A WATERSHED ASSESSMENT FOR THE SIUSLAW BASIN TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 Project Goals 6 Assessment Participants 7 Siuslaw Basin Physical and Cultural Geography 9 Map 1.1: Location of the Siuslaw Sub-basin 9 Graph: Land ownership 9 Landscape Ecology 10 Map 1.2: Historic Vegetation 12 Aquatic Conservation Issues 14 Map 1.3: General Land Ownership and Land Forms 16 Map 1.4: Distribution of Mature Forest 18 Map 1.5: Recent Restoration Related Projects 21 Map 1.6: Managed Reserves and Protected Areas 22 Recent Protection and Restoration Efforts 23 Assessment Conclusions 24 2. LANDSCAPE HISTORY 26 Map 2.1: Umpqua Fire in 1846 27 3. SIUSLAW CULTURAL HISTORY 29 Occupation Timeline of Native Populations Within the Watershed 29 Map 3.1: General Locations of Historical Significance 30 Early Historic Period Land Use: Early observations 32 Siuslaw Culture 34 Social/Political/Religious Systems 34 Subsistence and the distribution of people to resources 35 Distribution of people throughout the landscape 35 Impact of Siuslaw subsistence on the landscape 36 Early contact history, land loss and current Tribal status 37 Archeological Research and Prehistory Data as Resource Capital 38 Footnotes 39 Bibliography 40 4. SOCIOECONOMIC HISTORY, 1850 - 1950 42 Early Euro-American exploration and settlement 42 Settlement and Farming 42 Timber Harvesting in the Watershed 44 Fish Harvesting in the Watershed 46 Transportation and Road Construction 47 Florence 47 Lower Siuslaw River 48 Indian Creek and Deadwood Creek 49 Wildcat Creek 50 Wolf Creek 51 Lake Creek 52 Upper Siuslaw River (Lorane) 53 Summary 53 Footnotes 55 Bibliography 55 5. HYDROLOGY 56 Review of USGS Gaging Data 56 Map 5.1: Stream Gauges and Contributing Up-stream Area 57 Figure 5.1: Comparison of Seasonal Discharges at Mapleton, OR 58 Figure 5.2: Comparison of Seasonal Discharges at Deadwood 58 Figure 5.3: Summary of Unit Peak Flows for 1972 Storm Event 58 Seasonal Variation 58 1972 Storm Event Analysis 58 Table 5.1: Siuslaw Watershed 1972 Storm Event 59 Table 5.2: Downstream Analysis - Siuslaw River Reach 59 Table 5.3: Downstream Analysis - Lake Creek Reach 60 Table 5.4: Isolated Basin Analysis 60 Conclusion 61 6. RIPARIAN VEGETATION AND WETLANDS 62 Wetlands 62 Map 6.1: Potential and Existing Wetlands 63 Riparian Vegetation 64 Graph: Forest Classification by Acreage 64 Map 6.2: Riparian Vegetation Condition 65 Table 6.1: General Ownership of Riparian Areas 66 7. CHANNEL HABITAT TYPES 67 Background 67 Methods 67 Results 67 Ownership patterns 68 Table 7.1: Channel Habitat Type Criteria 68 Map 7.1: Generalized Channel Habitat Types 69 Discussion 70 Table 7.3: Channel Habitat Type by Ownership 70 Conclusion and Summary 71 8. SEDIMENT 72 Debris Flows 72 Map 8.1: Shallow Landslide Hazards 73 Table 8.1: Ownership Patterns of Potential Landslide Hazards 74 Bank Erosion 74 Bed Erosion 75 Sheet Erosion 75 9. WATER QUALITY 76 Graph 9.1: River Temperature and Dissolved Oxygen Concentrations 76 Map 9.1: Water Quality and Stream Temperature Monitoring 77 Chemical Water Quality Issues 78 10. AQUATIC RESOURCES 79 Table 10.1: Stream Habitat Conditions (Siuslaw Nat’l Forest) 79 Table 10.2: Stream Habitat Conditions (ODFW) 79 Change in the population of salmonids 80 Graph 10.1: Historic Productin of Coho 80 Table 10.3: Estimated Coho Salmon Spawner Abundance 81 The general distribution of salmonids in the Siuslaw basin 82 Table 10.4: Fish Life History 82 Current distribution of fish in the Siuslaw basin 83 Figure 10.1A: Idealized Distribution of Salmonids 83 Figure 10.1B: Hypothesized Distribution of Salmonids 83 The Interaction of salmonids in the Siuslaw 84 Figure 10.1C: Current Distribution of Salmonids 84 Causes of salmonid decline 84 Discussion of Available Salmonid Information: 85 Map 10.1: Coho Salmon Spawning and Snorkel Surveys 87 Figure 10.2: Conceptual Model of the Decline in Coho 88 Aquatic condition summary 90 11. THE SIUSLAW ESTUARY 93 Oregon’s Estuaries 93 Estuary Subsystems 93 Analyzing Estuary Conditions 94 The Siuslaw Estuary 95 The Siuslaw Estuary Historically 95 Present Condition of the Siuslaw Estuary 97 Table 11.1: Estuarine Habitats (Types and Areas) 98 Table 11.2. 