South Fork Nooksack Floodplain
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The South Fork Nooksack Floodplain flows from tributaries in the Mt. Baker/Snoqualmie National Forest to the confluence of the North and South forks just upstream of the City of Deming. The town of Acme on State Route 9 is the largest community in the floodplain.
Notes
- The South Fork Spring Chinook run is critically imperiled and floodplain habitat restoration is a focus of whatcom county recovery efforts.
- The South Fork is not glacially fed, and so low summer flow and high stream temperature affects spring chinook which hold in the river until fall spawning.
- Maudlin & Coe (2011) describes the effectiveness of 11 project to install engineered log jams in the South Fork floodplain to increase wood formation of pools.
- The following workgroups are most active on the South Fork
- Whatcom County Public Works
- Nooksack Tribe
- Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association
- Whatcom Conservation District
- Whatcom Land Trust
- Nooksack Recovery Team - which serves as a coordinating body
- The Habitat Work Schedule identifies 14 completed salmon recovery actions on the South Fork (Link to map)
- A natural gas pipeline and an active railroad run north to south through the floodplain constraining restoration efforts.
- NOAA provides real time flow at Saxon Bridge
- Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association and Whatcom Land Trust have led a series of actions to restore The Catalyst Site where Landingstrip Creek Watershed enters the Nooksack downstream of the Hutchinson Reach Restoration.
Restoration
- Larson's Reach Floodplain Restoration - An initial installation of engineered log jams is being followed by a second installation, led by the Lummi Nation.
- Nooksack Tribe has been leading "natural storage" (Wetlands and beaver enhancement) as an alternative to engineered solutions (Dams). This leverages USGS capabilities to support groundwater modelling as well as feasibility work for natural wetland restoration. This is a response to Water Rights Adjudication in WRIA 1.
- The Catalyst Site is a very large complex of restoration and conservation activity, managed by the Whatcom Land Trust and just upstream of the town of Acme.
- Lummi Nation has been completing a series
- Nooksack Tribe is lead on a large complex project around the town of Acme known as Fish Camp Reach Restoration that includes a variety of actions to restore the reaches above and below the SR9 bridge. The project incorporates Flood Hazard Management
