Prince William Sound in the context of "Tatitlek, Alaska"

Southcentral Alaska, also known as the Gulf Coast Region, is the portion of the U.S. state of Alaska consisting of the shorelines and uplands of the central Gulf of Alaska. More than half of the state's entire population lives in this region, concentrated in and around the city of Anchorage. The region is Alaska’s best-connected region, with the Port of Anchorage, Ted Stevens, Anchorage International Airport, and the Alaska Railroad servicing the area.

The area includes Cook Inlet, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the Kenai Peninsula, Prince William Sound, and the Copper River Valley. Tourism, fisheries, and petroleum production are important economic activities.

An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity. This point distinguishes environmental disasters from other disturbances such as natural disasters and intentional acts of war such as nuclear bombings.

Environmental disasters show how the impact of humans' alteration of the land has led to widespread and/or long-lasting consequences. These disasters have included deaths of wildlife, humans and plants, or severe disruption of human life or health, possibly requiring migration. Some environmental disasters are the trigger source of more expansive environmental conflicts, where effected groups try to socially confront the actors responsible for the disaster.

The Gulf of Alaska (Tlingit: Yéil T'ooch’) is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from Kabuch Point in the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Cape Spencer in the east, where Glacier Bay is found and start the Inside Passage (Coastal Waters of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia).

The Gulf shoreline is a combination of forest, mountain and a number of tidewater glaciers. Alaska's largest glaciers, the Malaspina Glacier and Bering Glacier, spill out onto the coastal line along the Gulf of Alaska. The coast is heavily indented with Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound, the two largest connected bodies of water. It includes Yakutat Bay. Lituya Bay (a fjord north of Cross Sound, and south of Mount Fairweather) is the site of the largest recorded tsunami in history. It serves as a sheltered anchorage for fishing boats.

Valdez (/vælˈdiːz/ val-DEEZ; Alutiiq: Suacit) is a city in the Chugach Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. In 2020, the population of Valdez was 3,985, up slightly from 3,976 in 2010. It is the third most populated city in Alaska's Unorganized Borough.

Valdez was named in 1790 after the Spanish Navy Minister Antonio Valdés y Fernández Bazán. A former Gold Rush town, it is located at the head of Port Valdez on the eastern side of Prince William Sound. Valdez was incorporated in 1901, and flourished after the road link to Fairbanks was constructed in 1910. It suffered catastrophic damage during the 1964 Alaska earthquake, and is located near the site of the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill. Today, it is one of the most important ports in Alaska, a commercial fishing port as well as a freight terminal. Valdez is the terminus for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

The Pacific temperate rainforests of western North America is the largest temperate rain forest region on the planet as defined by the World Wildlife Fund (other definitions exist). The Pacific temperate rainforests lie along the western side of the Pacific Coast Ranges along the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America from the Prince William Sound in Alaska through the British Columbia Coast to Northern California, and are part of the Nearctic realm, as also defined by the World Wildlife Fund. The Pacific temperate rain forests are characterized by a high amount of rainfall, in some areas more than 300 cm (10 ft) per year and moderate temperatures in both the summer and winter months (10–24 °C or 50–75 °F).

This ecoregion is a subregion of the Cascadia bioregion.

The Chugach National Forest is a 6,908,540-acre (27,958 km) United States National Forest in south central Alaska. Covering portions of Prince William Sound, the Kenai Peninsula and the Copper River Delta, it was formed in 1907 from part of a larger forest reserve. The Chugach includes extensive shorelines, glaciers, forests and rivers, much of which is untouched by roads or trails. It hosts numerous bird, mammal and marine species, including extensive shorebird habitat and a bald eagle population larger than the contiguous 48 states combined. Human industry in the forest includes extensive tourism and some mining and oil and gas operations.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes) of crude oil over the next few days.

The Exxon Valdez spill is the second largest in U.S. waters, after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in terms of volume of oil released. It is the costliest disaster ever with no direct human fatalities. Prince William Sound's remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane, or boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and made existing response plans especially hard to implement. The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals, and seabirds. The oil, extracted from the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, eventually affected 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline, of which 200 miles (320 km) were heavily or moderately oiled.