Clark Blake wrote:
>Cascadia was originally defined as a hypothetical landmass that once lay

>to the west of the present Cascade Range (see King, P.B.,1959,The
>evolution of North America: Princeton Univ.Press, p.161). In 1972, Bates
>McKee redefined it to include a much larger area of southern B.C.,

>Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and northern California (McKee,Bates, 1972,
>Cascadia-The geologic evolution of the Pacific Northwest, McGraw-Hill,
>394 p.).More recently, a number of other geologists have used the term
>"Cascadian subduction zone" to describe an east-dipping slab of oceanic
>crust that is currently being carried down beneath the Cascade Range from
>Mt. Lassen in northern California to near the north end of
>Vancouver Island on the north.It seems to me that Cascadia is thus a
>geological rather than a geographical term and to name a book "Shorebirds
>of Cascadia" would not be a good idea even if the area in question
>coincided with that of the subducting Juan de Fuca plate.

Methinks this horse is surely dead, but Clark Blake raises some
interesting points about uses of the name Cascadia that deserve comment.
First, "Cascadia[n] Subduction Zone" is not the same as "Cascadia," so
whether or not the subducting Juan de Fuca plate coincides with the area
in question doesn't really bear on the question at hand. The area covered
by Dennis Paulson's _Shorebirds of the Pacific Northwest_ is very nearly
the same as the area McKee called "Cascadia," and on that basis the name
may be appropriate *if* a replacement for "Pacific Northwest" is
desired/needed.


Second, a name can have both geologic and geographic uses. Indeed,
geology has borrowed heavily from geography over the years. Moreover, if
McKee identifies an *area* of the earth's surface as "Cascadia," it seems
to me hard to argue that that is *not* a geographic usage, even if he is
writing about the geology of that area. If he uses the name solely to
indicate that the rocks in this area constitute a "Cascadia Group," or
that they represent a specific interval of time ("Cascadia Time"), that
would indeed be a strictly geologic usage -- but I don't think that's the
case. And even if it were, "Cascadia" has been used in an explicitly
geographic sense for the area in question in recent years.

Gene Hunn pointed out that from a continental perspective "Pacific
Northwest" is an appropriate term for the westernmost part of the
continent extending from Alaska down to Oregon or thereabouts [the Pacific
part of the Northwestern part]. This is perfectly logical, but the region
in question is only part of this chunk of land. From a continental
perspective, the region covered by Dennis's book would be the "Southern
Pacific Northwest."


I don't see "Pacific Northwest" as a slur (then again I never lost any
sleep living in New *England*). But if that term is offensive, I'll buy
"Dragonflies of Cascadia," or "Dragonflies of the region covered by this
book." Whatever. None of the terms in contention is so well-defined as
to be understood implicitly: whichever one is used, it will have to be
defined, as Dennis did in SPNW.


David Wright
dwright at u.washington.edu