Major Bodies of Water
Upper Klamath Lake is the largest present-day body of water in the Klamath River watershed, covering 96 square miles (250 km2) on average, with a shoreline of 87 miles (140 km). It is also the largest freshwater lake in the state of Oregon. Historically, Lower Klamath Lake and Tule Lake were one interconnected freshwater marsh that totaled 195 square miles (510 km2) - more than twice the present-day dimensions of Upper Klamath Lake, and larger than Lake Tahoe in central California. This interconnected wetland still supports up to 3.7 million migrating birds per year. In wet years, the two lakes would connect to Upper Klamath Lake, forming one huge body of water. These lakes occupy the basin that was prehistorically occupied by Lake Modoc, a 1,100-square-mile (2,800 km2) freshwater lake that covered the entire Upper Klamath Basin, or 7% of the watershed - an area three times larger than the massive Salton Sea in southern California. This lake existed up to 11,000 years ago at the end of the most recent ice age. Today, Upper Klamath Lake encompasses just 0.6% of the Klamath watershed.
There are also several entirely artificial bodies of water in the watershed - including Lake Ewauna, J.C. Boyle Reservoir, Copco Lake, and Iron Gate Reservoir on the main Klamath. Lake Ewauna, also called Keno Reservoir, is 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2) in size, and is about 20 miles (32 km) long. The J.C. Boyle Reservoir is much smaller, with a surface area of 0.65 square miles (1.7 km2). Copco Reservoir is about 5.4 miles (8.7 km) long and is 1 square mile (2.6 km2) in area. Iron Gate Reservoir covers 1.4 square miles (3.6 km2) and is about 6.8 miles (10.9 km) long. Together, the four lower mainstem reservoirs total just 6.85 square miles (17.7 km2), or 0.04% of the Klamath River watershed.
Trinity Lake, on the mainstem of the Trinity River, is the largest tributary reservoir in the Klamath River watershed. At 25 square miles (65 km2) in size, it is larger than all four mainstem Klamath reservoirs combined (excluding Upper Klamath Lake).
Read more about this topic: Klamath Basin
Famous quotes containing the words major, bodies and/or water:
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we’re to bodies gone.””
—John Donne (1572–1631)
“I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)