015; Fryday, 2017; Lewis et al. 2017, Kyrkjeeide et al. 2018). The Herbarium (ALA) at the University of Alaska Museum of the North is the major regional collection and part of a network of collections with similar interests in the origin and evolution of the circumpolar flora. We are now the largest collection of Alaskan plants anywhere. Whereas there are significant holdings at some of the large North American herbaria, we are the only one mandated by virtue of our geography to study in the far north. This, of course, is true for the other collections at the UA Museum and indeed for much of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) campus, where the Institute of Arctic Biology, the Institute of Marine Sciences, the Geophysical Institute, and the International Arctic Research Center are located (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Map of the state of Alaska, emphasizing its size relative to the lower 48 states and showing the location of the Herbarium (ALA) at the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks as well as placement of rural communities, roads, and regional centers. The Vasculum, Volume 17, Number 1 Page 16
