Setting
This ecoregion extends from the Redmond area of Central Oregon, across a wide swath of the Columbia Plateau in Eastern Oregon, to Hells Canyon on the Snake River at the border of the three states. The ecoregion is named for the Blue Mountains and contains a complex of basins and mountain ranges that, at average 2100-2900m, are lower and more open than the neighboring Cascades and Northern Rocky Mountains but do include some steep landscape of which Hell's Canyon at 1,660m is North America's deepest gorge. The mountains of the ecoregion include the Strawberry Range, Greenhorn, Elkhorn, Aldrich and Maury Mountains in the Blue Mountains, the gentler Ochoco Mountains to the west and the rugged Wallowa Mountains to the east. Rivers include the Grande Ronde, Powder Rivers and Malheur Rivers, all tributaries of the Snake and the John Day and Umatilla Rivers, tributaries of the Columbia.
Like the Cascades, but unlike the Northern Rockies, the Blue Mountains are mostly volcanic in origin. However, the core of the Blue Mountains and the highest ranges, the Wallowa and Elkhorn mountains, are composed of granitic intrusives, deep sea sediments, and metamorphosed rocks.
Read more about this topic: Blue Mountains (ecoregion)
Famous quotes containing the word setting:
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—Anthony Storr (b. 1920)
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—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The trees stand in the setting sun,
I in their freckled shade
Regard the cavalcade of sin,
Remorse for foolish action done,
That pass like ghosts regardless, in
A human image made....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)