Amak Island

Location map
Alaska
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Amak Island (Amax [Bergsland, K "Aleut Dictionary" Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 1994] in Aleut) is a stratovolcano in Aleutians East Borough, Alaska, USA. The uninhabited island lies north of the western tip of the Alaska Peninsula, and northwest of the mainland city of Cold Bay. The island's land area is convert|15.094|km2 and its maximum elevation is convert|488|m|ft. The island's volcano, Mount Amak, last erupted in 1796.

The local population of the Song Sparrow was last seen on the island around New Year's Eve, 1980/1981, and has not been seen since; devegetation of the island played a part in its demise. These birds were formerly considered a separate subspecies, "Melospiza melodia amaka" (Gabrielson and Lincoln, 1951), but are now considered to fall into the range of variation of the Aleutian Song Sparrow "M. m. sanaka" (Pruett "et al.", 2004). Unconfirmed reports from the late 1980s suggest that the island, should habitat quality improve, would in time be recolonized by the species.

References

* Gabrielson, Ira N. & Lincoln, Frederick C. (1951): The Races of Song Sparrows in Alaska. "Condor" 53(5): 250-255. [http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v053n05/p0250-p0255.pdf PDF fulltext]
* Pruett, Christin; Gibson, Daniel D. & Winker, Kevin (2003): Amak Island Song Sparrows ("Melospiza melodia amaka") are not evolutionarily significant. "Ornithological Science" 3: 133–138. DOI|10.2326/osj.3.133 [http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/osj/3/2/133/_pdf PDF fulltext]
*United States Census Bureau (2000): [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-PANEL_ID=p_dt_geo_map&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-CONTEXT=dt&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_P001&-redoLog=true&-errMsg=&-transpose=N&-_caller=geoselect&-geo_id=100$10000US020130001001071&-format=&-_lang=en&-search_map_config=|b=50|l=en|t=4001|zf=0.0|ms=sel_00dec|dw=0.5256223683864579|dh=0.22333306252354646|dt=gov.census.aff.domain.map.EnglishMapExtent|if=gif|cx=-163.15317156792668|cy=55.421209534596606|zl=5|pz=5|bo=318:317:316:314:313:323:319|bl=362:393:358:357:356:355:354|ft=350:349:335:389:388:332:331|fl=403:381:204:380:369:379:368|g=100$10000US020130001001071&-show_geoid=Y Amak Island: Block 1071, Census Tract 1, Aleutians East Borough, Alaska]