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WILLAMETTE RIVER BASIN Challenge of Change

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WILLAMETTE RIVER BASIN Challenge of Change COAST RANGE Volcanics Willapa Hills Mid-Coastal Sedimentary WILLAMETTE VALLEY Portland/Vancouver Basin Willamette River & Tributaries Gallery Forest Prairie Terraces Valley Foothills CASCADES Western Cascades Lowlands and Valleys By MARCIA SINCLAIR Western Cascades Montane Highlands Cascade Crest Montane Forest Based on The Willamette Cascade Subalpine/Alpine River Basin Planning Atlas, Major rivers (Fifth order and larger) Trajectories of Environmental Fourth field HUC boundaries and Ecological Change WILLAMETTE RIVER BASIN Challenge of Change There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening. – Marshall McLuahan 1 2 CONTENTS The Challenge ......................................................................................................5 A Sense of Place ..................................................................................................7 How Has The Landscape Changed? .............................................................12 The Future Is Now ............................................................................................19 What Are Our Choices for The Future? .................................................. 27 What Can We Do? ........................................................................................... 37 Sources ................................................................................................................40 3 4 The people of the Willamette Basin have reached a pivotal point in our history. The rich soils, snow capped peaks, abundant rain, teeming rivers and picturesque views that nurtured the native Kalapuya people and dazzled Oregon Trail immigrants arriving in the Willamette Basin in the 1800s, continue to entice newcomers. By 2050 an additional 1.7 million people are expected to live here, bringing the total basin population to around 4 million. That’s equivalent to adding 3 more cities the size of Portland or 13 the size of Eugene. ur challenge is to accommodate that many more people without Olosing the qualities of the basin that drew us here. People know what they cherish. When asked to define quality of life, residents of the basin say the most important things are: 1. clean air and water, 2. enough water to support communities, industry, fish, and wildlife, 3. the unique character and livability of communities, and 4. significant amount of open space, natural areas, fish and wildlife habitat, and public parklands. Royal Jackson Yet even now, at least 1,400 miles of Oregon citizens have demonstrated streams in the basin do not meet water a willingness to act to protect the environ- quality standards, largely as a result of human ment and the region’s quality of life. They activities. There are water right claims to nearly pride themselves on their innovative land every drop of surface water in the basin. Even use laws, established in 1973, that have in a normal water year some 60 miles of reduced sprawl and enabled farms, nurseries, streams go dry in the Willamette Basin due and timber operations to coexist next to to water withdrawals. Seventeen plant and population centers. animal species are listed under the federal Citizens of the basin have also taken up Endangered Species Act, including the northern several community-based planning efforts spotted owl, spring Chinook salmon, and to improve livability, promote sustainability, upper Willamette River steelhead. and conserve natural resources. One of 5 these efforts, the Willamette Restoration tion. This information was synthesized into • Development 2050 reflects a Initiative, was established in 1998 to develop a map of land use (neighborhoods, roads, loosening of current restrictions across the Willamette chapter of the Oregon Plan orchards, nurseries, etc.) and land cover all aspects of the landscape, placing for Salmon and Watersheds. Willamette (forests, wetlands, snow, etc.). Then working greater emphasis on achieving short Restoration Initiative developed a basin- with a group of knowledgeable basin citizens term economic gains. wide strategy to protect and restore fish representing a wide range of interests, they • Conservation 2050 places greater and wildlife habitat; increase populations of developed three alternative versions or emphasis on ecosystem protection and declining species; improve water quality and scenarios of the basin’s future. Using maps, restoration, although still reflecting a floodplain management – all while the basin charts and text, these scenarios show the plausible balance between ecological, population grows. combined effects of how we decide to use or social, and economic considerations as To provide scientific support for manage urban, rural residential, agricultural, defined by the stakeholders. community-based environmental planning forest, and natural lands and water across Consortium scientists then translated efforts, the U. S. Environmental Protection the entire basin through the year 2050. Then these assumptions into very detailed maps of Agency initiated a five-year research effort the citizen stakeholders carefully reviewed land use and land cover in the basin through in 1996. Thirty-four scientists at ten different the scenarios to make sure they were plau- the year 2050. These landscape scenarios are institutions formed the Pacific Northwest sible and that the assumptions about future not predictions of future change, but rather Ecosystem Research Consortium to answer growth and where it would likely occur met a illustrate the likely outcomes of the stake- four basic questions: “common sense” test. holder assumptions. 1. How have people altered the land, • Plan/Trend 2050 vision represents Finally, researchers evaluated the likely water, and living organisms of the the expected future landscape if current effects of these alternative futures, and the Willamette River Basin over the last 150 policies are implemented as written and long-term landscape changes from the first years since Euro-American settlement? recent trends continue. Euro-American settlement through 2050. 2. How might human activities change the The results of their research were Willamette Basin landscape over the documented in the Willamette Basin next 50 years? Planning Atlas, Trajectories of 3. What are the environmental consequences Environmental and Ecological of these long term landscape changes? Change published by Oregon State 4. What types of management actions, in University Press in 2002. This full color what geographic areas or ecosystems, volume, packed with maps, photos and are likely to have the greatest effects? graphs, is an outstanding tool for planners, researchers, natural resource professionals, Consortium researchers first compiled and citizens interested in the past, present information on historical landscape condi- and future of the Willamette Basin. tions, prior to large scale European American This booklet is a summary of their findings settlement and expressed this information in prepared in hopes that this information will map form. They summarized information on lend valuable guidance to the people of the population density and distribution, agricul- basin as they influence the path to our future. tural practices and crops, and native vegeta- 6 The Willamette River Basin is a verdant landscape in northwestern Oregon that lies between the Coast Range on the west and the Cascade Range on the east. The basin is 180 miles long and 80 miles wide, stretching roughly from Cottage Grove to Portland and encompassing 11,478 square miles, or 12% of the state. apturing abundant rainfall from Pacific weather systems, this Clandscape is defined by its waters. The Willamette River Basin is the area in which all surface water, nearly 11,000 miles of wetlands, creeks, streams and rivers, feed the Willamette River whose main stem flows from its headwaters in the Cascades and Coast Range, north to its confluence with the Columbia River. As a consequence of its rainy position in the world, the Willamette River has the 13th largest stream flow and produces the most runoff for its land area of any river in the continental United States. Bernd Mohrwill 7 September, when frequent fogs cloak the the continent. Part of this orphaned slab, still Oregon coast, the basin remains relatively covered by shallow seas, ultimately became warm and sunny. the floor of the basin. Elevations within the basin range from As the denser, oceanic plate slides under approximately ten feet above sea level at the the lighter continental coast plate, it has Willamette’s confluence with the Columbia pushed the slab higher and piled up sedi- River, to 4,097 feet at Marys Peak, the highest mentary rocks on the edge of the continent, point in the Coast Range, and 10,495 feet at Mt. Jefferson in the Cascades. THE BIRTH OF THE WILLAMETTE BASIN Oregon lies in a geologically active zone of the Pacific Coast, where the sea floor and conti- nent collide. Here, the ocean floor grudgingly slips under the continent. This process forms two kinds of mountains, one where rocks at the edge are forced upward, the other where rocks are heated underground to a liquid form, then vented to the surface as volcanoes. Roughly 35 million years ago, the direction Marcia Sinclair of this moving, grinding seam in the earth’s Cascade streams are colder, clearer and faster. crust shifted direction, leaving a slab of what In the Cascades, stream flows are high had been sea floor attached to the edge of Sandie Arbogast during spring snow melt. Stream flows Marys Peak is the highest point in the
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