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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5Archive 6Archive 7

Old course

I'm going to try to find some info on the old course of the river, where it followed through what is now the Wilson River valley when it flowed more straight into the Pacific (at least I remember hearing that before). Aboutmovies 00:45, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks AM, that would be a great addition! -Pete 03:11, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

More resources for future expansion

  • Jim McDermott introduced this bill (HR 1507) in March '07, which would have the GAO and other gov't agencies study the impact of the removal of four snake river dams. The findings in the text of the resolution may be useful as citations, esp. in the Ecology & Env. section.
  • Raymond, Camela (November 2007). "The Shape of Memory". Portland Monthly.
Article about Maya Lin's current project, the Confluence Project, enhancing state parks along the Columbia to explore its cultural history.
  • The October Portland Monthly had a relevant article, too.

-Pete 08:29, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Another suggestion I have is to look at everything you want to mention in the whole article, then make sure to describe it sequentially in the "Course" section. That way, when you mention Hanford or the Snake River, readers will have some idea or reference as to where these come along the course of the river. Of course my longest FA stream is only 22.9 miles! Hope this helps, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 00:47, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
A good suggestion. Working mostly on citations right now, I"ll come back to that if nobody else does. Another thought I had is to merge List of hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River into this article, which might accomplish much of what you suggest in the form of a chart. -Pete (talk) 10:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Citation for "three times size of Great Pyramid" and some other stuff here. -Pete (talk) 21:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Source for expansion

I gotta stop finding these, the work never ends! But...this 4-part OPB series is awfully cool, and probably has lots of stuff that could be used for this article, and/or related ones... http://news.opb.org/series/2007/columbia/ -Pete (talk) 07:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

GA Passed, March 2008

I've taken another look at Ruhrfisch's comments from his/her GA review, and believe all the most significant concerns have been met. Not every single concern, but the most important ones. I'm going to re-nominate, and leave a note to Ruhrfisch requesting that he/she revisit the review if time allows. Any thoughts? (I know there are still many improvements in progress, but I don't think any of them will hold this back from GA. I'm convinced by recent comments that FA may be a little further off.) -Pete (talk) 18:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I think it's definitely GA material. Excellent work, Pete (and others)!Northwesterner1 (talk) 20:56, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I will review it in the next day or so. My initial impression is also that it is quite good, but I need to carefully read and check the article. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I read all of the article and the talk page again and am passing it with congratulations. It is obvious much work has been done since the first GA nomination and I believe it is close to FA status. I agree that Wikipedia needs better articles on larger rivers and see this as a potential model FA. Here then are some ideas and suggestions for further improvement, as well as a few typos / things that need to be fixed.

NOTE: I removed several items that have been addressed. Ruhrfisch's full list is still preserved in /Archive3.

  • The footnote for the textbox quote from "Timothy Egan, in The Good Rain" is essentially hidden on my computer (IE) - just the very top shows - I can not tell what number it is.
  • I noted with interest the discussion of tributaries on the talk page. For FA, I think this section needs to be expanded. I think a discussion of the major tribs and a sentence or two on the smaller major tribs and a paragraph on each of the major tribs would be useful. I would also add the size of their drainage basins to the table.

Congratulations and well done! Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Canadian-side resources on the Columbia

turns out there's a Biodiversity Atlas underway funded by the BC Gov with the participation of Selkirk College. The main links off maps.gov.bc.ca didn't work but I found this which gives statistics on the Canadian length etc. and is a spinoff of the main project page. I don't have time to "mine" the article and add relevant contents here, but there was a need for Canadian-side citations/data so this should provide some of hte main stuff.Skookum1 (talk) 16:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Great find, thanks Skookum! I'll dig into it shortly (unless somebody gets there first.) -Pete (talk) 16:50, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Human paleohistory

i.e. the indigenous peoples section but in ref to Kennewick Man and other early-digs/finds; I'm mostly thinking of only one addition, but I don't know where to find the citation; so many hundred years ago, IIRC about 1500BP, maybe 3000BP, there was a pottery-using culture (presumably also pottery-making but finds are marginal); buried in alluvial ash or whatever, evidently wiped out by natural disaster. Bona fide but I don't know more than that tidbit, remembered from the CHINOOK-L listserve's discussions of various things. Oh, another aboriginal name for th river was Sesotkwa or Tsesotkwa, but nobody knew which language it was from; similarly when Simon Fraser started down the Fraser it was in the hopes to prove it was the Tacoutche Tesse, the Columbia; although once again in whose language I don't know, as that's not a Carrier-looking name (ko=river) nor is it Salishan (meen/een=river). The Chinookan name that turns up is Wihml - Wimhl? - with only one vowel; whether etymologically it means "big"+"river" I don't know. Oh, there's another "ancient" dig in the upper Columbia somewhere; might be in that diversity atlas or resources connected to it...basic drift is maybe there should be an archaoelogical section; won't be large but worthwhile.

found a resource

I was looking for other stuff about elsewhere in BC and came across a Columbia Basin page on "Living Landscapes", a Royal BC Museum webproject; the Human history page looks like it has some interesting stuff but the natural history page looks like it has some material useful for this page, and for Columbia Basin. Also found this but you probably already know about it (?)Skookum1 (talk) 15:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Columbia Icefield

Although Columbia Lake is nominally considered the headwater of the Columbia, ultimately the source is the Columbia Icefield, hence the name (as also of Mount Columbia. Which little upper tributaries exactly come from the icefiled I'll have to look at later; I had a vicious stomach flu yesterday and have to mobilate myself for errands and some fresh air right now; though this was worth mentioning, maybe someone can stitch a mention into the article on it? Also found this which if you zoom in on BC is interesting, more for the way the Fraser basin was dealt with; but useful anyway perhaps. The diverted areas shown are, from N to S, the Nechako, Bridge and Cheakamus Rivers; only Nechako changes actual basins, though, so I don't see the point, i.e. there's other basin-to-same basin diversions...I'll have to read up the backinfo on this page to se what's up with that. Not that the Whatshan is a big deal, nor Alouette Lake nor Jones Lake; usually these national-level things are complied with only a loose understanding of BC geography/history, though.....(my stock complaint, no?)_ Skookum1 (talk) 18:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

passing through the Cascades

Along with the Klamath River in southern Oregon and the Pit River in northern California, the Columbia is one of only three rivers to pass through the Cascades.

that line has always bothered me, although the exception to it I'm thinking of doesn't pass through the Cascades from one side to the other; it loops through it - the Skagit River; I guess it never crosses the divide of the Cascades, though....but is such a concept of a "divide" on a range pierced by, or spanning, the Columbia, even relevant?Skookum1 (talk) 03:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Minor wording issue about steamboats

I'm doing some bits of minor copyediting and am stuck on this sentence, from the Navigation section: The use of steamboats along the river, beginning in 1850... There is a footnote, to this timeline page, which phrases it "1850: Steamboats Columbia and Lot Whitcomb begin regular service on the Columbia River." The thing is there was a steamboat in regular service on the river before 1850, at least to Fort Vancouver: the Beaver (steamship), which arrived on the river in 1836. I thought about rewording the sentence The regular use of steamboats along the river..., but that isn't quite right either because the Beaver was in "regular use", even if its operations were not limited to the river. Anyway, I can't come up with a way to reword this bit, especially given the existence of the footnote, which does not mention the Beaver. So I'm just mentioning it here. It is a minor point to be sure, but symptomatic of an unfortunate US bias present in many history books and web pages. Pfly (talk) 04:46, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Nevermind, I put two brain cells together and solved it myself. Brain cells are sometimes hard to come by. Pfly (talk) 02:37, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Work for feature article status?

So, this page has been quiet for a while, but after the last burst of activity we got it to good article status with the notion that is was near or at feature article status. Anyone interested in working for FA? I've never been involved in such a thing and would find it interesting. And I don't mean right now per se, but over the next few months perhaps? I also don't know how to go about starting such a procedure, so I thought I'd just toss the idea out. If nothing else it would be interesting to see what criticisms come out in the process. Pfly (talk) 06:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Also, while I'm at it, this talk page is getting long, perhaps we should archive most of it? Pfly (talk) 06:41, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Pfly, I would love to work on that with you. I found the GA push took a lot of energy, and I needed a break -- but that's long ago now. I don't think it would be terribly hard. Ruhrfish left a pretty good list (see above) of what he thought it would take to get to FA, which I think is a great starting point; I actually think a lot of that work has already been done.
I'm off to breakfast, but will try to come back soon and archive the talk page -- maybe we can leave Ruhrfisch's comments at the top, to set us off in the right direction? -Pete (talk) 18:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
I'd be happy to help with a push. For starters, I'd like to revise the course description somewhat to include a few more specifics (river miles/kilometers and/or coordinates) about locations and to move the discharge paragraph to the bottom of the course description section. The logic of the layout part of this is: stream first, basin second. I don't think I would step on anybody's editorial toes by doing this. My impression of the overall article is that it is not far from being FA-worthy. The greatest obstacle to getting there might be the great diversity of editorial opinion that comes to bear. It seems more difficult to develop a group article about a well-known subject than to work alone on something obscure. Finetooth (talk) 18:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
The Manual of Style now deprecates autoformatting of full dates in the main text and citations. I can run a script that will remove the autoformatting from all the dates that have been formatted with square brackets. It won't touch the autoformatting that's part of the "cite" family of templates, but if I understand the new guidelines correctly, this will be OK at FAC. Finetooth (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
The geobox has a parameter for "nickname" and another for "other name". Should we add "Wimahl" and/or "Big River" to one of these places in the geobox? If so, which one? Finetooth (talk) 19:54, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
Finetooth, I think adding Wimahl to "other name" and Big River to "nickname" might be the way to go. Your points about dates and the course description are well taken -- I say "be bold" and do it! I actually think the article is ready to go -- I'm sure concerns will arise, but I think it's clearly of a quality worthy of nomination. Anyone object if I just get "bold" in that regard? -Pete (talk) 22:43, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>Names are done. Dates are unlinked except those not in brackets in the "cite" family of citations. Those will be acceptable at FA and don't have to be fixed by hand. (The script does not touch them.) I need to think carefully before I tinker with the course description. Finetooth (talk) 05:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh curses and mutterings. I didn't quite understand the autoformatting stuff completely. I must make a few more boring tweaks, and I will. Pay no attention to me while I do this. I'll probably be scowling. Finetooth (talk) 04:37, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for taking this particularly irritating bull by the horns. That stuff is a big pain, and your efforts are very much appreciated! -Pete (talk) 19:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
I think I might have broken my record for nutty low-level fixes this time. I mis-read the fine print on the new MoS guidelines for date autoformatting consistency, and my misunderstanding caused no trouble until I got to this article. The new guidelines don't require complete autoformatting consistency within an entire article. The consistency is divided into two parts: (1) the main text autoformatting must be internally consistent and (2) the citation autoformatting must be internally consistent. What I temporarily did was to get the main text consistent as m-d-y (June 10, 2008, for example) but the citations inconsistent, some as m-d-y and some as ISO (2008-06-10, for example). My effort to hand-convert everything to m-d-y failed because although the "cite web" template will accept substitute parameters that don't autoformat, "cite book" and others do not accept these parameters gracefully. Bummer. I reverted to the only reasonable option I could think of, which was to hand-convert all the m-d-y dates in the citations to ISO. The main text dates are now all m-d-y. The citation dates are all ISO. Exceptions, if any, would be dates that I overlooked. Now the dates should be OK for FAC. If I am wrong, I will fix them again. Whatever it takes. Finetooth (talk) 20:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Infobox

As someone who doesn't have trouble (usually) editing articles with lots of markup in them, I have to say that the infobox in this article is really enormous (in the edit mode), and slightly obnoxious. To preserve ease of editing, I think it might behoove us to move the infobox in to a separate template ala Template:ColumbiaRiverInfobox or the like. Any objections? Steven Walling (talk) 00:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that's a fine idea -- I agree that it's really big and cumbersome, but hadn't thought of that solution. -Pete (talk) 05:48, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
Move complete! You can edit it now at Template:ColumbiaRiverGeobox. Steven Walling (talk) 04:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Nom for FA -- no time like the present?

