Abstract Estimated Alaska coal resources are largely in Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks in three major provinces: Northern Alaska-Slope, Central Alaska-Nenana, and Southern Alaska-Cook Inlet. Cretaceous resources, predominantly bituminous coal and lignite, are in the Northern Alaska-Slope coal province. Tertiary resources, mainly lignite to subbituminous coal, are in the other two provinces. The combined measured, indicated, inferred, and hypothetical coal resources in the three areas are estimated about 5,526 billion short tons (5,012 billion metric tons), which is about 87 percent of Alaska's coal and surpasses the total coal resources of the conterminous United States by 40 percent. Coal mining has been intermittent in the Central Alaskan-Nenana and Southern Alaska-Cook Inlet coal provinces, with only a small fraction of the identified coal resource having been produced from some dozen underground and strip mines. Alaskan coals have a lower sulfur content (averaging 0.3 percent) than most coals in the conterminous United States and are within or below minimum sulfur value mandated by the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. Another untapped potential resource is coalbed methane estimated to total 1,000 trillion cubic feet (28 trillion cubic meters) by Smith (1995). Using This CD The descriptive and interpretive text of this volume are in PDF format. Use Acrobat Reader 5.0 (installer for Mac and Windows provided on this CD) to access and bring up this publication. The PDF file is also accessible as defined by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. GIS information is presented in the Spatial folder and its subdirectories that contain the spatial data, documentation, and shapefiles files. ArcReader This data may be viewed in Arcreader. This freeware may be downloaded from www.esri.com or follow the link below: Arcreader can be downloaded for Windows from ESRI's website http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcreader/download.html The spatial data is provided as ESRI Shape files (see SPATIAL/SHAPE folder). Contents of This CD-ROM When the CD is opened, the following folders appear on the screen: ACROBAT--contains installer for Acrobat Reader 5.0. OPEN_FIRST--from OPEN_FIRST.pdf in this folder, navigate to the ReadMe file, an executive summary, pages of chapter titles, and the GIS data and metadata. README--you can access the ReadMe file from this folder also. REPORT--listing of and links to the SPATIAL--folder containing files for the GIS data and metadata. --In other words, there are several routes to the information in this volume. System Requirements MAC OS . Power PC processor . Mac OS 8.6*, 9.0.4, 9.1, or OS X* . 64 MB of RAM . 24 MB of available hard drive space for installation . CD-ROM drive . 70 MB additional hard drive space for Asian fonts (optional) *Some features may not be available because of system limitations. WINDOWS . Intel Pentium processor . Microsoft Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 5 or later, Windows 98 Second Edition, or Windows 95 Service Release 2 (OSR 2) . 64 MB of RAM . 24 MB of available hard drive space for installation . CD-ROM drive . 70 MB additional hard drive space for Asian fonts (optional) Requirements for ArcReader for Windows: . 450 MHz Processor . Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6a or Windows 2000 or Windows XP Home and Professional Editions . 128 MB RAM . 200 MB Disk Space Requirements for ArcView 8.x for Windows: . Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 6a or Windows 2000 or Windows XP Home and Professional Editions . 128 MB RAM, 256 recommended