Landforms

On the wiki, we differentiate between pages describing sites and those describing places. Place pages can be about anything, from a oceanic sub-basin, to a county, to a pond. A site is a particular piece of the ecosystem based on current regional planning models:

Our approach suggests seven different types of ecosystem sites, each shaped by distinct processes, and potentially providing a distict suite of ecosystem services. We consider them each from mountain to sea:

Headwaters

Headwaters are the steep foothill and mountain valleys, where precipitation falls as snow, and forestry is the primary land use.

Lowland Watersheds

Lowland watersheds contain the streams that drain the low foothills and the glacial plateau. These landform are shaped by glaciers and most precipitation falls as rain. Many lowland watersheds are urbanizing rapidly.

Floodplains

Floodplains form where the larger rivers and streams create and rework flat areas filled with their own alluvium. These are both the home of agriculture, the core of chinook salmon habitat, and where risk of flooding is highest.

Deltas

Deltas form where large river floodplains enter marine waters. Tidal flows create fluctuating water levels. Many areas are drained for agriculture, and deltas provide unique habitats at the intersection of land, river and sea.

Embayments

Embayments are those places along the shoreline where waves are muted by aspect or spits, collecting muddy sediments and marsh, often at the mouths of streams.

Beaches

Beaches form where sediment from eroding shorelines are pushed alongshore by waves, creating bluffs, benches, spits and lagoons. Beaches have been valued as residential property since time immemmorial, provide access to the wealth of the sea, but are vulnerable to storms.

Headlands

Rocky headlands emerge where bedrock is shallow along shoreines, along Juan de Fuca, San Juan Islands, and along the Seattle Fault. These dry stable shorelines contain pockets of beach.

Places

This system of ecosystem sites is different from the myriad ways that people define place. We use place pages to define all other places.

Humans define place using both natural and imaginary boundaries, as well as the extent of their settlements and development. Our places often contain a mixture of ecosystem sites, and define the focus of our management and governance.

Maps and Plans

We are currently storing images that describe ecosystem sites, in the ecosystem map category, displayed below. A future project will be to integrate this wiki with mapping systems that show ecosystem sites, like the Nearshore Portal

gravel, sand and finer materials moved and sorted by rivers and streams

particles of clay, silt, sand, gravel, or cobble, transported by water, are called sediment.