I have drafted a nomination for FA here: Talk:Columbia River/FAnom

Please take a look, and edit it as you see fit. I'd also love to see a number of us listed as co-nominators, so please add your name. Let's aim to submit this Wednesday. -Pete (talk) 19:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Before doing that, Pete, I'd run the article through PR. This was the advice you gave me on Johnson Creek, and it was good advice. Reviewers at FAC prefer to see articles that have been peer-reviewed partly because it makes their enormous task a bit easier. In my humble opinion, no amount of vetting could be too much. I still see things in the article that worry me. The orphan paragraphs consisting of only one or two sentences will likely be challenged. I'm not sure that citations to Encarta will be acceptable; it would be better to replace them with citations to Loy or the USGS or other primary texts rather than derivative texts like other encyclopedias. I don't have any trouble with the new infobox template, but will it annoy reviewers who find it puzzling? Has anybody run a link checker recently? I have a nagging concern about the citations to JSTOR that require a semi-special connection to verify; I've seen a discussion of this somewhere, but I can't remember where at the moment. Taking this to PR would give us a little more time for a few more fixes and cautionary adjustments, and it will probably head off complications at FAC. In all likelihood, some of those will occur no matter what we do, but maybe we can keep the number down to single digits. And then, certainly, go for it. Finetooth (talk) 20:35, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Finetooth - it often helps to have a fresh set of eyes look things over before WP:FAC. I read the draft nomination and it is OK, a few points though: Featured Article Review is the process whereby current FAs that may no longer meet FA criteria are either fixed up or delisted (it is a common mistake to confuse the two - see WP:FAR); I would decide ahead of time who the nominators are - there are six editors with 20 or more edits (see this, not that all have to be nominators); I understand the last sentence, but am not sure what it has to do with this article at FAC - it might be good to add model articles that are FA that this follows (and dwarfs ;-) ) or to mention that it follows the WikiProject Rivers and WP:WIAFA guidelines. I would also have someone check the images and have Ealdgyth check the refs before FAC. User:Moni3 did an amazing job on the Everglads series of articles and would be a good peer reviewer, I think. I would also be glad to take a look, but am somewhat familiar with the article at this point. I would also run the FAC link checker and dab checker on this. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 21:31, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking maybe all the eyes on this reduced the need for PR, but respect what you both say. Should I put in the request? You guys? Sorry about the confusion of "FAR" -- please feel free to make edits like that, and the others you suggest, directly to the draft nom…or rewrite from scratch, if mine isn't the right foundation. -Pete (talk) 23:39, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
If you would put in the PR request, Pete, that would be good. I'd prefer to work more-or-less in the background on this one as a helper and dust-mouse chaser. (My high edit count is misleading because almost all of it came from meddling with citations. I had nothing to do with the hard work and research that produced most of the article.) After the PR request is in, you might have someone you'd like to approach on the PR volunteer list. If not, I wouldn't mind asking User:Moni3. I realize that I just made a lot of changes to the "Course" section, but I have no plans for the other sections. Meanwhile, I'll try to find another source for the Encarta data and run the link checker. I've never run the dab checker, so I'll probably give that a try. Is there anything else you'd like me look into or do? Finetooth (talk) 02:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>The half-dozen or so dabs are fixed. "Homestead" was one of them, and nothing on the dab seemed to explain what the word means in this context. My solution was to unlink. Finetooth (talk) 23:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Would Wiktionary:homestead work? Linked as homestead, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 00:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Good job with the dab checker..is that a program you download, or a script..? I submitted the PR nom, so if you want to ask Moni to take a look, go to it! I'm not sure if there's a policy forbidding links that require login -- it's something I've wondered before. The citations should be fine either way; if somebody insists that we unlink them, so be it (though in my personal view, that reduces the value of the citation). Re: Homestead, I think Homestead principle might suffice, but if you don't like it I'm fine with leaving it unlinked..or pointing to Wiktionary. -Pete (talk) 01:11, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, one other thing -- the Tributaries section. A while back Ruhrfisch suggested getting data, for the chart, on the drainage basin areas of the larger tributaries. I agree that it would be good to include, but all searches for a collection of that data have come up short. (I wonder if Kmusser, the map master, might have any ideas?) So if either of you know where that might be found, that would be a big help. Also, I don't see any citations in that section. I suspect it all comes from the USGS table that is cited elsewhere in the article; but we should be sure to put the citation in there. -Pete (talk) 01:19, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Snake River ~72,000 sq. mi. [1], Willamette 11,460 [2], Cowlitz 2,480 [3]. The sources seem to be out there, maybe a little scattered though. Franamax (talk) 01:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The dab checker is a website - you enter the name of the article and click a button. Here is the link for this article: [4] Ruhrfisch ><>°° 01:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
"Homestead principle" it is. I'll try to find an answer to the log-in question. I've seen a discussion of it recently, probably on one of the FAC-related talk pages. You are right about missing source(s) for the discharge table. I don't know where the numbers came from. User:Franamax's approach would work for the basin areas; source each one separately if no general list exists that can be cited. Does somebody want to add a column to the table and then fix the layout? Speaking of USGS, I did the stream gauges up to the international border, but I don't know where or if the Canadians have gauges on the Columbia. I can look, but I thought somebody here might know. I'll send a note to Moni. Finetooth (talk) 02:27, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I think I was too set on finding the basin areas all on one page...d'oh! Thanks for the links, I'll seek out the rest. And thanks for linking that tool Ruhrfisch, that'll be useful! -Pete (talk) 02:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The USGS has a whole pile of data on river basin areas here. Kind of a detailed listing, but is that what you would be wanting? Franamax (talk) 02:54, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Just watch out for drainage basins that cross the US-Canada border, as the USGS figures often only take the US portions into account. Sources for drainage basin sizes in Canada are sometimes trickier to find too. Another thing to watch out for is, some river drainage basins have sneaky little bits that cross the border. Like the Pend Oreille River, which not only crosses into Canada near its mouth, but also has at least one distant tributary that flows south out of Canada (the Flathead River). In fact, looking at the Pend Oreille's page just now and looking at the source cited for its drainage basin, it might not include the portion in Canada. This is a topic I can try to look into more. I've collected a number of possible sources while making pages for various BC rivers. Pfly (talk) 03:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
In fact, just checking the pages on tributaries such as Okanogan River and Flathead River I'm seeing problems with drainage basin figures cited (as well as broken links). It may take me a while, but I'll work on these things. Pfly (talk) 03:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Good point Pfly, and here's another discrepancy: NRCan shows the Kootenay as Can 37,700, US 12,600, Tot 50,300 sq. km. which I can't match to the existing cited figures at all. [5] Franamax (talk) 03:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>I've written to Moni seeking her sage advice. Finetooth (talk) 03:35, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Nitpicking

On first reading of this truly excellent article:

  • 258,000 or 260,000 square miles of drainage - which is the definitive number, and shouldn't it be used throughout?
 Done Good catch. The 260,000 was sourced to Encarta and the 258,000 to the USGS. Bye, bye, Encarta. Forgot to sign earlier. Finetooth (talk) 19:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
  • BC used as an abbrev for British Columbia but not shown in brackets after the long form.
 Done Added BC on first instance. Forgot to sign here too. Finetooth (talk) 19:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
  • The Dalles - overlinked and not linked on first use in the article body.
 Done -Pete (talk)
  • Tribes vs tribes - is the capitalized use appropriate throughout?
 Done -Pete (talk)
  • Suggest linking dug-out canoe for the naive reader.
 Done -Pete (talk)
  • Tri-Cities - possible overlinking?
 Done -Pete (talk)
  • Would be nice to see brief mention of the War of 1812 thing where the Astor company men wanted to switch to Great Britain but the British captain wanted a victory and insisted on attacking the fort anyway. Result being that after the war was settled, the fort was returned as "captured territory".
  • "One of the main commodities..." - the sentence doesn't explain itself very well.
  • Important crops - got a reference?
  • "much more severe than any in recent memory" - can't make sense of this.
 Done Finetooth (talk) 19:36, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
  • "...could do to the today's regional..." - !!
 Done Finetooth (talk) 20:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
  • aluminum - US produces 17% vs 15% of the world's aluminum - don't see the Columbia catastrophe here, could it be explained better?
Oops, meant to explain this. Yes, I'm sure the article text could be improved. Read it a little more closely, the numbers don't quite line up like that -- the NORTHWEST produced 17% or the world's aluminum, then later the ENTIRE US produced only 15%. Those are the figures that are available in the sources I found, and they don't match up easily; unfortunately, I had a hard time lining them up in a way that tells a compelling story. Suggestions or bold rewriting welcome. -Pete (talk) 19:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Hanford waste - gallons converted to cu.m., would litres be better? I dunno.
I don't think so. The numbers are almost incomprehensible in any form. Changing to liters would mean using a phrase like "thousand billion". Finetooth (talk) 20:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Did you know billion is an ambiguous number? A million million means the same thing to everyone though. Perhaps it could be expressed in acre feet with an note of how many households that would serve for a year's water usage (if it were clean). —EncMstr (talk) 20:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Ha! I used to know that, but I forgot all about it. Could we entice you to come in and do a hands-on fix to that particular critter? Finetooth (talk) 22:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
  • bacteria is not a pollutant per se, should it be listed as such?

Massively good article, so I'm not even going to try changing any of that stuff, I'll leave this for your consideration. Great work! Franamax (talk) 02:44, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the kudos, and for the suggestions! I'll start chipping away at 'em, too. -Pete (talk) 05:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

And just to pile on: could the sections be re-organized so that (new) "History" encompasses "Indigenous peoples" and "New waves of explorers". and (new) "Harnessing the river" contains "Damming the river", "Irrigation" and "Hydroelectricity"? This would mean splitting up the "Navigation" section, the first bit would go to History, "Opening the passage..." and "Deeper shipping channel" would go to "Harnessing...". Just an idea, it has a pretty good structure already. Franamax (talk) 05:27, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Tributary basin areas

I've completed the table based on the USGS and NRCan links I've mentioned above. I would regard the USGS data as definitive, except trumped by NRCan, which shows international figures. The table now needs a metric-equivalent column, n'est ce-pas?

I will invite scrutiny of my changes - for instance did I pick the right Sandy River? Also, there are some serious discrepancies with some of the linked articles - a conscientious editor would follow those up. And I haven't yet compared the USGS numbers with the existing ref's. An even more conscientious editor would infobox up the subsidiary articles with the necessaries - however, I suppose I am not that conscientious editor! Franamax (talk) 04:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! I might be that conscientious editor. At least I'll give it a go. I think your source for the Pend Oreille River doesn't include the Canadian portions. And I'm a little suspicious of the nrcan figures for the Kettle River, because it gives figures for the US and Canada portions of some other rivers, but not that one. But I've already begun following up, so it's all good! Except, at the moment, it's time for bed. Pfly (talk) 04:49, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
And I've asked for help using the {{convert}} template in tables here, so it can be nice and clean. If anyone here already knows how to make it work, please save them some time answering me. Franamax (talk) 05:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The Atlas of Canada has some numbers for the Kootenay and Kettle [here]. Finetooth (talk) 05:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that's the page I found. It shows the discrepancy on the Kootenay with the current figures, and Pfly has spotted a possible problem with the Kettle numbers, which should be transborder. Curiouser and curiouser... Franamax (talk) 05:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
I've found the nwcouncil subbasin planning reports to be pretty good on trans-boundary things. They have drainage basin info, but usually tucked away inside some huge PDF. I downloaded them all and will check later to see what I an find. Pfly (talk) 13:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Also just to note, the top 13 largest tribs by length or discharge are not the same top 13 by basin. Eg, tiny Crab Creek has a basin larger than the Cowlitz. Pfly (talk) 13:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Image placement problems still

Screenshot, Firefox in Windows Vista
Screenshot, IE in Windows Vista

By the way, I still have the problem I brought up, now in Archive 3. In Firefox the images overlap the tributary chart. This is on my Mac and the Windows Vista box I'm on right now. Just chekced IE and it looks good there. Here's a couple screenshots from the Windows Vista box. Firefox version 2.0.0.16 on Vista. The archive link has screenshots from Macintosh Firefox. Does anyone else have this issue? Pfly (talk) 12:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't overlap on my screen in Firefox running XP, but it's not pleasing to my eye. I'd show you, but I don't know how to do a screen shot. Further, I have a real-life thing this morning that is whisking me away right now, and I'll be gone until after noon. I'll get back to this as soon as possible. Moni, meanwhile, has said "yes" to doing a PR sometime later today. You all are doing a great job. Finetooth (talk) 14:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
The use of {{clear}} templates might help here. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 14:23, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, it changed which text the pics overlap anyway. Gotta run.. Pfly (talk) 14:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Before adding the extra columns, this mostly "fit" on monitors as small as 800x600. But widening the table changes that. I think it's time to remove the images from the right side of this section, and get rid of the {{imagestack}} template. What do you guys think? The middle one is sort of the "classic" gorge shot, maybe unnecessary because it's so widely used elsewhere in the world. The other two look very similar to one another (even though they're from very different parts of the river). I wouldn't object to simply nixing all three, though we could also work to move them into other parts of the article. Or, we could set up a small gallery at the bottom of the article. Thoughts? -Pete (talk) 19:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Moving or removing is a good idea. I think something resembling one image per subsection is about the maximum that looks good. The layout problem with the "Major tributaries" comes down to "too many images illustrating too little text". Come to think of it, these three images don't have anything to do with tributaries. A further thought: I believe that galleries at the bottoms of articles are deprecated. Finetooth (talk) 22:25, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
Columbia River near Revelstoke, British Columbia
Crown Point Vista House, with Beacon Rock and Hamilton Mountain visible in the background
The Columbia River, as it forms the border between Washington and Oregon

Okay, I have removed these three images. I believe you're right that galleries are not encouraged, but there are exceptions. In my view, when there is a wealth of varied visual material related to an article, it's worth making an exception. You may recall that Hanford Site has a very interesting gallery, and made it through FA. However, I'm not sure these images are really that indispensable. I've pasted them at the right for y'all's perusal. -Pete (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and if you guys want a pic of a tributary, I've always been rather proud of this one, of the confluence of the Deschutes and the Columbia… -Pete (talk) 00:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
All good. You are right about the Hanford gallery, which I had forgotten. I really like your photo of the Deschutes, and I hope you can fit it in here. Finetooth (talk) 01:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Tributary section images and content

