DMLW Managed Land and Water

DMLW is responsible for managing general state lands, including about 100 million acres of uplands, plus 65 million acres of tidelands, shorelands and submerged lands covering about 34,000 miles of coastline.

The State of Alaska owns most of the tide and submerged lands along its coastline, granted to the State under the Submerged Lands Act of 1953. Tide and submerged lands include all land between the mean high tide line and three nautical miles offshore of the mean low tideline. There are a few exclusions to the State's ownership of these tide and submerged lands, such as those lands conveyed to municipalities or those withdrawn before statehood. The State also owns shorelands, which are lands covered by navigable, nontidal water up to the ordinary high-water mark as modified by accretion, erosion or reliction. See the diagram below for a depiction of these lands.