Oregon & Northern California Coastal is a freshwater ecoregion in western North America. It includes the coastal rivers of Oregon and Northern California, from the Columbia River mouth in northwestern Oregon to northern Monterey Bay in Central California. It includes the Umpqua, Rogue, Smith River, Klamath, Mad, Eel, and lower Russian rivers, and many smaller coastal rivers and streams, including those on the coast side of the Marin and San Francisco peninsulas. [1]
The ecoregion has an area of 105,520 square kilometres (40,740 sq mi). 55% of the ecoregion is in Oregon, and the remaining 45% in California. [2]
The ecoregion is generally west of the crest of the Oregon Coast Range and northern California Coast Ranges. The upper Klamath River lies east of the Coast Ranges, draining part of the plateau country between the Coast Ranges and the Cascade Range. [2]
The predominant vegetation is temperate coniferous forest. It overlaps portions of the Northern California coastal forests, Klamath–Siskiyou forests, and Central Pacific coastal forests terrestrial ecoregions.
It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The Columbia River basin lies to the northeast, and includes Oregon's Willamette River on the eastern side of the Oregon Coast Range. The upper Klamath basin borders on the Oregon Lakes ecoregion to the east. To the southeast the Sacramento–San Joaquin freshwater ecoregion includes the Sacramento River basin on the eastern side of the California Coast Ranges, as well as the rivers and streams that empty into San Francisco Bay.
About a quarter of fish species are endemic to the ecoregion, including the Umpqua pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus umpquae), Klamath smallscale sucker (Catostomus rimiculus), Klamath largescale sucker (C. snyderi), Klamath Lake sculpin (Cottus princeps), slender sculpin (Cottus tenuis), Modoc brook lamprey (Entosphenus folletti), Klamath River lamprey (Entosphenus similis), Miller Lake lamprey (Entosphenus minima), shortnose sucker (Chasmistes brevirostris), Lost River sucker (Deltistes luxatus), blue chub (Gila coerulea), Umpqua chub (Oregonichthys kalawatseti), and Umpqua dace (Rhinichthys evermanni). [1]
The rivers and creeks of the ecoregion are home to several species of anadromous Pacific salmon and trout (genus Oncorhynchus ), including pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), king salmon or chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss irideus), and coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii). [3]
Other native fishes include the white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) and northern tidewater goby (Eucyclogobius newberryi). [2]
Other native animals include the California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii), foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii), and western pond turtle (Actinemys marmorata).
Ramsar sites in the ecoregion include Tomales Bay and Bolinas Lagoon in California. [4]
The Pacific lamprey is an anadromous parasitic lamprey from the Pacific Coast of North America and Asia. It is a member of the Petromyzontidae family. The Pacific lamprey is also known as the three-tooth lamprey and tridentate lamprey.
The Noyo River is a river on the north coast of California in Mendocino County. The river's headwaters are in the steep Mendocino Range, but downstream the river flows through gently sloping marine terraces before draining into the Pacific Ocean. The 113 square miles (290 km2) watershed extends east to the small city of Willits and the river's mouth is at Noyo Harbor in Fort Bragg, which uses the river for drinking water; it is neighbored on the south by Hare Creek and the Big River, on the east by the South Fork Eel River, and on the north by Ten Mile River, named for its distance from the Noyo River. The average annual rainfall is between 40 inches (1,000 mm) and 65 inches (1,700 mm).
The Big River is a 41.7-mile-long (67.1 km) river in Mendocino County, California, that flows from the northern California Coast Range to the Pacific Ocean at Mendocino, Mendocino County, California. From the mouth, brackish waters extend 8 miles (13 km) upstream, forming the longest undeveloped estuary in the state.
The coastal cutthroat trout, also known as the sea-run cutthroat trout, blue-back trout or harvest trout, is one of the several subspecies of cutthroat trout found in Western North America. The coastal cutthroat trout occurs in four distinct forms. A semi-anadromous or sea-run form is the most well known. Freshwater forms occur in both large and small rivers and streams and lake environments. The native range of the coastal cutthroat trout extends south from the southern coastline of the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska to the Eel River in Northern California. Coastal cutthroat trout are resident in tributary streams and rivers of the Pacific basin and are rarely found more than 100 miles (160 km) from the ocean.
The Oregon Coast Range, often called simply the Coast Range and sometimes the Pacific Coast Range, is a mountain range, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region, in the U.S. state of Oregon along the Pacific Ocean. This north-south running range extends over 200 miles (320 km) from the Columbia River in the north on the border of Oregon and Washington, south to the middle fork of the Coquille River. It is 30 to 60 miles wide and averages around 1,500 feet (460 m) in elevation above sea level. The coast range has three main sections, a Northern, Central, and Southern.
The Southern Oregon Coast Range is the southernmost section of the Oregon Coast Range, in the Pacific Coast Ranges, located in the southwest portion of the state of Oregon, United States, roughly between the Umpqua River and the middle fork of the Coquille River, beyond which are the Klamath Mountains. To the east is the Umpqua Valley and to the west the Pacific Ocean. This approximately 55-mile (89 km)-long mountain range contains mountains as high as 3,547 feet (1,081 m) for Bone Mountain. The mountains are known locally in the Roseburg area as the Callahan Mountains, or simply as The Callahans.
The Klamath Mountains ecoregion of Oregon and California lies inland and north of the Coast Range ecoregion, extending from the Umpqua River in the north to the Sacramento Valley in the south. It encompasses the highly dissected ridges, foothills, and valleys of the Klamath and Siskiyou Mountains. It corresponds to the Level III ecoregion designated by the Environmental Protection Agency and to the Klamath-Siskiyou forests ecoregion designated by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The Pysht River is a stream in the U.S. state of Washington. It originates near Ellis Mountain in the northern Olympic Mountains on the Olympic Peninsula and flows generally north, emptying into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Pysht and nearby Hoko River are the two largest streams flowing into the southwestern portion of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The watershed of the Pysht River drains a region of industrial forest lands; 98% of the watershed is zoned commercial forestry and the remainder rural. Nearly all of the forests have been logged at least once and most trees are less than thirty years old. The upper portions of the watershed, which feature steep gradients, are owned by the United States Forest Service. The lower reaches, with low gradients, are largely owned by two industrial forest owners.
The prickly sculpin is a species of ray-finned fish belonging to the family Cottidae, the typical sculpins. It is native to the river drainages of the Pacific Slope of North America from Seward, Alaska south to the Ventura River of Southern California. It extends east of the Continental Divide in the Peace River of British Columbia. It has also been introduced to several reservoirs in Southern California.
Whitefish Lake ; is a natural oligotrophic freshwater lake in Flathead County, Montana, United States.
Oregon Lakes is a freshwater ecoregion in the western United States. It includes several closed basins in southern-central Oregon and adjacent parts of California and Nevada, including the Harney Basin, Warner Valley, and the basins of Lake Abert and Summer Lake.
Sacramento–San Joaquin is a freshwater ecoregion in California. It includes the Sacramento and San Joaquin river systems of California's Central Valley, which converge in the inland Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. It also includes the mostly-closed Tulare Lake basin in the southern Central Valley, the rivers and streams that empty into San Francisco Bay, and the Pajaro and Salinas river systems of Central California which empty into Monterey Bay.