Your Deschutes photo is beautful, Pete, but adding it caused the map below to totally obscure the chart! I don't know why I have such problems with this section. But in any case, I changed the image placement from right to left, which makes the chart mostly readable, though not fully. Consider it a temporary fix-- I would like to add some text to this section about drainage basin sizes, and the added text might make image placing easier. I figure instead of troubleshooting the images now I should wait until the text I have in mind is added. Make sense? As for the new text I'm thinking of, it would just be something short about the chart: It lists the largest tributaries by discharge, but now that we have added drainage basin sizes to it, there may be the implication that these are the largest drainage basins, even if they are not ranked in order. In truth they are far from the largest basins (well, some of them are). So I thought it worth explaining that, and perhaps mentioning a few of the larger basins that are not on the chart. Like the ephemeral little Crab Creek has a 13,200 square mile basin! Also, some second order tributaries have drainage basins larger than most first order streams, which seems worth a quick mention. For example, the Owyhee River, a tributary of the Snake, has a basin 11,049 square miles large, which is larger than most first order tributaries excepting the 4 or 5 huge ones. Anyway, just to explain my less than idea image edit-- to be made better soon? Pfly (talk) 18:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Text expansion along those lines sounds excellent to me, and yes, something like Crab Creek definitely merits a mention in that context. Your image edit almost entirely obscured the table on my browser -- so I tried a different application of the {{clear}} template, which I think will be sufficient until more text alleviates the problem. Does it work more or less OK for you in its present state? -Pete (talk) 18:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Haha.. oops, can't win! But yes, image placement and obscured text doesn't matter right now. I can always get at the content one way or another. We'll fix it up nice once the content is more stable. Pfly (talk) 20:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
I have another idea for text expansion in this section. We have a little material here about the watershed but not much. The bottom section might be called "Watershed" and include one subsection called "Tributaries". The "Watershed" material above the "Tributaries" subsection could include the size of the watershed, the names of the big watersheds (and one ocean) that butt up against it, statistics about land use within the watershed, something about precipitation (including seasonal and regional variations) over the watershed, and perhaps something about big mountains or other special geographic features. (Some of this may already be in "Geology" and elsewhere and probably can't be used twice.) This might add a paragraph or two or three to the section, which could then more easily accommodate the graphics. It might also address User:Juliancolton's concerns about geography. If any of this sounds useful, I can help with the research and writing. Finetooth (talk) 00:22, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Finetooth, that sounds like a mighty fine idea to me. You've done a fantastic job on that sort of stuff with Johnson Creek (Willamette River) and similar articles. Pfly, it may soon become academic, but I can't seem to stop tinkering with the image alignment stuff. Does my latest attempt work well in your browser(s), at various window widths? -Pete (talk) 00:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Yep, Pete, it works now at any window size. The map and chart look a bit awkward, layout-wise, when the window is narrow, but nothing overlaps anything else. Thanks! If we do expand the section along Finetooth's ideas, there's a few things worth mentioning that come to mind right away (assuming they are not already in the article somewhere). The basin's climate and landforms change fairly dramatically from the Rocky Mountain headwaters area to the near-desert Columbia Plateau, to the temperate maritime area west of the Cascades. While the wide range of climate and vegetation/ecology types is hardly unique among rivers, it is unusually striking in places, and was frequently remarked upon by people from the first records. There's something about water temperate too-- how strange it seemed to have such a cold river flowing through the blazing summer heat and near-desert near the Snake's mouth. I'm sure the Meinig book I've often cited from, The Great Columbian Plain, has a great deal of material along these lines to pull from. Precipitation patterns tie into discharge and basin size, helping explain why the second largest river by discharge, the Willamette, has a smaller drainage basin than Crab Creek. I haven't dug up discharge numbers for Crab Creek, but they are tiny. Also, I like the idea of mentioning neighboring river basins, akin to they way pages about states typically mention bordering states. There's an interesting multiple ocean thing, what with the Missouri/Mississippi system to the southeast draining to the Gulf of Mexico, the Saskatchewan system to the northeast draining to Hudson Bay, the Athabasca/Mackenzie system, just touched up near the BC "Big Bend", draining to the Arctic Ocean, and of course the Great Basin to the south not draining to any ocean at all. Anyway, just some random thoughts in reaction to these ideas. As usual I can't predict how much time I'll have in the weeks ahead, but I'm enjoying seeing how the FA idea has played out so far (eg, never knew what peer review was). I have been working on collecting info on various tributaries, esp discharge, basin size, and stream length. If nothing else I'm curious which streams would rank highest in these three ways. My still-quite-incomplete working page for number collecting is User:Pfly/Sandbox2. The process takes so much longer when you try to update/fix the tributary pages themselves, phew. Pfly (talk) 03:55, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Let me correct myself. My amazing example of Crab Creek was quite overdone. The basin was given in sq km and I read it as sq mi. It is "only" about 5,100 sq miles. Still big, but not Willamette sized. Pfly (talk) 19:39, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>I worked up the neighboring basin stuff last night and this morning and added it just now as per the discussion above. The prose might need some tweaking; I may have used the word "watershed" a few too many times. The new paragraph might give you some wiggle room with the graphics. I'll be looking for more stuff about the watershed. A basic description of the landforms should be possible. User:Northwesterner1's work on ecoregions might come in handy somewhere here. Finetooth (talk) 19:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Two days later, Im working up something about the population of the watershed. I have found an interesting source document that's about 80 pages long. I'll try to condense it to one paragraph that suits our purposes. Finetooth (talk) 19:49, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'm liking what I see thus far. Population would be good, rainfall might be interesting too…I'd have to say, you're the best expert I know on these matters. I suppose it goes without saying, but in its current state it's a little weird -- only mentions the things bordering the watershed, but not the watershed itself. -Pete (talk)
Over the last few days I've also been slowly roughing up some text much along the same lines as what you added, Finetooth. I got mine relatively polished up before realizing you already added yours. So I took what you wrote and expanded it with some of the stuff I wrote, and reordered some things, and added more footnotes than are probably required. I hate to just replace your addition with mine, but I think I might do just that in a few minutes. Well, it isn't "mine" anyway, since the core of it is the stuff you added. But in any case I thought I should explain a little:
I liked your idea described above for this section, about having info about bordering big watersheds and "perhaps something about big mountains or other special geographic features". That last idea, combined with "major watersheds" led me to writing about bordering watersheds in terms of continental divides. A good part of the Columbia's boundary runs along "the" Continental Divide (Pacific vs Atlantic & Arctic) as well as the Laurentian Divide (Arctic vs Atlantic). These divides meet at named "triple divide points" (like Triple Divide Peak in Glacier National Park, MT), and separate the Columbia watershed from other really major ones (Mississippi-Missouri, Nelson-Saskatchewan, Mackenzie-Athabasca). I thought that was interesting enough to mention, and important enough to mention bordering basins based on "divide importance" order, instead of your counterclockwise order. "Lesser" divides, much noted but unnamed as far as I know, split the Nelson-Saskatchewan from the Mackenzie-Athabasca, and the Columbia-Snake from the Colorado-Green, so I described those next. Their triple divide points are named peaks too (Snow Dome and Three Waters Mountain). Next in importance, it seemed to me, was the Great Basin, so I put that next, adding that it isn't a single watershed but quite a few. I mentioned the larger three that border the Columbia Basin. Finally, there are all those adjacent watersheds that drain to the Pacific just like the Columbia. Of those, the Fraser seems to warrant special mention, being particularly large and sharing a long divide border with the Columbia. That left me with just the Klamath and, I thought worth mentioning, the "Puget Sound Basin". I thought about adding the Rogue and Umpqua basins, but decided my text was already getting long and complex. Finally, I reused the phrasing and words for each major watershed/divide, which might be overly repetitive. The idea was that by writing it that way the logic of describing watersheds based on divide importance would be clearer, but it could probably be written better.
So that's my excuse logic. I fear my additions may be overly long, perhaps unnecessarily complex or dense, and badly footnoted. Please, if it needs it, trim it down, reorganize, whatever is useful. One point: I used the terms watershed and basin interchangeably, assuming readers would understand they mean the same thing. There's a link to drainage basin earlier in the article, so I didn't link and didn't bulk up the text by explaining the terms. On the footnotes.. several sources applied to certain ideas spread over the whole section. I thought about simply putting the bulk of the at the end with a note about how they apply to the section as a whole, but decided instead to place them here and there where they seemed most appropriate. I could have not used one or two of the at all, but I liked how each one seemed to approach things from a different angle. I suspect the Triple Divide Points cite could probably be dropped, since most of it is also covered in Continental Divides in North Dakota and North America. Otherwise, I don't know, perhaps I am overly zealous about citing interesting/diverse sources. Anyway, all this is my long-winded way of apologizing for wholesale replacement of text, and trying to explain the logic.
And one last PS-- Pete's right about it being a little weird in describing bordering watersheds and not the watershed itself so much, although I hope the divide stuff helps as it applies to the Columbia Basin. I've collected some sources and rough notes about climate (precipitation, temperatures, etc) within the basin, as well as things like physiographic regions, ecoregions, land cover and use, and so on. There's a great deal that could be said, the trick is figuring out how to say it tersely. I probably won't get to fleshing those things out for some time yet. ...sheesh, my talk page text about the addition is longer than the addition itself, sorry to go on so long! Pfly (talk) 02:03, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Pfly, I think the triple divide stuff is interesting and important. If you work up one paragraph about climate and another about ecoregions and land use, I think we might have enough on the basin. I'm finding the combination of the basins and the divides a little too complex, but it's late, and I'll read it again tomorrow. I wonder if we might not have "neighbor basins" as its own paragraph (not my original but your modification of it modified once again) and "divides" as a separate paragraph. We might add some elevations and the coordinates for the big peaks and/or triple divide points. Finetooth (talk) 02:46, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
That sounds sensible to me. It's late here too, and life is chaos of late, so I'm not able to edit my own writing as well as I used to. I too will reread tomorrow or when I get a chance. I'll keep looking into climate, ecoregions, and land cover/use. I found an interesting book online that has a long chapter on the Columbia River. In one part, while talking about the Columbia mainstem itself, the author mentions that there are 13 terrestrial ecoregions in the whole basin, and the mainstem passes through 10 of them. I assume he means ecoregions as defined by the WWF. That's a good lead for more research (the book is Rivers of North America, at Google Books). One other thing I was thinking about, perhaps more under Tributaries than Watershed, is the 2 or 3 tributaries that join the Columbia with nearly equal discharge and/or basin sizes. Some rough calculations suggest that the Snake River and Pend Oreille both contribute close to half the water of the mainstem at their confluences. The Pend Oreille's basin size is something slightly less than the Columbia's basin above the confluence. The Snake is similar I'm sure. Ok, bed.. Pfly (talk) 04:59, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>Pfly, reading this fresh this morning, it seemed to make much better sense that it did late last night when my brain was filled with fog. I tweaked it slightly, clarifying the two different uses of "north" and merging some of the short paragraphs. Shorties are OK for emphasis but at FAC are deprecated by more editors than not, in my limited experience. My own view is that shorties will be hard to defend at FAC unless they are relatively rare. They function like bolding or italics. It's a matter of taste rather than any hard-and-fast rule I can point to. If others here disagree, please revert. Pete, as the main contributor, might have to decide this question for the article as a whole. Finetooth (talk) 17:57, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

The Rivers of North America looks good. Glad some of it is on-line. Buying it new from a bookstore would cost $114. Ouch. I'll try to work up something rough-drafty and stick it into the section as a place-holder if you don't get there first. Our combined ideas and talents seem to be working pretty well together, although I must say the process is chaotic beyond anything I'm used to. Pete's moving of the population paragraph above the "neighbor basin and divides" material was exactly right, I might add. Finetooth (talk) 18:33, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Glad it made better sense in the morning! No free time for me today so far (just a slice right now I think). I generally prefer longer paragraphs too. If I wrote "shorties" it was probably just me trying to keep my thoughts organized while writing, then not taking the time to put it all together in the end. Also the way citations, especially templates, make text look much longer in edit mode (and me trying to keep track of sources while writing). So, yes, thanks for improving not-quite-finished text and style. I also agree that Pete's move was right: the "bordering basins" should probably come last. Also agree about this new round of work here being surprisingly chaotic. I have the feeling that while good stuff is being added, various problems are as well. Mostly small things like poorly formatted citations, issues of flow and phrasing and so on, more redlinks, etc. Even so, it's enjoyable so far, even if I should probably be spending time doing real-life chores. Hopefully there's momentum enough to clean up after additions stablize. Speaking of chores, gotta do some. Later I might make time to rough out a list of WWF ecoregions in the basin. Did a very quick look this morning and counted 16, with 2 may not quite counting. By biome the ecoregion count looks like 10-11 "coniferous forest" regions, 2 grassland, 1-2 "desert and xeric shrublands", and 1 "broadleaf and mixed forest". Pfly (talk) 19:07, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I added a paragraph on climate just now. I think I will leave the ecoregions to you since you've got a start on them. I don't remember if that covers fauna as well as flora. I've seen some species counts for the basin somewhere. I can probably find them again if need be. Meanwhile, I'll try to do some more clean-up. Yes, we have introduced some new low-level errors. I will get my dust mop back out of the closet. Finetooth (talk) 00:06, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
The Watershed bit is a major addition. It somewhat conflates demography, climate and hydrology, but adds a lot. Two points (I got a little distracted, but I'm back picking nits!):
  • To me, one of the major features of the basin is hydrology in the form of "rain shadows". Some parts are temperate rainforest, some are temperate desert. This is a distinctive feature of the Pacific coast and cordillera and probably explains much of the huge contrast between basin areas and basin outfalls. (Of course, irrigation sways the discharge numbers yet more in the rain shadows - are withdrawals mentioned anywhere?)
  • And as to describing the adjoining watersheds, to me the best flow would be to start at the headwaters (which to a biased Canadian is the "real" triple-point :); then dispose with the right-bank first (it's much shorter), i.e. mostly the Fraser basin; then proceed down the left-bank, encountering the continental triple-point and beyond; then figure out a way to describe the Snake basin watershed, which is a pretty major feature of the basin; then rejoin the main basin and get to the Pacific on the south side. Isn't the most natural description the way the river(s) flow(s)? (PS Sorry for not being around) Franamax (talk) 05:46, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>I added a fairly superficial bit about landforms, flora and fauna, just now with mention of a few of the more spectacular or important in each category. Make bold edits where you see fit, Franamax. Your ideas sound fine to me. Finetooth (talk) 23:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Subscription required

I found the recent FAC discussion of citations to subscription-only sources here. As a courtesy to readers, two different ways of handling these will probably be acceptable, as illustrated below. The phrase "subscription required" fits nicely into the format parameter in the "cite journal" template. I haven't tested the other members of the "cite" family, so I can't say for sure about all of them. I think the Newsbank links in this article all require a subscription or library card. I doubt that news articles have doi numbers, but I don't know for sure. Shall I attempt to add "subscription required" to the templates for the Newsbank group?

  • Baz, Bar (2008). "Foo". Journal of Metasyntactic Variables. 314. doi:10.2307/1353871. or
  • Baz, Bar (2008). "Foo" (subscription required). Journal of Metasyntactic Variables. 314.

Finetooth (talk) 19:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure I understand the DOI stuff. The second sample looks fine to me, with "subscription required". Thanks for researching this. I use NewsBank a whole lot, so it's good to know the preferred approach…I'll have a whole lot of retroactive fixes to make… -Pete (talk) 19:40, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

The DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier and is one more way of keeping track of things. (Weasel alert!) I think we can forget about it here. I just tried out the "subscription required" in "cite news" for citation 73. Although the syntax is a little odd, it works and is probably OK. Finetooth (talk) 20:48, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

For some reason, I am able to see all the Newsbank articles (or at least all four I tried) with no subscription that I'm aware of. Are you sure they need the "subscription required" notation? Franamax (talk) 16:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
I've never been able to figure this out. Sometimes they seem to need a login, other times not. I can't see the pattern. -Pete (talk) 16:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, gosh. I just finished adding the "subscription needed" lines to the whole set of Newsbank articles before seeing your latest notes here. I don't know what to say about the "sometimes needed" and "sometimes not" pattern. Could it be that once you've logged onto the library site and entered your card number, etc., that your computer does the log-on automatically for other Newsbank instances until you've logged off or turned off your computer? If the "subscription needed" lines need to come back out, I can do that. Finetooth (talk) 17:03, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
What it looks like is that some Newsbank links are open, some are subscription. The Oregonian articles are served up by infoweb.newsbank.com, whereas I tried an article from the News Tribune and it goes to nl.newsbank.com and invites me to spend some money. Do others see the same thing? Franamax (talk) 17:34, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
OK. I figured it out. The Newsbank links that go through the Multnomah County Library are the problem ones. The ones that go straight through to Newsbank are open to everyone. The ones that go through the library system are "subscription required". Citation 92, for example, went through the library, but it didn't have to. I found it with a direct search on Newsbank and replaced the library url with the direct url. So, what I need to do is to go through the whole Newsbank set again, find the direct urls and use them instead of the intermediary library urls, and get rid of all the "subscription needed" lines. In the end, all these links should work for everybody. Finetooth (talk) 17:40, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Except that the News Tribune problem noted by Franamax is an odious exception. Yes, I am seeing the same thing. I hadn't noticed that only a teaser article was showing up there. Can you try Citation 92, Franamax, and see if I really fixed it? Finetooth (talk) 17:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, 92 works fine for me. I'll help out if you want, working from the bottom up. Franamax (talk) 18:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent> Yes, thanks a bunch. I see you fixed at least two of them, and I fixed one more. I've got to disappear for a while, and I may not get back to this until this evening. Finetooth (talk) 18:35, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, as a reward for your impertinence in abandoning Wikipedia to do such trivial things as buying food to sustain your life, when you get back have a look at this:
  • Cite 78, "Judge rips latest plan to help salmon" - the current link is dead. Which is the best way to fix it: use the Wayback link with archiveurl, or change it to the Newsbank link, less well-formatted and with a different headline, but possibly more reliable and with much less advertising? Franamax (talk) 19:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
Oy! We are trapped in a black comedy feedback loop for sure. Having confessed earlier that I've never done a screen shot, I must now confess to never having used the Wayback machine. Hearing rumors of such a machine, I've imagined something out of Stephen King. Piling on with bad news, I must add that when I click on the Newsbank link you give as the alternative to the Wayback, I'm asked for a password. I have none. Why is Newsbank suddenly asking for a password? It must not like us. Finetooth (talk) 00:24, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Well LOL - how'd I contrive a request for password from a working link? This could get us into the missile defence network - I dunno :) It's my turn to drop out for a few hrs, I'll take another look in a while. Anyway, it's easy enough to search Newsbank to find the publisher and article - but obviously not that easy!
As far as Wayback, it's quite simple, go to www.archive.org, paste in the web address you are looking for and let it search. If it has the page indexed, it will show the "calendar" of archive dates, just pick one. (Warning: sometimes if the site is busy it will give you an argument; and just in case, I make sure to never have more than one archive.org window open at any time). When it gives you a good historic link, you can add it to many cite templates with archiveurl= and archivedate=. Back in a while. Franamax (talk) 00:41, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Cool. Thank you. I have added this tool to my toolbox. For a while since we last spoke, Newsbank gave me quick access to its database, but now I am getting the password challenge again. Maybe we should use the Wayback machine. Finetooth (talk) 04:28, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this is most vexing. Maybe we should approach one of the peer/FA-reviewers for advice. I'll keep trying the links at random times anyway, to try to get a sense of the frequency of lock-outs. Franamax (talk) 08:09, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>I'm willing to declare this problem solved. If we spot any more that are only intermittently accessible, let's label them "subscription required" just to be safe. Finetooth (talk) 04:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Canadian gauging stations

