Subject: East vs. West Washington -Reply
Date: Apr 15 10:07:17 1998
From: CHRIS CHAPPELL - cbmm490 at gwgate.wadnr.gov


By the same token, it aint one giant region over here either.
Although at a certain scale, they are two big regions, one
being a part of the northwest coast which runs from Se
Alaska to nw Calif and the other being a part of the
intermontane West.

I do agree though that many birders do not have adequate
appreciation for the ecoregional differences within our state.
There are a few different possibilities in terms of dividing up
the state.

One is Franklin and Dyrness (73) physiographic provinces:
Olympic Peninsula & Southwest Washington (name's too
long), Puget Trough, West Cascades, East Cascades,
Columbia Basin, Okanogan Highlands, Blue Mountains.

Another is Bailey's or Omernik's ecoregions. Omernik's are
Coast Range, Puget Lowland, Willamette Valley (only a
small area near Vancouver in WA), North Cascades,
Cascades (ie south of Snoqualmie Pass and including areas
on the creast and west), Eastern Cascades Slopes and
Foothills (again south of about Snoq Pass), Columbia Basin,
Okanogan Highlands, Blue Mountains.

In all of these systems the Okanogan Highlands are divided
from the Cascades or North Cascades by the Okanogan
Valley, and the low elev northeast Oly Peninsula is part of
the Puget Lowland or Trough due to it dryness.

Chris Chappell
DNR Natural Heritage Program
chris.chappell at wadnr.gov
Olympia, WA

>>> Deb Beutler <dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu> 04/14/98
06:19pm >>>
One thing has been bothering me for the last five years
(since I
moved to Washington). Why do we only divide the state into
two regions?
People often talk about Western Washington, meaning
anything west of the
Cascade Crest, and Eastern Washington, everything east of
the Cascade
Crest). Clearly there is a political and ecological difference
between the
east side and west side of the Cascades (rain shadows are
powerful things).
However, by that division, eastern Washington covers most
of the state and
includes and incredible diversity of habitats from the
sagebrush coulees and
potholes area, the slackwater (formerly riverine) habitats
along the
Columbia and Snake Rivers, the wheat deserts of the
Palouse, the apple
deserts of the Tri-Cities area and and the pine forests of
northeastern
Washington.

On Tweeters, the vaguenes of east vs. west can cause
problems.
Often people ask for good places to bird in "eastern
Washington" and I never
know what to tell them (except "Avoid the Palouse"). Are
they talking about
the dry central part, the wetter northern pine forests or the
wheat desert?
Other times, people are reporting their trip just east of the
Crest and put
"Eastern Washington" in the subject line. It isn't one giant
region over here.

What do you think? What would be a good
classification for
Washington? We could have Western Washington (possible
divided into Puget
Sound, Olympic Pennisula, South Coast, Cascades), South
Central Washington
(east of the Cascades to around the Potholes region), North
Central
Washington (Okanogan region), Northeastern Washington
(forested regions from
Grand Coulee west to Idaho South to Spokane) and
Southwestern Washington
(including the Palouse, Snake River area, etc.) That is just
my
classification. What is yours? You can respond to me
directly or to the
list at large.

Just wondering
Deb

Deb Beutler
Department of Zoology
P.O. Box 644236
Washington State Univerisity
Pullman (Whitman Co.), WA 99164-4236
dbeutler at wsunix.wsu.edu