1998 Water Quality Limited Streams - 303(d) List 101 Graph 11.1: River Temperature & Dissolved Oxygen Concentrations 101 Findings and Recommendations 102 Map 11.1: Estuary Major Habitat Types 104 Additional Recommendations & Data Gaps 105 12. WATERSHED CONDITION 106 Map 12.1: Potential Fish Passage Problems 107 Map 12.2: Perceived Threats 108 13. ECOLOGICAL CAPITAL 110 Map 13.1: Ecological Capital 113 14. ONGOING EFFORTS TO RESTORE THE AQUATIC ECOSYSTEM 115 Alternative Approaches to Habitat Restoration 115 Landscape Considerations 118 Building a Restoration Vision 118 Key Processes to Restore 119 Geographic Considerations 121 Map 14.1: Ecological Capital and Salmonid Abundance 122 Building Social and Ecological Capital 123 Monitoring and Adaptive Management 124 To sum up our main recommendations 125 15. BIBLIOGRAPHY 126 Appendix A: Fish species in the Siuslaw River Basin, Oregon Appendix B: Coho smolt counts from the Siuslaw Basin 1990-2000 Appendix C: Procedures for determining ecological capital Appendix D: GIS Data layers used Appendix E: Catchment Summaries hard copy from the Siuslaw Council office in INTRODUCTION Mapleton, or at local BLM and Forest Service offices. The Weyerhaeuser assessment is avail- able at their corporate office in Springfield. Welcome reader, to this assessment of the Siuslaw River Basin of the beautiful central An independent assessment of the entire Siuslaw Oregon Coast Mountains. Before you page basin was recently developed by the Coast Range through the rest of this document, we hope you Association of Corvallis, Oregon. This project will take a few moments to read this introduction, did a good job of summarizing stream habitat in order to gain a clearer picture of what we have survey information, and is available on that hoped to accomplish. organization’s web site (Willer). The only part of This part of the Upper Siuslaw has fairly mature riparian the Siuslaw Basin that has not been assessed to Project Goals forest date is the estuary. A watershed assessment has been compared to a ment certainly has been faced with all of the There have been significant advances in the study “health screening” for an individual. In a sense, above issues. of stream and watershed ecology over the past we are taking the watershed’s temperature, blood twenty years. We have attempted to apply these pressure, and so forth to determine its general The Siuslaw basin is a large and complex water- to this assessment wherever we could. Among the condition. We also hope to be able to describe shed, with a long history and story. We cannot key concepts we have employed are: why the watershed is in the condition it is, and to hope to learn or know everything about it. Even if put forth a conceptual program for stabilizing and we did know everything, we would find it -Stream Continuum Theory, which posits recovering a more robust health over the long impossible to transfer all of this knowledge to the that in order to understand the condition term. reader in a digestible format. In fact, most of this of a stream, all the processes from ridge basin has already been assessed by Forest Ser- tops to the mouth of the river need to be Any large scale watershed assessment has vice, Bureau of Land Management, and in one considered. Restoring fish populations inherent limitations, and this one is no exception. case Weyerhaeuser teams. Since 1995, these means considering the entire chain of Watershed assessment is a very young activity, teams have developed independent assessments habitats, from headwaters to the ocean having only been used in our region for the past for; the Upper Siuslaw, Wolf Creek, Wildcat and back, required for the life histories of ten or so years. Knowledge about the best way to Creek, Lake Creek, Deadwood and Indian the species. restore watersheds to health is also sketchy. The Creeks, the North Fork, and the Lower Siuslaw field of restoration ecology is only about 20 years River. These assessments have a great deal of -The condition of streams reflects the old, and the application of restoration is usually information on the aquatic ecosystem, as well as condition of the surrounding landscape. done at the scale of a few acres, not 500,000. The uplands. Thus they cannot be understood or information available to work with is never “fixed” independently. Nor can the focus complete. Some of the information may be only We encourage the reader of this assessment who be only on parts of the landscape, or approximately right, or out of date. And we may is interested in learning more to read these other restricted to public lands. Aquatic not fully understand what the information is documents. Several are available via BLM’s habitats are the result of landscape scale telling us in any case. Our work on this assess- Eugene district web site. Most are available in processes. Executive Summary 6 -Ecosystems are dynamic. Thus “restor- 7) Follow the format suggested in the Oregon ing” a watershed may have more to do Watershed Assessment Manual. Funding for this with adjusting land use to conform to project was provided through an Oregon Water- dynamics (fires, floods, debris torrents) shed Enhancement Board grant. OWEB is than with creating a static, idealized Oregon’s key state agency focused on watershed landscape picture. health. The OWEB manual was designed to be used on watersheds only 1/10th the size of the - “Clean streams” are not “normal,” at Siuslaw. Consequently we could not follow all of least by historic standards.