Thanks, Franamax, for tracking down the Birchbark station. I took the day off from staring at my computer and went to get some photos of the lower Columbia Slough for a different article. Your note about the Birchbark station led me to this Environment Canada site, which has gauge information for the whole country. The Canadians have at least one other gauge on the Columbia that measures the discharge rate. It's station 08NB005 at Donald, not too far from the source at Columbia Lake. I haven't yet figured out how to get the average discharge rate from the available charts and tables, but I'm sure it's possible. If this sounds like fun to you, go for it. Finetooth (talk) 23:35, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Just so you know, Donald isn't all that close to Columbia Lake - a good 40 miles or more, to the NW of Golden. My guess is that the location of the gauging station relates to the combined inflow of tributaries between Columbia Lake and Donald, ie. the Kicking Horse, Beaver, Blaeberry and Spillimacheen, which as a combined inflow will be relevant/important for the control of the lake-level in Kinbasket Reservoir; flood/freshet forecasts are more decisively projected from "snow pillows" - by which I mean t he inflow from the Bush/Valenciennes, Bush and Canoe Rivers is known by snowpack; on the other hand Mica Dam provides another form of gauging station, though of regulated, not natural flow. If Donald, British Columbia doesn't exist as n article I'll get to it; I seem to recall it qualifies also as a railway construction-era camp/ghost town as well as just a whistle stop/railway point.Skookum1 (talk) 19:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Arggh! I was evidently using the wrong search terms on *.gc.ca - how did you find that/how did I miss that?
I don't remember. I typically Google with terms that spring to mind more-or-less randomly like "Canada river gauge" and see what pops up. Something you said in your note to me led to some different search terms, and something interesting appeared. Finetooth (talk) 18:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
There is a wealth of data there, but what do we want for the purposes here? "Average" discharge doesn't really work that close to the mountains and the weather (unless I can OR with my calculator). In the headwaters, it depends solely on the snowpack and timing of spring - which is one of the reasons they built the dams! (See elsewhere - 1895 and 1948 floods) Give me a sock to sniff...
Good question. I thought about this overnight. All the gauges record way more information than we can possibly use in an encyclopedia article. The researcher/writer has to narrow down what's available to an essence that an encyclopedia reader can grasp without too much head-cracking pain. That essence has to fairly represent conditions at a particular point in the river, but it also has to fit neatly into an encyclopedia section with similar essences. Sometimes seasonal variations in discharge rates are essential to include as in the case of streams that become life-threatening to rafters, kayakers, and canoers when the water is very high and unfloatable when the water is very low. (See Lochsa River). Mostly, though, the average discharge rate is probably sufficient for giving a fair idea of the nature of the stream. In these cases, an average is an over-simplification made in the interest of readability. The answer to your question is: "it depends on local conditions". My guess is that even at Donald, B.C., the river is much like a big canal and that an average will be fairly representative. I haven't examined the data closely, though, and I don't really know if my hunch is correct. In these cases of overwhelming data, I think the citations add value to an article that goes way beyond verifiability. Readers who need to know what the discharge rate at a particular point is during the month of July or, for "real-time" gauge sites, what it is right now, can click on the link we have provided. We have done all the Googling for them and handed them just what they need. A paper encyclopedia can't do this sort of thing. Finetooth (talk) 18:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
And thanks for the link - I can now present it for the consideration of other water-obsessed Canucks! Franamax (talk) 04:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Water, after all, is necessary for the making of beer......but further to previous above, the flow-rates through the powerhouses/spillways of Mica, Revelstoke and Keenleyside/High Arrow - and Seven Mile - are all available somewhere; not natural flow, but average flow is still in the same ballpark, i.e. because the variable discharge rates of the dams/powerhouses will average out to hs ame as thte normal seasonal flow of the Columbia; the only difference is that it is "over time" not equivalent at specfiic times that regular gauging stations would show.....Skookum1 (talk) 19:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
Right, one wants the "mean annual discharge" in volume per unit-of-time, ideally averaged out over many years. Exact terms may differ, but "annual" is rather key for meaningful numbers. As for "natural" discharge stats, the Columbia is almost nowhere in a natural state of flow, nor are most of its larger tributaries. I was just dealing with this wrt the Yakima River, whose discharge is nothing like "natural". Along upper reaches, the dams may "average out" discharge over time, but in areas with withdrawals for agricultural irrigation, especially below Grand Coulee and most major tributaries, the system has been altered too much for terms like "natural". I'm not trying to be contrary, just thought worth mentioning-- discharge stats are tricky sometimes, and often there is no single, clearly "correct" stat. Pfly (talk) 19:48, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
That's certainly a factor for the Okanagan/Similkameen and Kettle basins, where irrigation is a going concern; also the Thompson-Shuswap though in that area I'm not so sure the water sources are necessarily the river/lake as they are in the case of the Okanagan; where evaporation is also a big factor, especially along the Okanagan River/Canal south from Okanagan Falls. On the BC portion of the Columbia there's next to nil irrigation, if any at all, from Mica to Revelstoke and High Arrow and Seven Mile Dams; if there is any irrigation, there's enough rainfall in that area it would be from feeder-creeks and not taken from the main flow; the dam discharges at those locations will be fairly much on-target. The Kootenay's final discharge at Brilliant Dam should be on-target for that river.....Skookum1 (talk) 20:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
OK. I've been beavering away at other problems, but I got back to the discharge rates tonight. I found USGS sources for the two international gauges, one at the border and the one at Birchbank that Franamax identified. Only one more is necessary, methinks, the one at Donald. I've probably found enough sources to nail Donald down, and I'll work on that tomorrow (Thursday). I was really puzzled by the difference between the BC basin area as reported by a Canadian source and the basin area at the border reported by the USGS until I re-read the material recently added by Pfly. I added an explanatory note about the Pend Oreille, which accounts for the large apparent discrepancy. Finetooth (talk) 04:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Also as llluded to below in my ramble on Duncan Dam, somewhere there are treaty regs regulating all the mean annual discharges, sort of like a big conerto of water quotas; the mean annual flow is apportioned out within the treaty or corollary documents somewhere, I'm sorry I wouldn't know where to begin to look, other than I kno they're in the public power agreements governing the region/grid. BTW is there a similar thoroughness of Hydroelectric dams around Puget Sound, though were it to exist that's not the right title - "in Puget Sound" didn't soudn right' maybe Hydroelectric dams in the Puget Sound region (or "basin"). It was yaers ago I worked at System Control for a few weeks, and while I remember a document with such information in it I can't begin to think of what kind of docuemnt it was, other than a system report on water management in BC Hydro's demesne in the Columbia water system. BTW isn't htere a guage on the Similkameen? And maybe if they're not alreayd in the artilce - or might belong in Columbia Basin, there's an online listing/reportage of snow pillows........side thought, I'm fairly sure the Columbia Treaty ewas excepted as a precedent in regards the Free Trade Agreement; i.e. it didn't set a precedent for water sales/management with the US as mandated by the treaty; once we sell some, we have to sell it all; IIRC it ws one of Simon Reisman's big boasts that he'd gotten that exception (and one or two others, probably the Boundary Waters Agreement).Skookum1 (talk) 04:53, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I've added the Donald station, including info about the great variance there between summer and winter discharge rates per the suggestions above by Franamax and Skookum. The effect of the snow pillows, piling up and up and then melting, is impressive. I don't think we should add any more to this subsection, although Skookum is correct in saying that a lot more could be added. Canada operates 2,839 stream gauges, and quite a lot of them are in the Columbia Basin, mostly on tributaries. The discharge subsection is already way way longer than I originally intended. I'm concerned that I might have drifted into "unnecessary detail". Now that I'm done, I need to ask you all if you think it's too much. If so, it can come back out a lot faster than it went in. Finetooth (talk) 20:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
It seems a bit heavy with detail. I think this material would make an excellent basis for a geeky split-off article like Columbia River flow. Then this section could be condensed into a single paragraph perhaps with a diagram. —EncMstr (talk) 20:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>That sounds like a good idea. As I kept finding and adding more stats, I became worried that the sheer volume of it would cause reader fatigue at the very beginning of an otherwise highly readable article. I think the existing "Discharge" subsection could reasonably be reduced to the first half of its first paragraph. I could move the rest to Columbia River flow. What do others think of this proposal? Finetooth (talk) 23:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

How about either adding it to Columbia Basin, or merging that article into Columbia River watershed? Seems like the watershed and the flow rates of the river(s) are pretty closely tied..I'd rather see a pretty comprehensive unified article than a couple short ones. What do you think? -Pete (talk) 02:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, a lot of what's here seems more about the basin and its indudstry/society than the river..... some seems to repeat itself, also, or re-address the same information in different sections.....your "watershed" title might be the way to go, given the variable meaning of "Columbia Basin" even within the US and/or withing Canada; as noted before "Fraser Basin" is a landform/region in BC (the low parts of the Fraser Plateau north of Williams Lake), but has a dual meaning for the whole watershed; seems similar to the Columbia Basin in that regard, except that the regional meaning is different on one side of the border vs the other; Columbia Plateau is another intersecting article (likewise Fraser Plateau re the Fraser).Skookum1 (talk) 02:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
To speed things along, I reduced the "Discharge" subsection to something more modest. The question of what to do with it can be answered later. Eyes on the prize. Let's push on to FA. Finetooth (talk) 17:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Peer review

Columbia River

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
This article has been the focus of a broad collaboration for some time. There are a number of us who have put in a lot of work to make the best article possible; we've been through two thorough GA reviews, and solicited feedback on a number of topics from a number of people, both on and off Wikipedia. We feel that the article is nearing readiness for a Featured article nomination, and would like a fresh set of eyes on it first. Thanks in advance for any feedback! Pete (talk) 20:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Note: Because of its length, this peer review is not transcluded. It is still open and located at Wikipedia:Peer review/Columbia River/archive1.


