I often find myself keeping in mind that the agencies are equally overwhelmed with the complexity and their capability to "Thinking Like a Watershed". One of our tasks is to help them help us help the watersheds. As their active constituency of diverse landowners and citizens, we can play a very important role in facilitating and creating a brand new form of emerging watershed consciousness. Historically each agency has been charged with its own myopic mandate to deal with their defined resource issue in their own vacuum. Unfortunately as well, the landscape has typically been divided with random straight lines on paper instead of honoring the evolutionary unique forms of the landscape as derived by geological, hydrological and biological processes. Integrated, whole systems thinking that brings these seemingly disparate pieces of the ecological puzzle together is the critical advantage of community based entities striving to appropriately inhabit our own "Basin of Relation". In addition having ourselves organized at the next regional scale up is critical to supporting more macro-initiatives. I often think about the lay of the landscape that the WCWNetwork represents.
A broader eco-regional delineation of this area, encompassing by the watersheds within the WCWNetwork, is a fascinating landscape entity in and of itself. We inhabit a place with the boundaries of the Russian River to the north flowing west and the Pacific Ocean to the west flowing south and the Petaluma/Estero wind gap to the south flowing east and the Santa Rosa plain to the east with hot air rising up. Each of these edges literally and biologically defines a unique place that we dwell within. From an energetic perspective what results is a macro counterclockwise upward spiraling vortex fueled by these peripheral swirling energy flows that yield West County its characteristic dynamic vibe! River flows to the west, ocean currents southward, aeolian winds inhaled through the wind gap filling the void of hot air lifting to the east pulling cooling fog through Salmon Creek and the Esteros and filling the Santa Rosa plain. The WCWNetworks overall Eco-region makes up a square, roughly 20 miles x 20 miles with its center pretty much being Occidental. This perspective helps me understand why often Occidental is surrounded by fog and we are sitting in a sun spot. And why I often leave home in shorts and end up freezing in Sebastopol or Santa Rosa.
If you study a Topo. map of West County Watershed Network Eco-region it is possible to identify a primary ridge that is the main continuous spine of the area with numerous secondary ribs. This spine seems to run on a roughly NW to SE axis and can be tracked from English Hill where it divides the Estero from Blucher and moves NW to then divide upper Atascadero from the Estero with a triple divide junction to the Laguna; it then keeps wiggling along to divide Salmon Cr. with Ebabius Cr. across to Jonive Cr. of the Green Valley system; it then runs along and divides Salmon Cr. with Redwood Cr. and then meets up with a triple junction divide between Salmon Cr., Purrington Cr. and Dutch Bill right around where Occidental Rd and Facendini Ln. intersect; it then continues down as the saddle of Occidental along Coleman Valley and divides Salmon Cr. with Dutch Bill and eventually another triple junction divide with Willow Creek and on out to Freezeout Cr. Obviously there are many secondary ribs off this vertebral like primary ridge. I have not actually drawn this line and determined where this primary ridge actual traverses, but it would be fun someday!!! I find these triple divide locations very fascinating where a raindrop has three watershed choices if it lands on a very specific and probably impossible location to actually determine.
Understanding these kind of topographical features will be informative towards the project of getting all of the watershed divides signed on public roads. This signage program will really help deepen our collective cogniscence of place as we travel through the environs in our internal combustion carriages.
I have recently seen photos of one of two global triple divides in Canada in the Athabascan glacier area where glacial snow melt can either go the the Atlantic, Pacific or Arctic Oceans! The other global triple divide is supposed to be in Siberia? Something else I recently learned about Copeland Creek is that it historically flowed off Sonoma Mountain and has created an alluvial fan that sometimes directed the creek to flow into the Petaluma River/San Pablo Bay Watershed and other times like now, is currently flowing into the Laguna. It is currently maintained into the Laguna by human ditches. A creek that flip flops between entire watershed basins over time is neat to ponder as well!
Here is another broader perspective to layer on. The knowledge that our little Eco-region is the most southward coastal extension of the contiguous coniferous temperate rainforest of North America stretching to Alaska. Here we have the range limitations of numerous species such as red tree vole, Douglas Squirrel, Grand Fir and red-bellied newt. From an island biogeographical perspective this is a significant place worthy of more ecological recognition and human participation in the restoration of our collective selves through the restoration of the watersheds and region that is us
The whole watershed is greater that the sum of the creeks. The whole eco-region is greater than the sum of the watersheds, ad infinitum to the whole planet, the whole universe, etc...
Brock
P. S. Here's a description of the WCWNetwork:
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The West-County Watershed Network is an alliance of watershed groups in the western region of Sonoma County, CA. The Network allows members of watershed groups and councils in the western region of Sonoma County, CA, to network among themselves and to interact with governmental agencies and bodies and with other watershed organizations. The watershed groups in the Network include the Dutch Bill Creek Watershed Group, Blucher Creek Watershed Council, Salmon Creek Watershed Council, Atascadero Creek and Green Valley Creek Watershed Council, Ebabias/Estero Americano Watershed Group.