Time for Greater Attention to Alaska's Islands??

Much of my career has involved working on islands systems.  From my early work on islands and cays of the Great Barrier Reef to my later research in Japan, various Pacific islands and Indonesia, islands have long held a special fascination for me.  That may be due to their unique characateristsics (e.g. many islands such as Sulawesi have high levels of endemicity).  It may be due to their often convenient scale - you can usually observe ecological and social processes more easily at island scale, particularly in isolated islands.  It may also be due to their pressing management needs - for example, islands are particularly vulnerable to change as a result of introduced species - Guam and other islands affected by introduced wildlife are poster childs for those types of impacts.  Those effects are not just confined to ecological impacts - consider, for example, the catastrophic losses and ongoing social disruption caused by the introduction of diseases to many Pacific islands by early explorers.
Maybe my fascination with islands is simply because they are typically beautful and unique places to work!  There are often a few perks involved in being one of the first researchers able to access remote islands and survey their ecology or cultures!  There are also a few down sides - in the mid 90s, I was part of a small team to undertake the first comprehensive survey  of the reefs around the Karimunjawa islands (just off the coast of central Java in Indonesia) - about 6 hours into our overnight small boat trip out there, the crew lost the boat propeller in about 40 feet of muddy water... fortunately they found it after just a  few hours of diving...

Photo of one of the Karimunjawa Islands courtesy of Central Java Tourism Office - more details available from

http://www.indonesia-tourism.com/central-java/karimunjawa.html

Even in the face of those types of tribulations, islands have proven to be rich natural laboratories - consider their influence on the work of Darwin, Wallace and other bio-geographers from the 19th century...

We have learned so much from islands and yet there is still so much to learn.
 

With increasing globalization, islands have come under severe pressure - there are many islands in the world where resources and cultures have been destroyed or severely degraded as a consequence of unsustainable exploitation of their resources.  Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" contains numerous examples of catastrophic change when resources and society are not 'in balance' - his work suggests that islands provide great insights into the the indivisibility of cultural and ecological sustainability.  Marcus Stepehen, the president of Nauru (an 8 square mile island in the Pacific) recently published an equally eloquent tale about what has happened to his country as a result of that lack of balance - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/opinion/19stephen.html.

There are several global efforts underway to promote a greater understanding of islands and the challenges they face as well as to promote a more sustainable approach to island development. Notable among those is the Global Islands Partnership (GLISPA) that was launched in 2006.  GLISPA seeks to conserve and sustainably utilize the invaluable island natural resources that support people, cultures, and livelihoods in their island homes around the world. It brings together island nations and nations with islands — small and large, developing and developed — to mobilize leadership, increase resources and share skills, knowledge, technologies and innovations in a cost-effective and sustainable way that will catalyze action for conservation and sustainable livelihoods on islands. (see http://www.cbd.int/island/glispa.shtml).

Analysis of Mexico's islands in the Gulf of California - details available at

http://conserveonline.org/workspaces/islandsmexico/documents/islas-de-mexico-un-recurso-estrategico/view.html

Among the many exciting GLISPA initiatives underway globally, I was particularly impressed with a recent publication on the islands of Mexico.  The book (in spanish only) is beautifully produced and systematically evaluates threats to islands as well as priorities for action.  It is the sort of book that decision makers can easily understand...

I began searching for a comparable book about Alaska's islands.  Sure there are a lot of books and reports about various islands and island groups within Alaska, but nothing that systematically addresses the status and needs of our islands - that is pretty surprising given that Alaska is the most island rich state in the USA.  Alaska has 38 islands larger than 100 square miles (see http://www.worldislandinfo.com/US/AK/AKlargest.htm for the list - it would make a great local geography quiz question!). 

As far as I can tell, there is no complete inventory of Alaska's islands and no "big picture" assessment of their status, threats or management needs. 

A book like the Mexican islands report could play a valuable role in promoting awareness of Alaska's islands and would draw attention to the many key "known unknowns" that researchers and others might begin to focus on.  Anyone interested in working on this?