Problem with/notes on map in Tributaries section

I just happened to look at the dams map that's in the tribs section and glanced at the colour-key once I zoomed in on it; there needs to be a third colour for BC Hydro Dams; initially I was expecting that the treaty dams would be marked distinctly, but they're not. Brilliant I'm not so sure about, Waneta and Seven Mile are AFAIK I know BC Hydro, as are definitely Keenleyside, Revelstoke and Mica - and Duncan. BC Hydro ("Hydro" we call it usually) is a Crown Corporation, although half-privatized of late (Accenture runs the accounting and customer service division....) and so publicly-owned; it's the equivalent of "federally owned" in the US - hydroelectric resources in Canada are the jurisdiction of the provinces, not federal authority; the feds only got involved here because of the cross-border nature of the basin, they got involved in Quebec because of funding and land-claims issues. Brilliant used to be West Kootenay Power and Light, and all the little dams and powerhouses around the Kootenays were mostly part of that grid, though quite a few were privately owned. I'll check BC Hydro's list of installations and see if Brilliant's included; the whole WKPL infrastructure is integrated into Hydro now, I think; also it would be nice to see the Slocan and Similkameen included, since the Sanpoil and other small rivers are in there - and Trout Lake, no less, which I guess it's time to flesh out articles in that area (lots of ghost towns). BTW once again I'm impressed at hte thoroughness of the build-out of this article; the Fraser River article needs major work and is a skeleton by comparison; it's just been nominated, like this article, for teh hard-copy version of WP (v.0.7?).......has anyone here seen any resources that might have discharge rates for the Spillimacheen, Blaeberry, Beaver, Kicking Horse, Bush/Valencienees, Wood and Canoe? Some are quite large, I belive; .also there's another one that comes down from the Monashees opposite Revelstoke, at teh eastern outlet of Eagle Pass; it's not small....BC Basemap has been buried within a new site GeoBC, so can't check easily just now what it's called......Skookum1 (talk) 03:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Very good catch, Skookum. The image comes from the U.S. gov't, so it's no great surprise that it doesn't adequately address ownership of the Canadian dams. If we can get accurate and properly sourced info on each dam, I will gladly make any needed adjustments to the image. Because that sort of thing is time consuming, I'd prefer to make sure all our ducks are in a row first, before editing the graphic. -Pete (talk) 05:02, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
I'll try and get all the ducks appropriately stuffed, then; I just found this which says outright that Waneta is owned by Teck Cominco (the smelter company at Trail), while Seven Mile is owned by BC Hydro. What's the other yellow symbol there - "Boundary" meaning "Boundary Dam"? And where Brilliant and Keenleyside there's another one shown - would that be Loewr Bonnington, I guess - Lower Bonnington Falls it may be? Brilliant is owned by the Brilliant Expansion Company - or they're contracted to expand it rather, it may be a complicate4d PPP (public-private partnership) where the original facility is owned by someone else, someone else is upgrading it, and Hydro's buying the power. There's actually half-a-dozen small dams/plants along the lower Kootenay, with Brilliant the last one in the series; no room to show/label them all though; Duncan, Revelstoke, Mica and Keenleyside are definitely Hydro though I'll be back with Hydro's own pages on them. BTW if you google "Brilliant Suspension Bridge" you'll find a very interesting story, maybe someone's done a short article by now so I linked that to see if that's the case. One thing for sure on the revision - where it says "Arrow Lakes" the labelling indicates Lake Okanagan, not the Arrow Lakes (which are what's upstream from Keenleyside nearly all the way to Revelstoke, i.e. the city of Revelstoke, not the dam, which is farther upstream). And since there's room, sort of, Whatshan and Spillimacheen maybe should be shown; Whatshan is I think much bigger in power than Spillimacheen, I'll find the data.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:11, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
OK, found a comprehensive resource for all of them - here and have a look at this map and this directory of dams. Handy-dandy info on all dams and powerhouses, including some that don't exist anymore. Upper Bonnington Falls is owned by the City of Nelson and I think another of the lower Kootenay operations are, too; maybe Corra Linn or the Kootenay Canal, just scanned over 'em, a bit muddled in memory as I write this; most of the lower Kootenay dams are FortisBC-owned (the new name for West Kootenay Power & Light....ain't rebranding wonderful?). Point is that the federal/private thing on the US side doesn't wash northwards well at all; not just BC Hydro dams are publicly-owned, but obviously City of Nelson-owned ones are, too; Fortis is so far as I know still a private company, can't see why it wouodn't be, haven't heard of a Hydro buy-out that would have made it public, and Hydro's more into selling off assets than acquiring them, but I'll check about Fortis to make sure.Skookum1 (talk) 14:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
FortisBC (WKPL) is still private; just found and templated its article....Skookum1 (talk) 14:41, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Now that I look more closely at that map (link to the website it came from), I see a number of issues. First, some of the dam labels are missing or confusingly placed. Especially: Wells and Chief Joseph, Priest Rapids and Lower Monumental, Keenleyside and Brilliant, Swan Falls and Lucky Peak, and a number of others. Second, some dam dots have no label, like on the Kootenay, Spokane, and Pend Oreille Rivers. Third, I don't understand the criteria for including a dam on this map. It isn't dams whose primary purpose is hydroelectricity, as it includes Lucky Peak (flood control), and American Falls (irrigation), Duncan (storage), and the 4 lower Snake dams (navigation primary purpose). It isn't size, as it includes Milltown, which is only 12 meters tall, not even enough to warrant the standard term "large dam". Large dams seem to be normally defined as over 15 meters tall (and major as over 150 meters). The map shows a number of dams that are barely "large", like Box Canyon (32 m), American Falls (32 m), Swan Falls (33 m), CJ Strike (32 m), etc. And it doesn't show dams such as Mossyrock (185 m, hydroelectric, Cowlitz R), Detroit (141 m, hydroelectric, North Santiam River, Willamette basin), Round Butte (134 m, hydroelectric, Deschutes R), Owyhee (127 m, irrigation, Owyhee R), Swift and Yale (126 m & 98 m, hydroelectric, Lewis R). I got these stats from NPDP, which is US only. I browsed Skookum's links quickly but had trouble finding very large or major dams that aren't on the map, except perhaps Corra Linn and the Kootenay Canal project (75 m drop). Other dams that seem notable but are not on the map: Minidoka (Snake), Palisades (Snake), Cascade, Bonnington complex, Slocan, others. So, these three issues together make me want to make a new, better map. Of course I don't have the time, but perhaps I could do it anyway, eventually. Here's a few links about the various ways "large" and "major" dams seem to be defined: 1 (15 and 150 m, plus some other factors), 2 (50+ ft, and/or various factors), 3 (150+ m, and/or other factors for "major"), 4 (major again 150+ m plus other factors). Pfly (talk) 21:16, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm sure all the major Canadian dams on the map are there, they're just not colour-formatted/keyed properly....Spillimacheen turns out to be tiny, though maybe Aberfeldie (on the Bull River) is high enough; didn't look at its megawattage. Duncan Dam, though only water control (and controversially so, historically if not currently), has to be on it because it's a Treaty Dam. Some of the now-gone ones in teh Boundary Country might ahve been "big", though not by modern standards; the South Slocan entry gives me fuel for the community article in that area (which I was in and through all last summer, though didn't see the damworks, just at the hwy junction). Thing to realize about "vintage" dams is they all tend to be small because of the differeng scale of engineering as industry grew; little ones li the boundary Falls and Illecilliweat and teh one at Sandon (Silverstream?) Silverking?), were important and notable in their day; but puny now....Skookum1 (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
BTW is there a List of crossings of the Columbia River? There's a List of crossings of the Fraser River....my comment earlier about the Brilliant Suspension Bridge got me thinking.....Skookum1 (talk) 23:30, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Skookum, do you think you could fill in the chart below? I get lost in all the details -- if we can get a clear spec of how to change the graphic, I can get to work. Also, are there any that wound up public, apart from the treaty dams? If so, what's the political history of that? I stuck in a paragraph in the Hydroelectric section about influential U.S. politicians like George Joseph and Charles McNary -- who on the BC side should be included? Did W. A. C. Bennett have something to do with this? Sorry, my knowledge of the BC side is pretty spotty.

(edit conflict) A couple notes I added before edit conflict with Skookum, mine in italics. Pfly (talk) 02:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Mica: Hydro (BC gov't owned) -- BLUE (With a note on the map "CRT dam") - marking could be usual usage maybe, "Treaty Dam" or maybe just "Treaty"; CRT looks like a medical term ;-).
  • Revelstoke: BLUE
  • Duncan: BLUE (With a note on the map "CRT dam")
  • Keenleyside: BLUE (With a note on the map "CRT dam")
  • Brilliant: YELLOW. owned by Columbia Power Corporation, operated and maintained by FortisBC (according to Generation, FortisBC)
  • Waneta: Teck Cominco (YELLOW)
  • Seven Mile: BC Hydro (BLUE)
  • Boundary: YELLOW. City of Seattle (see Boundary Project, Seattle City Light)
  • Libby: stays RED (With a note on the map "CRT dam")

As far as Kootenay-area politicians go in relation to hydro history I'm at a bit of a loss; it's not my part of hte province; no doubt West Kootenay & Light had their pet MLA (an MLA is like a state represesntative/senator, an MP is like a congressional representative) and it won't take much scratching to find out who. But the towering figure in BC history for hydroelectricity is without doubt WAC Bennett; the location of the Treaty Dams, and which ones were chosen/allowed, is entirely his legacy - he threatened to pull BC out of Confederation if he didn't get his way, no less, and both Ottawa and DC followed his drum and also paid the piper; unpopular as the Columbia deal was, he made it more palatable but cutting a deal that Ottawa would never have seen fit to, i.e. protecting BC inteests and revenues, as well as keeping too much of BC from being flooded out (other wise an expanded Columbia Lake would have made t he Purcells and Selkirks a Vancouver Island-sized "freshwater island", i.e. Kinbasket, Arrow, Koocanusa and Kootenay Lakes plus Columbia Lk would all be one big lake...if the US had had its way, which Ottawa was prepared to give them....not the first time BC got teh shaft from Ottawa, one reason for Bennett's popularity in standing up to the sell-out; people in living memory at the time had seen the debacle of the Alaska Panhandle, when BC lost half of its coastline (in contemporary eyes)). Boundary I'm not sure about, I'll check back on that site again; that's not hte same as Seven Mile is it? Waneta as noted previously is Teck Cominco owned, Brilliant is private with a contractor now expanding it, the otehrs are Hydro without doubt. But please note, BC Hydro is not Canadian-government owned, but BC-government owned, there's a big difference. I suggest maybe green or a different shade of blue than used for the river; BC Hydro's long-time colour scheme was a light green and sky blue.....elegantly set off by the "H" logo that is meant to look like two mountains reflecting in teh water; come to think of it maybe the company logo is PD - ? - and could be used as a symbol? Thing there, though, is taht the Treaty Dams kind of need their own colouration (Mica, Duncan, Keenleyside) and that colouration should be shared by Libby etc......Skookum1 (talk) 01:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I have tried to assemble the specifics above -- please double-check my work? Do I understand correctly, then, that there are no dams owned by the Canadian federal government, only the four owned by the BC government? Thanks for the clarifications. I'll see if I can find a good source for Bennett's leadership in this realm. -Pete (talk) 02:15, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Boundary I'm not sure about, I'll check back on that site again; that's not hte same as Seven Mile is it? Boundary I know about personally while never having been there: it's owned and operated by the City of Seattle, and provides about a third of the city's electricity. Seven Mile appears to be BC Hydro: Our System: Columbia. Pfly (talk) 02:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Maybe the label for yellow should be changed to "private or municipal government-owned" -- so that it's accurate for Boundary, and possibly other American dams that may be owned by local governments?? -Pete (talk) 02:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
That makes sense, perhaps something like "private or local government", since, when I think about it lots of dams are county owned: Wanapum, Rock Island & Rocky Reach, Box Canyon, etc. The main distinction seems to be federal vs local or private. This makes some sense in the US since the Bureau of Reclamation and the USACE are so powerful. I suppose there could be three categories, federal, local government, and private. I don't know, it's too early to think clearly. (to clarify, municipal means city of course, so technically wouldn't imply county, in case I wasn't clear). Pfly (talk) 12:32, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

[undent]I added Seven Mile (BLUE/Hydro) and I see Boundary has City of Seattle.....are you sure that municipal and private shoudl be the same? For one thing, a power plant owned by a distant city, like Boundary, is a totally different thing thatn one owned by a local city, as with Bonnington's relationship with the City of Nelson. Tecko Cominco is local - i.e. the smelter in Trail so no rpoblem there. I'm wondering two things further - if FortisBC dams shouldnt' have their own colour - if the city of Seattle has more than one, or a few, then likewise - but the reasno for Fortis/WKPL having its own deisgnation is that there are/were so many projects, and the local infrastructure (until the Treaty) was dominated by them; I'm thinking a closeup showing the Kootenay-Pend Oreille-Columbia core region so all can be shown; the Lower Kootenay dams are too many to fit on the map at teh scale, and with the symbols shown.Skookum1 (talk) 20:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

If we're redoing the map anyway we can ask whether the dot symbols ought to show "ownership" in the first place. There are other possibilities, but I'd have to think about it a little more. There's a lovely map of dams I saw somewhere that used fairly complex symbols to show a number of things. Might be overkill here, but I'll see if I can find a copy of that map and see how it looks. Also, I just made a stub for Mossyrock Dam, which seems like it ought to be included. The thing is over 600 feet high. Pfly (talk) 20:42, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
All good points. Let me suggest a somewhat different approach to this, just to keep all the tendrils of our project a little more organized:
  1. Remove the color codes from the map (since we've determined they're inaccurate in a couple ways).
  2. Change List of hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River to List of hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River watershed, and add other tables to that list/article for the various tributaries
  3. Continue the work of determining ownership and classifications on that article
  4. When we're happy with the results over there, come back and reconsider how to color- or symbol-code this map.
How's that sound? I think that approach will allow us to take on one thing at a time, and keep this article accurate while we're laying the foundations for making it more comprehensive. -Pete (talk) 21:30, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Just a suggestion when it comes to Duncan Dam that it be treated as a hydroelectric dam because it is part of a hydroelectric system, i.e. it's designed to work as part of water control within the Kootenay basin as well as in relation to the overall Columbia flow; it's also interesting that the entire regional water/power system is not only bilateral in governance but involves many different authorities, even just within the Kootenay, and that all their respective water needs have to be balanced; there's an entire policy document on this, I recall editing it during a temp stint at System Control in Burnaby, as to who gets which block of power/water when and such, and how the downstream benefits are/were calculated (now discontinued via a buy-out; that should be in here re the Treaty if it's not already; more later on that on demand). Point is in other ways dams like Whatshan, not directly connected to their powerhouse, are in the same league; likewise others in BC Hydro's dominions - Wahleach, Cheakamus/Daisy Lake/Squamish, Clowhom, Buntzen, Alouette, Terzaghi, Seton....Nechako and more; the whole premise of the now-blocked Chilko development would have done that on the grand scale). Other historical and local dams in the area may only have been water-storage, either for a mine or community or farm/orchard etc (lots of old wood flumes - mines or orchards - in all that country, down stateside too I'd imagine huh?). Anyway just some thoughts on Duncan, because I remember it being discussed as non-hydroelectric; actually it is, directly interconnected with the functioning of the Upper Bonnington and Kootenay Canal etc....as well as interconnected with the power-generating treaty stations in terms of macro water flow; very controversial up here, I think it was one of the targets of the Sons of Freedom although the plot to bomb it never went forward; I don't know Doukhobor history in detail, but they're an important component of the core Columbia-Kootenay area converging on Castlegar and including hte Boundary Country - cf the aforesaid Brilliant Suspension Bridge (which needs a better article than I would write, but maybe I'll do a stub); the Freedomites were an aberration, but interconnected with the history of anti-development agendas in the region which remain strong today; Duncan is controversial because it's there to manage power for Americans, and isn't there to provide power for the region it's in. It's an old trade-off in BC; the Freedomites were operating on religious grounds (sound familiar?) rather than ecological grounds, though it's also true that Doukhobor orthodoxy is highly ecology/enviroment/nature-oriented. This is O.R. or maybe commentary, but just to explain that the plot on Duncan repreeented a new level of development/industry in the region, hydro on a scale not seen before, and including hte flooding out of much good (Doukhobor) farmland - and also were very pointedly part of the Cold War-era expansion of the military-industrial complex, which to the otherwise pacifist Doukhobours was a growing outrage (Orthodox and Reformed Doukhobour organizations remain prominent in peace marches and organizations); they were stopped, as I recall, before the dam was bombed, but some powerliens were bombed, or the bombing's intercepted/defused. Much Doukhobour protest was freedom-of-education-related, or aagainst the materialist corruption of Doukhobour families by modern life...anyway sorry for the history lesson; it's background on Duncan Dam, all citable somewhere but I don't have the books or the time.Skookum1 (talk) 03:04, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I think that sounds very sensible, Pete. While I have the links let me post about two very similar, US federal maps, for later: Columbia River Basin, has better labels); andColumbia/Snake River Maps, better labels and a third ownership category. Pfly (talk) 12:22, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Would you like me to take this on? I have GIS data for the dam locations already. If I make a new map it could be color coded by something other than ownership if folks think something else is more important, other possibilities are: size, purpose of dam, year built, MW capacity for the hydroelectric ones. Kmusser (talk) 13:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
I am likely to be fairly inactive for a little while as return travel across the continent is imminent, but two final comments before that: Kmusser, that would of course be awesome. You have Canadian dam location info too? Will ponder symbolization-- it might be best to keep it simple and use just one symbol, I'm not sure. Pete, a minor thing about the idea Change List of hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River to List of hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River watershed,...: might as well drop the word "hydroelectric". Even if the page is only on mainstem Columbia dams, aren't they all hydroelectric? And of course in the watershed as a whole, there are plenty of big, non-hydroelectric dams. Pfly (talk) 02:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Good points, Pfly. Kmusser, that would be fantastic -- if you feel you have all the info you need, great, but if not you might want to wait a bit while we work on the list. I'm going to change the name now. -Pete (talk) 03:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

