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Oregon hydrologic landscape regions
Citation:
WIGINGTON JR, P. J., S. G. LEIBOWITZ, R. COMELEO, AND J. L. EBERSOLE. Oregon hydrologic landscape regions. Presented at Oregon Chapter, American Fisheres Society Annual Meeting, BEnd, OR, February 25 - 27, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
Individuals who spend time working with streams intuitively come to understand that stream hydrologic and ecological characteristics are related to the attributes of the watersheds in which they occur.
Description:
Individuals who spend time working with streams intuitively come to understand that stream hydrologic and ecological characteristics are related to the attributes of the watersheds in which they occur. This is easy to see in Oregon with its large climatic and geologic variations throughout the state. Resource managers are constantly seeking tools by which they can bound the hydrologic and ecological expectations of streams within a given watershed or landscape. We used principles of Winter (2001) and Wolock et al. (2004) to create and map Oregon hydrologic landscape regions (HLRs). Four layers of GIS data were employed to define the HLRs: 1) climate, 2) terrain, 3) soil permeability, and 4) bedrock hydraulic conductivity. Occurrence of snowpack and melt explicitly are included as components of the climatic data. We believe the HLRs will provide a good broad-scale representation of the variability of stream hydrology in Oregon and may prove useful to managers as they plan restoration or other management activities.