[undent]Might as well note here that there are separate categories for dams vs powerhouses - I think "power station" may be the catname, the implication being that the powerhouses (though in cases like the Bonningtons and such the dam and the power station are virtually the same building (not BC Hydro's style, by teh way, not even when they have room). So it makes sense for there to be a cat that includes non-immediately hydro dams as well as, well, reservoirs, because those are still dams; the presence of a power station would invoke the second category; one for dams, one for power plants - the latter being able to include things like Burrard Thermal and Trojan Nuclear Station (sorry don't konw it's official name); and the old coal-fired plants in some - many - mining towns.....BTW Karl the main BCGNIS index is searchable, and all dams are in it with their latlongs; you can also download the provincial gazetteer, or have it sent to you, via a link on the "free" section on www.geodatabc.com, or is it geodata.bc.ca, wherever http://maps.gov.bc.ca redirects to now; it's the full database of all placenames, including all dams and such....Skookum1 (talk) 06:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Kmusser: Counting the Lewis & Clark map, there are currently four maps on the article. That's a whole lot! If you're going to redo the one of the dams, maybe you can incorporate the features of one of the others, in a way that makes it possible to reduce the number of maps? The "course" map springs to mind, though possibly your general map could accommodate both cities (as it currently does) and dams… -Pete (talk) 02:06, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I think four maps is probably ok. If needed you could probably toss the "course" map, the main contribution of that one is that you get to see the satellite imagery, which is nice but not critical, unfortunately I don't have imagery readily available to be able to remake it with more info on it. I could add dams to the general map if I didn't label them, but I think the dams are an important enough part that it would be good to give them their own map so that there's room for labels (and potentially convey some other info about them like ownership or type or whatever). Kmusser (talk) 02:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

A quick note that this is still on my list of things to do, real life has just kept me from getting to it, will get there eventually. Kmusser (talk) 12:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

That's great to hear. I'm curious, though -- it will take some research to get this map right, if it's going to have labels for USACE dams, privately-owned dams, PUD dams, BC Hydro dams, etc. Are you volunteering to take that all on, or just to make the map once somebody else assembles the information? If the latter -- do we have a volunteer to lead that charge? I'm happy to contribute, of course, but it's a big task! -Pete (talk) 17:28, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I already have the dam locations for both sides of the border. For the U.S. dams I have a lot of info. For the B.C., not as much, though I think I have ownership. If you want anything besides ownership to be shown for the B.C. side (such as size, hydroelectric vs. other, year built, etc.) that could be done but still needs to be compiled - or for that matter if you think some other element would be more useful to show instead of ownership, then let me know. Kmusser (talk) 17:37, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I've been pondering what, if anything, to show with symbols for dams, and I keep returning to the idea that simple is better. A few classes of ownership, basically like the map already is, seems best to me now. But I am still not sure quite how many classes. Perhaps: 1) US federal (USACE and Reclamation dams); 2) US public-owned utilities (eg, county PUDs, Seattle City Light, etc); 3) BC public-owned utilities (eg, BC Hydro); private (eg, Idaho Power, FortisBC). Maybe some extra layer of symbolization, or just a text label, to identify the Treaty Dams. Also multiple dams/powerhouses in close proximity and part of a larger project could/should be a single symbol (ie, Upper and Lower Salmon Falls Dams). Anything beyond this and I start to think the map will be unnecessarily complex. One remaining question is which dams to show and which not to show. I'd like to see some that are not on the map now, and some that are on the map seem rather insignificant and unnecessary. Exactly which to show is another matter. I have some ideas, but will leave it for later. One final thing: If a few key cities are to be shown, like in the current map, Lewiston should be one of them, since the point of the locks on the lower Snake dams was to make Lewiston barge-accessible. Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter. I wonder what other think. Am I overthinking it? Pfly (talk) 23:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

How about we continue this discussion at Talk:List of dams in the Columbia River watershed, so as not to overburden this talk page, and those who are focusing on other topics? -Pete (talk) 05:54, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Watershed intro

Most of the Columbia Basin, which is about the size of France,[117] lies roughly between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Cascade Mountains on the west. (In common usage, Columbia Basin generally refers to the relatively flat area in eastern Washington bounded by the Cascades, the Rocky Mountains, and the Blue Mountains.)

Couple of things; one is I know what you mean by the Rocky Mountains here, i.e. including the Cabinet, Salish and US Selkirk Mountains; it's confusing for a Canadian reader as our conception of the Rockies ends at the Trench (though I know better, but them I'm not a tpyical Canuck reader...); it might be better to specify the ranges rather than using a generality that's US in context. Also re that, "Columbia Basin" in BC, when it's used to refer to BC only, would tend to mean only the direct basin of the Columbia itself, and not including the Kettle and Okanagan-Similkameen (escept in large formal planning bodies...but even that one I posted above somewhere is just hte Kootenays, plus the Boundary, no? Did it include theOkanagan?). Anyway just to note that the US usage of "Columbia Basin" is not the same as the BC one - when speaking outside of the pure geographic river-basin - in the same way that "Columbia Basin" means the region described in the US, in Canada/BC - if used - it would tend to mean the Kootenays only, or even excluding the Kootenay River basin; similarly Columbia Valley and Columbia Country have yet other meanings....Maybe "In British Columbia, "Columbia Basin" can be a reference to/synonymous with the Kootenay district" though that's rather uncitable I suppose....Skookum1 (talk) 01:25, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Skookum, I don't live up that way so I'm not so familiar with all the ranges. Maybe we could state it a little more generally:
The term Columbia Basin is often used colloquially to refer to a smaller area; in BC, it typically refers to the areas that drain directly to the Columbia (rather than its major tributaries), while in the US it typically refers to the flat area between the Rockies, the Cascades, the Blue Mountains, and XYZ other ranges.
Does that seem like more or less a good approach? If so, can you add in whatever other mountain ranges ought to be there? -Pete (talk) 01:43, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
A quick comment: Even if the Rockies end at the Trench it is still true that the Columbia basin is bounded on the east by the Rockies. Pfly (talk) 03:04, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Small-b basin, yes, that was my point - that the watershed meaning of basin is different that the infraregional usage(s). The Columbia Basin meant in the regional sense as described above was only Washington and Oregon; not including the Kootenay/Flathead country, but west of the US Selkirks (which as I recall end right at Spokane, or thereabouts). And I'd venture that there's two BC regional senses, one including the Kootenay and Kettle, the other without them - NB the pure-watershed sense would include the Similkameen and Okanagan, which we don't normally refer to as being part of the Columbia Basin (big-B), except in organizational/study formats like the Columbia Basin Initiative stuff farther up....I suppose we "simplify" it with the terms Columbia Country and Columbia Valley (the former excludes the Kootenay Lake-Slocan Country and really only begins from Upper Arrow Lake northwards/upstream, the latter is what's southeast of Kinbasket Lake....although "in my time" I think the Columbia Valley meant the more settled area south of Golden, not Golden, which was at the end of the Big Bend Country ("the end" from a BC-Coast perspective, at the end of the long Big Bend Highway which was the way you got to Maplesucker Land before they built hte TransCanada via the Robers Pass).....in the watershed sense "Columbia drainage" is more like it. The different definition of the Rockies does produce some tricky wording problems in various articles, including this one; as before I suggest the specific subranges of the Rockies be mentioned in the context of describing the US-regional meaning of Columbia Basin; easier for BC to just say the immediate basin of the Columbia, and not of its tributaries, although to me the sense of "basin" here also implies only the lower portions, below/between the mountains - which in BC of course is very narrow, unlike the US version; Columbia-Kootenay basin is another term that crops up, or "Columbia-Kootenay country"...as noted the Kootenay Land District is defined as the basin of the Columbia and Kootenay (and Flathead of course, by default); the Kettle and Okanagan/Similkameen basins are the Yale Land District (Boundary, Okanagan and Similkameen subdivisions, respectively - not all LDs are so subdivided, though there's also the Kamloops subdivision (of the Lillooet Land District, I think). Peripheral point here is that the boundary of the watershed is used as a legal definition in BC for all kinds of things, defaulting from the survey-infrastructure system of the Land Districts - electoral districts, mining districts, regional districts, forests districts, environment regions, health regions and every other kind of district (BC is parallel multi-layered, provincial services/powers. I note in looking at county maps of Washington and Oregon and your neighbours that there's lots of straight lines and more or less parallelograms in county geometry; we've got a few here and tehre with the RDs, but relatively few by comparison, though electoral districts do it willy-nilly (gerrymandering isn't logical to start with, so the illogic/impracticality of the mountains didn't matter...; the forests, environment/parks, health, mining etc boundaries on the other hand are largely terrain-based; none of them match, though, which is hte interesting thing.....long ago either one of my profs or a journalist commented that it was all deliberate, to prevent the growth of cohesive regional government within the province, so the backcountry would have to rely on the distant capital - and I'm not meaning in colonial times, I'm meaning post-war....now taken for granted, then controversial; like the fate of the Columbia, and not incidentally unconnected to it....does it say in the article, by the way, that the lower part of the Canadian Columbia, and the upper reaches of the Elk, are famous turn-of-the-century and 'thirties hotbeds of labour organizing/action, acting and a number of noted electoral representatives and leaders? Again, there's little mining history in the article, but maybe that's also for the Columbia Basin/watershed article, also t he railway and steamboat history which interconnects with that of the mines; and the cross-border timber market (some mention of the shifting balance between Canadian producers/workers and American ones re the softwood lumber dispute would satisfy "CanCon" but I'm not that much of a content-nationalist ;-) (worth noting that the FA here will also depend on WP:Canada feedback) All of these not river-oriented, but region-oriented, so just thoughts for later....Skookum1 (talk) 04:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh I see what you are saying. Perhaps a few sentences about the meaning of drainage basin, basin, and watershed in general, and the local usage differences of Columbia Basin in specific, should be added then. Short on time myself right now. Pfly (talk) 15:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Canals

Just because the mention of the Kootenay Canal came up, thought I'd mention the Okanagan Canal (that might as well be a redirect to Okanogan River, though).....which as I think of it makes me wonder if it's the manmade watercourse through Penticton, or the canal-ized course of the Okanagan River from Okanagan Falls southwards; I rode along it last summer, from Oliver almost to Vaseux Lake, where teh Jackson Triggs Winery is; there's an almost-shaded bikepath along it, runs right into parkland in downtown Oliver and countinues southward; a poor, depleted stream, much of its water taken up by orchards and vinyards flanking it...there are programs to protect the remaining natural river....which is all fine and dandy for the OK River article, but what I'm mentioning it here in relation to is the history of canals in the Columbia system - there's Celilo Canal, I seem to recall, and the old and long-filled-in Columbia Canal - are there others? (the Sumas Canal is an exception, I mean shipping/navigation canals, not drainage canals) Got me thinking that the Columbia system/basin is the only one in BC that has canals...there was talk of them on the Lakes Route and also to connect the Shuswap to the Okanagan, even to canal-ize the middle Thompson, but only in the earliest days before people knew what trains were; there was talk about canals from teh Fraser to the Peace during the headdy days of railway expansion there, and making the Skeena navigable from the Nechako; but no industry to support the cost, only resource extraction so none got built, and of course canal-shipping was out-competed as a concept by railways....I can't think of a set of locks in British Columbia, in fact, whereas there's quite a few in Washington and Oregon, no?Skookum1 (talk) 04:11, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Peer review: the second coming

I am a slacker.

This is the rest of my peer review.

  • Image:Roll On Columbia.png is too small to see.
Not sure what this is about -- perhaps browser specific? Could you maybe upload a screen shot? -Pete (talk) 07:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I'll mention some of what I didn't catch in the first go-round. Can you introduce, before The Columbia enters eastern Washington flowing that the Columbia is part of a system of rivers? Would that be accurate? Because reading all these rivers in the Course section is a bit overwhelming. It might help to be prepared a bit to "get" that all these rivers flowing into the Columbia makes it a much larger...network of... you have the sources. What is it called?
 Done -Pete (talk) 07:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Why is Bonneville Slide in italics?
 Done Not any more. Good catch! -Pete (talk) 07:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Is it me, or does Chief Joseph in that image look like the skeptical cheeseburger cat? Yeah, me maybe.
  • No citations in this paragraph: In October 1792,, In 1825 Dr. John McLoughlin of, and The earliest French Canadian employees and the paragraph after that. Wha? OR American captain Robert Gray Why God? Why???
  • I'm sure you know how hard it is to make writing about the geology and history of a river interesting. You've done quite a good job. The article is engaging and thoughtful.
Why, thank you very much! He said, on behalf of the extensive team that accomplished this. -Pete (talk) 07:28, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm going to put the article on watch, and hope to see the uncited paragraphs cited. I'll continue to copy edit and help out with clarity, but until the citations are in, it can't be nominated for FAC. Well - it won't get supported at least... --Moni3 (talk) 16:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. The paragraphs without citations you mention, all in the New waves of explorers section, are troublesome. I've thought about cleaning them up and sourcing them better for some time. Not only do they need citations but they could be tightened up and made clearer, I think. If I find time I'll try to fix them up, but for now I'll just post some thoughts about them.
The paragraph about Broughton sailing up the river, naming Mount Hood and so on should be easy to source, but that last parenthetical statement (about Gray not having made a formal claim) might requrie a separate citation. Does this last statement need to be made at all? It realize it plays into the Oregon Boundary Dispute stuff, but that seems fairly tangential to the Columbia River itself. One could go on and on with details about who made what claims and how it all played out in the end.
The paragraph about Fort Vancouver has some problems. First McLoughlin did not establish the fort. George Simpson should probably be credited for that (I have a source for that I'll add later). McLoughlin was appointed first Chief Factor of the fort, but he was not in the Pacific Northwest during the initial site selection and construction. He certainly helped establish the fort as an important and functional post though. Different meanings of the word "established" I suppose. I can probably source most of the rest of the paragraph, perhaps with some text editing. Time permitting of course.
The paragraph about French Canadians calling the river "Ouragan" is not one I can get a citation for. I've seen this claim before but never seen a good source for it. In fact the page linked to, Oregon (toponym), has "citation needed" tags on that bit.
Finally, the paragraph about the settling of the boundary dispute has bothered me a little. I'm not sure how accurate it is to say Americans generally settled south of the river and British north. I thought more retired HBC employees settled on the south side, if nothing else. I'm not sure I can source that one. Anyway, gotta run now! Pfly (talk) 18:55, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Many thanks to Moni3 for both helpful critiques and to Pfly for pursuing many of the remaining problems. It seems to me that one of the hardest things to do with a multi-editor project spread over such a long time is to fix the WP:V problems without offending anyone. I would suggest that after another week or two, it would be reasonable to use the delete key on all remaining unsupported claims in this article. I do not know whether the claims are true or not, but that's not the question. The question is whether they are verifiable or not. If the original contributor of unverified claims or anyone else thinks the claims are important enough to keep, he or she can source them. If not, perhaps it's time for the eraser. Finetooth (talk) 19:14, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree. One nice thing about Pacific Northwest people, in my experience, is they don't tend to be easily offended. Perhaps I'm naive, but I like to think we can cut and edit each other's work without worrying too much about it. For statements that don't seem so easy to cut, perhaps a "fact" tag would help draw attention to it, and if not sourced "soon" can be cut. Anyway, the eraser is good, and we seem to have a team of, um, teamplayers, or something. Pfly (talk) 07:38, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
I was under the impression, I guess because it's how I operate, that those who are seeking a peer review were responsible for the information already in the article. But from this conversation it looks like some history of the region was added before y'all got to it, it's uncited and you're not sure what to do with it. If that's accurate, I suggest getting some books about the history of Oregon and the Columbia River and seeing if you can confirm it. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, it shouldn't be difficult to find in your local library. Whatever you can't confirm should be removed. Don't worry about hurting feelings. Everything added to Wikipedia should be cited. If someone comes around asking where his edits went to, invite him to cite where he got it. It is quite well-written, but sourced material trumps entertainment. --Moni3 (talk) 20:02, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Moni- this group includes a number of people who've been through FACs, conducted GA reviews, etc. We're aware of what you said -- I think it's fair to say we live and breathe it! But you're right, we had neglected this section. I'm glad to see Pfly has already been addressing the section with pretty much exactly the method you suggest. We're on the job! But as the person who's probably mucked around with this article the most, I do regret letting it get this far without catching this poorly cited and not entirely accurate section. Glad you caught it. -Pete (talk) 20:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if it appears I'm talking down to the editors involved. That wasn't my intention. --Moni3 (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Not to worry -- I think my comment may have been hasty and unnecessary. -Pete (talk)

Tributary discharge rates

Arrrg, I just discovered that table that's been on the article forever, uncited, was added by an anon. IP quite some time ago. So I guess we'll need to find a reliable source for each river's discharge. I'm guessing it won't be too hard for the bigger rivers, but the littler ones might pose a bit of a challenge… -Pete (talk) 20:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

I've been wondering for a while where to look for the Canadian ones, particularly the "wild" ones out of the Rockies and some of the large creeks south of the Big Bend ("creek" and "river" in BC are sometimes interchangeable in meaning/scale...). I'd have thought BC Hydro would have that information, but apparently not online, and I didnt' see any detailed info in that Columbia Basin Project linked above somewhere, e.g. for the Blaeberry, Valenciennes, Wood, Bush, Goldstream, Gold (Creek); Whatshan we'll know because it should be on the BC Hydro inforkmation page for that project (the Whatshan River is entirely diverted through the reservoir/penstock/powerhouse, though not in its original course). Fisheries - meaning "Ministry of Fisheries" (we just say "Fisheries" for short, "thinking with a capital F" when referring to MoF aka Dof) - must have specific data, but where to look on their site I wouldn't know. It has occurred to me to call my old (very old) workplace at MoE HQ - doubt I know anybody there anymore but I know there's a water rights data system which tracks every creek in the province as to who has how much capacity and waht rights etc, and I seem to recall there's specific data on at least mean annual discharge if nothing more specific (e.g. winter vs freshet); some community organizations in some areas like the Slocan Valley migth well ahve published online research somewhere related to envirommental issues in the re3gion. it's basically a digging job for someone dedicated and dogged enough to pursue it......Skookum1 (talk) 20:41, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I've recently done some work on the Sandy River, and I've got what I believe to be accurate numbers and sources for that one stream. I'll add them, and you all can take a look at what I've done to see if you approve. Looking at the Sandy River figures, I see that the drainage basin size we have listed is wrong by about a factor of 2. I think I see how this error occurred. The USGS source cited says, "Cataloging Units 17080001 -- Lower Columbia-Sandy. Oregon, Washington. Area = 1110 sq.mi." Alas, the cataloging unit, in addition to including the Sandy River basin, includes streams in Washington along that stretch of the Columbia. See a map of the cataloging unit here. I got my drainage basin figure of 508 square miles from a study done for Portland General Electric by an independent consultant. Her numbers for the whole basin seem plausible when matched with the numbers at the USGS stream gauge (below Bull Run River) closest to the mouth. I can probably track down numbers and sources for the other rivers in this table, but it might take a while. Finetooth (talk) 23:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
I've re-done the Sandy entries in the table by way of example. One further small problem is that the discharge figures I've used come from readings at the Bull Run gauge, about 18 miles from the mouth. Some rivers have a gauge right at the mouth but not the Sandy. That means that the discharge figure is skewed somewhat from the discharge at the mouth since a couple of tribs enter the Sandy below Bull Run. I could add another footnote explaining all this, or we could perhaps find a number somewhere for the whole river. Or perhaps we could eliminate the table and simply list the main tributaries in one sentence of the text and use another few sentences to give some interesting numbers for the biggest four or five tributaries of the Columbia and let the rest go. I'm open to any suggestion. Finetooth (talk) 00:11, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Good sleuthing on the Sandy. I've added a couple others in; fortuitously, many of the tributaries' articles have had this info. and citations added since I last looked. I like having the table there -- for one thing, it shows really clearly that four tributaries are far larger than the rest by both discharge and watershed area. If we can come up with all the citations, I think we should keep the table. -Pete (talk) 00:55, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, as it does seem overburden on rivers peripheral to the Columbia, i.e. not hte Columbia itself, mabye the data should be incorporated, table-form in List of tributaries of the Columbia Riverand I'd say four or five stateside, three or four Canada-side....Skookum1 (talk) 01:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I thought I had checked the stats on that table and found the discharge rates to be about right. Some of the basin sizes were not and I fixed those. I see the lack of sources for discharges, but I think the river pages should be sourced well. I'll check again when I have the chance. I was collecting this kind of info for various tributaries at User:Pfly/Sandbox2, but was haphazard about sourcing. Most of the larger tributaries have decent sourcing on their own pages. And yea, the USGS HUC cataloging units do not always correspond well to actual basin size. I think I fixed most of those in this chart. Sources for Canadian rivers was more difficult to find. I'll look into Skookum's find. And I am still thinking about someday adding some words about non-mainstem tributaries, at least mentioning some of the ones that stand out in terms of watershed and discharge, like the Owyhee River and Salmon River tributaries of the Snake. Might take me a while to get to though! Pfly (talk) 03:06, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Likewise in BC, non-steam tributaries are important in their regoins; the Elk and Slocan and Granby primarily but also the Lardeau and Goat (nr Creston); the Granby's not that hydrologically imporant except I suppose during freshet (the Monashees get dumped on.... by snow and when spring comes...). The ikmpact of logging on flow rates and water termperature I believe also is of interest, if it's not arleady in the article - ? I know from years ago in high scholl geography (this would be 1971-72) our tecaher said that because of all the dams on the river (Columbia), by teh time it reaches Portland the pressurization effects of the reservoir changed the former itrogen balance of the river; I dont' know anything about salmonology but if that's the case it must be on record; List of salmon streams in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska-Yukon is certainly in the offing at some point, but certain rivers warrant whole articles, the Fraser, Nass, Skeena and Stikine (and Unuk and Blue and Taku and etc etc) in particular but also the Columbia, which once had a larger run than the Fraser's, which is today the largest - I believe the larest in the world; but hte Columbia was even bigger; I'm not sure if it was just the impact of settlement that reduced the run, or the hydro developments - the Fraser basin as little hydro development - the Bridge and Nechako and Stave primarily - but it's known that urbanization and loggign and ranching/agriculture did their part ....History of the Columbia River salmon fishery....just an idea....chose " "fishery" for that proposed title so that it could include both a history of the run itself, and also fo teh canning and fishing industry on the river. I know anyway thtat the nitrogen and termperature issues are issues in the Stave and Bridge systems, I'd imagine they are in the Columbia (hwere temperature/heating must play a big part in changing the ichyological ecospace....Skookum1 (talk) 03:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Water info jackpot, maybe, for BC

I haven't explored it yet but at the Water Stewardship Branch's website 9the new retooled name for the Water Rights Branch) there's this tool, the BC Water REsources Atlas, from the "Search Water Rights section" of this [ge. I don't have time right now, I'll try a few major streams later and see what turns up; but all in all a useful site, mabye, for WP:Rivers and WP:BC....also note on the Atlas link the "British Columbia Water Resources Web Mapping Service" download and associated information.Skookum1 (talk) 01:00, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah ha, this can give discharge info for a good number of BC rivers. I just spent some time looking into it, figuring out how to make it work. It seems to take a number of steps. If I get a chance later I'll write up a short description about how to access long term mean annual discharge stats. Thanks for the links! Pfly (talk) 20:53, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I wrote something up here: User:Pfly/BC hydrometric data. Probably not the easiest way to do it, but it works. Pfly (talk) 22:07, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Rounding

I'm thinking we should round to the nearest 100 in the ft³/s column in the tributary table. I don't think the flow-rate numbers we have are generally more precise than this. Any thoughts? Finetooth (talk) 03:35, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

That would be ok, although it might be good to say they are rounded somewhere. Also, I thought the tributaries were listed in order of discharge. Maybe they were once but have been tweaked so that now there's no obvious order. Should they be put in order of discharge? And if so, does that effect the rounding question? There would be some ties. Pfly (talk) 04:17, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
And, it occurs to me, if it is a list of the top tribs by discharge, are we sure we have the top ones and haven't missed one that is larger than the 2,300 cfs of the Sandy River? Pfly (talk) 04:22, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you about a rounding note explaining what we have done. On the order question, I think the rivers were probably in order by discharge, but the original Kettle River discharge number was badly off and considerably smaller than the current number. We should move Kettle up to the fifth spot. Alas, I hate to point out yet another complication, which is that some of these discharge numbers come from gauges upstream of the mouth. That means we are not comparing 100 percent of River A with 100 percent of River B, and we don't know whether the Wenatchee has a bigger flow than the Yakima, or vice versa. We may be painted into a corner here from which there is no easy escape. And, yes, it is possible we've overlooked something bigger than the Sandy. I'd have to study the maps again to feel certain. I'd love to see a published chart of all these numbers assembled in one place, but none has sailed into view. Finetooth (talk) 04:43, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, yes. I suppose some of that could be put into a note at the bottom of the chart, or a footnote if need be. Something that says the numbers are rounded and the list is "major tributaries by discharge" with the caveat that discharge statistics are subject to various issues such as location of gages, differing periods of measurement, etc, such that a "pure ranking" is not really possible; along with a note that although the list is by discharge there may be streams left out due to the lack of discharge gages, exhaustive published sources, etc (but all this more tersely!). I too would like to see a good chart, all-inclusive (Canadian streams are harder to find, although I've yet to look into Skookum's links above--still I've seen Kicking Horse River, for example, and it looked rather big to me). I still find it a bit hard to believe that the Kettle's discharge is 12,000 cfs, even though it is well sourced (then again, I've never seen the Kettle, so what do I know?). If nothing else the rounding to 1,000s of cfs gives me pause. I wonder where the nwcouncil got the figure. Anyway, yes, discharge stats are far from ideal in the best circumstances. It makes sense to order the list by discharge, I think. Do you think a little note at the bottom about some of these issues would be good? "Ranked by discharge, but..." Sometimes I wish people in general took discharge stats with a grain of salt; this could be a chance to explain, if tersely, that salt grain. Pfly (talk) 05:14, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Only one I'd add in to this chart is the John Day, the discharge listed on it's article is lower than the Sandy, but not by much and it's not being measured at the mouth (I believe the John Day is also a lot more variable than the Sandy so it is probably sometimes larger and sometimes not). Kmusser (talk) 12:00, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh and hey, if there was a note about the table it could be a good place to mention that it only shows direct, "first-order" tributaries, and that some second- and even third- order tributaries have discharges and basin sizes on par with some in the table Pfly (talk) 14:57, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Minor claim about Gray removed

Thought I'd put a minor claim that I removed just now here on the talk page, in case anyone cares about it and wants to source it (although WikiBlame implies I added it myself, which is possible). After the sentence, Later that month, Vancouver encountered the American captain Robert Gray at the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I changed Gray reported that he had seen the entrance to the Columbia and planned to sail into it. to Gray reported that he had seen the entrance to the Columbia and had spent nine days trying but failing to enter. The only difference is whether Gray told Vancouver he was planning to try again or not. The source I cited is the most detailed one I know of about Vancouver's 1792 voyage. It even goes into the detail that Gray didn't tell Vancouver himself about the Columbia, but Puget and Menzies (who doubtlessly told Vancouver). But there's no mention of Gray saying he was planning to try again. In fact Gray spent the next several days tailing Vancouver, apparently suspicious of his intentions. Anyway, very minor point; just thought I'd put the deleted claim here. Pfly (talk) 14:51, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Kettle River discharge

Your instincts are good, Pfly. I've never seen the Kettle either, but the big number looked fishy. More checking shows that the original number, 2,930 cubic feet per second, used but not sourced for the Kettle River discharge, was probably right or at least very close. The source (Northwest Power Council) I cited for the much bigger number and which is also used on the Kettle River (Columbia River) page says, "The Kettle River has a mean annual flow of 12,000 cubic feet per second (cfs)." But when I checked the records this morning from the USGS gauge at Laurier, about 30 miles from the mouth, and calculated a 10-year average for 1930–39, I came up with about 2,500 cubic feet per second. It appears that the Northwest Power Council's published number is wildly wrong. Using a longer period of record, I'll run some more calculations and change the Kettle number and source it to the USGS. Finetooth (talk) 19:02, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah ha! I think I was the one who added the 12,000 cfs number to the Kettle River page in the first place, which seemed high and I'd always meant to look into more thoroughly. That's interesting though-- the NW Power Council's subbasin plans usually seem so reliable. Pfly (talk) 06:12, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Also, when looking for long term mean discharge info I usually go to this USGS page, and, for example, the Kettle River PDF there gives the annual mean discharge for Laurier gage, 1929-2005, as 2,924 cfs. Thought worth mentioning-- seems easier than doing calculations. Sorry if you are already quite aware of this. Pfly (talk) 06:25, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
I'd been using the time-consuming and complicated method I outlined in the note below about the John Day. My mistake was in assuming that the 2005 title on the USGS page you mention above meant that the numbers therein were for one year only. Later in the day I realized that my assumption was wrong. While re-thinking my approach in the light of this revelation, I stumbled upon a link at the bottom of the Laurier gauge page that I had never noticed before. It appears that the USGS gauge pages have a clickable option called "Summary of all available data". When I choose this option, I see a page with a link at the bottom that says, "Annual Water Data Report (pdf)". When I click this option, I get a tidy one-page summary of what we are looking for. Here is the one for the Laurier gauge on the Kettle. It's the same as the 2005 version you've discovered except more compact (and the pdf file is small and downloads quickly), and it includes data for an additional two years. I thank you very much for leading me to this much more direct way of finding these numbers. I'm putting my calculator back in my desk. Finetooth (talk) 17:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Cool. I had noticed that "all available data" link to a terse PDF before, but find PDFs slightly unwieldy on this macintosh (can't seem to make them just open in a tab in firefox), so I tend to use the longer reports. But either way, yea, they do it for you! Usually anyway. Some gages are oddly lacking in summary info. Also I just worked out how to get discharge info for BC rivers using Skookum's links above. It took multiple steps and the need to use a web mapping app to find gage IDs. I'll write up a brief description later if I get the time. I was able to get long-term mean annual discharge numbers for some of the BC tributaries. I was curious if any would be as large as the smallest currently in the tributary chart. It appears none are (other than the ones we already had, like the Kootenay of course). The largest two seem to be the Incomappleux River, at 1971 cfs, and the Illecillewaet River, at 1875 cfs (and both tricky to spell!). The Beaver River and Kicking Horse River are both a bit over 1400 cfs. The Spillimacheen is 1236 cfs. Anyway I added what info I've dug up so far to the specific pages. Added geoboxes in a hurry and might have made mistakes. Wondering how to make the word "for" go away under discharge location (the geobox makes "near mouth" show up as "for near mouth"). For now though, gotta run. Pfly (talk) 21:04, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I wrote something up here: User:Pfly/BC hydrometric data. Probably not the easiest way to do it, but it works. Pfly (talk) 22:07, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Super! This is most helpful. Finetooth (talk) 00:19, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

John Day discharge

And you beat me to the gauge problem on the John Day River, Pfly. I had noticed that the gauge at Service Creek was the one cited for the discharge rate and wondered why. You've partly fixed the problem by citing the McDonald Ferry gauge. But there's a further problem. The source you've cited gives the discharge for a single calendar year. Because of floods, droughts, and truly unusual events like the initial filling up of a huge new dam pool, using a single year of record for a discharge average is apt to be misleading. The complete list, 1906–2006, of mean annual flows at the McDonald Ferry gauge shows that they have varied on the John Day from less than 1,000 cubic feet per second to almost 5,000 cubic feet per second over the last 100 years. I've based my claims about the average flows of small creeks on similar gauge records by averaging the averages over as many years of record as were available. (I confess to using only 10 years on some of these Columbia tribs, but it would be even better to use the entire period of record. This is a somewhat tedious business using a hand-calculator and running the sums several times to check for mistakes.) By the way, I agree with User:Kmusser that the John Day belongs in our table. Finetooth (talk) 19:45, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I was wrong, Pfly. Your number for the John Day discharge at McDonald Ferry is a 99-year average and not just a one-year average. My time-consuming calculations may be unnecessary. Finetooth (talk) 23:45, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

New dam map

Kmusser's new map is amazing and wonderful. Finetooth (talk) 02:22, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree - wow! Thanks, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:25, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

On to FA review?

There are two tasks we really need to attend to:

  • My moving of the map introduced some more image weirdness into the "Dams" section. Need to sort that out -- back to a small gallery, maybe?
  • We still need sources for the paragraph about the Oregon Treaty and U.S./British settlement in "New waves of explorers."

If we can get those two things sorted out, I'd say we're ready for a run at Featured article review. Thoughts? -Pete (talk) 17:27, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

  • With a couple of minor caveats, I agree. I need to add one more statistical bit to the Okanogan notes in the tributary table. I'll try to get that done today. I think the Guthrie photo would be slightly better on the right looking into the page. The Watershed section could accommodate an image, and it should be easy to find one that illustrates something mentioned in the text. Maybe Pfly, who did a lot of work on this section, has a preference. To fix the image jam in the "Dams" section, I would suggest deleting the Egan quote, which may raise POV questions at FAC and adds no factual information not already presented elsewhere in the main text and photo captions. Finetooth (talk) 18:16, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
The statistical bit has been duly entered. I ran the link checker again this evening, and in Citation 113, the Hanford Quick Facts link is dead. Maybe somebody who worked on that section can decide on a fix more quickly than I. Finetooth (talk) 03:45, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Added archive link for #113 from Wayback Machine & verified accuracy of ref for 2 preceding sentences. Franamax (talk) 08:32, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Woo! I'll try to find time to source/edit Oregon Treaty and settlement stuff, and something for the watershed section. Not sure offhand, but will think about it. I feel there's a statement here and there in need of a cite, but a quick read looks quite good. I'm curious to see how an FA review works, looking forward. Pfly (talk) 07:42, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Re the Oregon Treaty and US/British settlement/history ath's partly my distractedness that's at fault; I wind up writing about steamboats and river basins and building basic geographic infrasturducture and shying away from stuff I said I'd do long ago; but which I'm wary of my own poiltics and POv in, liket he boundary disputes, which are swmpay ground, and coordinating the settlement historeis takes and implies reading from sources from each of the respective jursidctions; and giving balance to the coverage is hard; so even the oregon treaty and dispute pages and colonial-era BC pages aren't what they could be; in which case there'd be even more cites available and also more information for this article (as if it needed more; but tehre's "holes" in thie history....). Anyway I did want to opine that the title "news waves of explorers" Iv'e always ben shy of - it's a term that Native Aemricans and First Nations people mock; exploration is only from the colonialist point of view, i.e .teh "settler" point of view; p"Post-1846: American and British settlement and development" mabye is a beter term; because it moves fairly quickly from the fur company explorers - who we can call explorers in a way not apliable to later individuals.....anyway I'll try and come up with more cogent fixes and maybe some more Canadian-side points, just wanted to note these thing as somethings to consider.....als re paleogeography there's a mention on Lake Okanagan of Lake Penticton thet glacial-era lake; needs a stub/article or mention here maybe? Also FWIU the proto-Fraser flowed out through Kamloops-Kelowna befor a side-creek out of the icecap through t coast ranges carved the present coures (se...I'm not sure wher to read up on that; it's in S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia I think but I don't ahve a copy handy....Skookum1 (talk) 02:05, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I mentioned this before above, but the beginnings of the river may need some additional info. I was not able to find a specific cite for it flowing out what is now the Wilson River, but due to the continent ending around where the Blue Mountains are today and no Cascades in its early years, the location of the mouth has changed drastically. One source I did find said the mouth was likely originally around Coos Bay and has worked it's way north due to the CRBs. I'm sure this is in a book, but most stuff online focuses on the geology of the Gorge. Aboutmovies (talk) 07:02, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

<outdent>Ellen Morris Bishop, In Search of Ancient Oregon, p. 98, says, "Sediments from the erupting volcanoes and eroding remnants of the Blue Mountain island arc coursed down an ancestral Columbia River system, building a 2-mile-thick delta at its mouth. Today, those sediments form the low foothills of the Coast Range around Vernonia and Keasey." According to Bishop, the coastline during the Eocene, about 40 million years ago, lay just north of the Klamaths, but sediments from rivers other than the Columbia accumulated near what is now Coos Bay. On page 128 of the same book, Bishop says of the Miocene, about 24 million years ago, "Where Mount Hood rises today, the ancestral Columbia River followed a gentle valley." We could add more detail to the geology section and, for that matter, to the history section, as Skookum says, but we might be to the point where we have to delete something to make room for new material. The article is already on the longish side. Finetooth (talk) 17:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

How 'bout Natural history of the Columbia River or Natural history of the Columbia River basin?Skookum1 (talk) 18:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
i.e. to migrate content to, or create further content of this type in, with a "main" template here....Skookum1 (talk) 18:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, good ideas, but we don't have to do these other articles before taking this one to FA. Finetooth (talk) 18:14, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Those would be good. Though taking what you wrote above and condensing it into about two sentences: basically the mouth and general course are not where they used to be, it has migrated north as the continent has changed and as the basalt flows altered its course. Taken in context with the amount of text devoted to the Missioula Floods (a good sized paragraph where an existing article exists just a click away for more details), two sentences for a much longer period of time seems the least we could do. Aboutmovies (talk) 23:12, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Elsewhere I've read about how during some period in the distant geologic past the river's mouth was more to the north, around what's now Puget Sound. Before the Cascades rose up. Could be the course has changed a number of times in a number of ways. Just a comment to think about if a sentence or two is written. And I can try to find the northern course info I'm remembering. Pfly (talk) 04:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
This is a great discussion. I support of course support the idea of a couple sentences about the older geologic history. I will probably not have time to go to the library till after the election (Nov. 4), but if we're still working on this then,

I'll tie up any loose ends. -Pete (talk) 18:02, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I began to re-write the Geology section along the lines suggested by Aboutmovies, but now that I'm looking at the geology more closely, I need to know more. This is particularly true in light of Pfly's suggestion that the ancestral Columbia flowed into Puget Sound or thereabouts. I doubt that this is true, but Bishop's book and the other things I can quickly lay my hands on don't address this. It appears to me from my reading that BC, Washington, and Oregon did not exist 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs were wandering around Montana, and that the ancestral Columbia Basin formed between 60 and 40 million years ago in essentially the same place it is today. Like the Willamette Valley, it was at times a shallow inland sea later uplifted to elevations higher than sea level. About 10 to 15 million years ago, the basin got covered by up to 2 miles of basalt. The basin is older than the river. It's also much much older than the Cascades. The river was a big factor in making the Columbia Gorge but not in making the basin. I don't know what happened geologically in BC between 100 million years ago and today. That big hairpin turn on the Columbia must have a geologic explanation. Back to the library. Finetooth (talk) 17:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I just skimmed the book in which I thought I had read about this northern mouth and didn't see anything. So... nevermind, sorry. Pfly (talk) 06:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Are you maybe confusing rivers? - the Fraser used to have a "Puget Sound" estuary - if Bellingham Bay is Puget Suund, that is (technically it's not though often referred to that way....). As mentioned before, one of the outflows from the Fraser Glacier was via the south Thompson to the Okanagan; I'm not sure when it broke through te coast ranges, or anything about geological history in detail; it's a blur to me, and teh up-and-down and now-you-see-it-now-you-don't million-year cycles of change make it hard for me to relate to considering today's rivers as resembling their paleo-ancient counterparts; it may be eaiser to write up such geological history on a regional basis, rather than by current definitions of rivers and basins; Geological history of the Pacific Northwest maybe be an easier paradigm....Skookum1 (talk) 13:04, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Citing Bishop, I forged ahead with a small addition about the course of the ancestral lower river and its delta. Skookum's hunch that the ancestral Fraser or possibly something else flowed across what is now northern Washington seems plausible. I'm guessing that even earlier ancient no-name streams flowed more-or-less straight west from BC's exotic terranes across a fairly level plain into the ocean. It would be great to have a geologist writing the layer-upon-layer stuff, but it certainly won't all fit into this article. If my research produces other important tidbits that I can squash into a sentence or two or three, I'll add them. Finetooth (talk) 20:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
See Bridge River Ocean......Skookum1 (talk) 14:00, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. This is all new to me. Alas, Bridge River Ocean is unsourced, or I might use the sources to track down more. Do you think it would be worth my while to acquire Landforms of British Columbia? Bishop says much of the territory we inhabit on the Pacific coast was "swept onto the prow of a westward-moving continent like pond scum on the bow of a giant canoe." The Klamaths and the Blue Mountains are the two biggest hunks of pond scum in Oregon. The process of land acquisition (hostile takeovers?) was slow and enormous, and a bunch of stuff like the opening and closing of basins seems to have gone on pretty regularly. Finetooth (talk) 17:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Pond scum...wow, what an image! That'd make a good quote box :) By the way, re: the Egan quote, we discussed that a while back, and I can't remember if you (Finetooth) were in on that discussion. I feel pretty strongly that the quote is an important part of the article; and that to the degree that it reflects a POV, it's clearly Egan's POV, and not Wikipedia's. Representing a variety of perspectives is the job of an encyclopedia article; we've certainly devoted a lot of pixels to the idea that the Columbia needed to be developed to meet human needs, for instance. As for the formatting, I have an idea that would allow preserving all the elements -- I'll give it a shot, lemme know what you think. -Pete (talk) 18:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Found resource for Arctic-basin rivers

I was looking up someting on the obscure Sikanni Chief River, part of the Peace-Mackenzie drainage, and found this great resource on all Arctic basins, the Saskatchewan-Churchill, Hudson's Bay, Yenisey, etc etc. Just dropping it here for refernce if someone happens to be looking for flow/discharge rates on Arctic rivers....pity there's not something similar for the Columbia, maybe I just haven't looked hard enough.....Skookum1 (talk) 22:21, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Layout

I thought I'd start a new section since the FA review one was getting so big. I'm OK with Egan. I think I missed out on the earlier discussion. Lots of people worked on this article for years before I parachuted in with my red pen. The layout looks better to me since you moved things around, Pete. Woody will still have to move down a notch to avoid bumping into a second-level head, although he doesn't have to shift to the right. The MoS says, "Do not place left-aligned images directly below subsection-level (=== or greater) headings, as this can disconnect the heading from the text it precedes. This can often be avoided by shifting left-aligned images down a paragraph or two." The three-image stack in "Navigation" is also a problem. On my screen, it causes the "Edit" button to veer into the text in "Opening the passage to Lewiston". That could be fixed by moving the Essayons image down into "Deeper shipping channel" and moving the log raft image down into "Opening the passage to Lewiston". Many other solutions are possible. I have no strong opinions about which is best. Finetooth (talk) 19:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Columbia Basin Trust

Forgive me for not knowing if this is in the article yet...I just found it and gave it a POV tag. it is important in the history and politics of hte basin BC-side. I'll let you guys read it and decide if/where it fits in.....it deoesnt' mention "downstream benefits" which really is a topic that needs an article, also....subtle and consternating....I'm not in the mood to explain right now.....Skookum1 (talk) 17:50, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

found something neat

I was looking at the 19th Century LoC archive for Harper's Magazine and found this. Takes some sorting-out to read as the OCR'ing sometimes makes two pages read as if one, but the original magazine pages are also available for viewing; anyway it has some nice poetic-travelogue kind of stuff on Puget Sound; that one's From the Fraser to the Columbia and it was the April 1884 issue; there was one on Oregon and Puget Sound, I'll try and find that link also. Some passages in it might have tidbits of information but quite often the writing is "of a certain kind" and make not-bad-stabs at describing certain landscapes and settings.Skookum1 (talk) 01:53, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I should also explain that while there's some stuff on the Columbia in the articles I found, and probably lots if you use the right search strings, a lot I found was relevant to Oregon and Washington and regional history in general; even though this is the Columbia River talkpage I tend to use it as a noticeboard for OR/WA and related resources/regions/topics....Skookum1 (talk) 01:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Another significant gap

I just realized that we don't have anything about the 1855 Indian wars, or more generally, about the cultural clash and extermination that resulted as Americans and British began to settle the region in large numbers. There's a reasonable amount about the fishing conflict, but the deck had already been stacked against the natives once that became an issue. We need stuff about the Cayuse War, Whitman Massacre, Yakama War, Chief Joseph....also, the final paragraph in that section (about horses) should probably be incorporated into this effort, and moved up in the section for better chronological flow. -Pete (talk) 22:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

That's also missing from American Indian Wars and Wars of the indigenous peoples of North America (for non-�US wars). The circumstances of the extermination were very different, just as the settlement patter was very different; we had a couple of wars, and ongoing strife on the Coast and in certain areas, but the extermination up here was largely disease-driven, though it's true that Governor Douglas helped supply US forces during the Cayuse and Yakima Wars. But yes, of course, it's a major part of the region's history that shouldn't be given short shrift. We're kinda of lean on indigenous contributors from Washington and Oregon; User:Murderbike seems to be indigenous but his area is the Puget Sound Salish et al. I've been putting off trying to write Indigenous peoples of the North American Northwest Plateau/Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Plateau (to match a corresponding PacNWCoast article and parallel language-area article) so maybe that's a precursor to getting a handle on indigenous history in the Columbia Basin. I'm not sure how much he covers Washington/Oregon-side populations, but Cole Harris' The Resettlement of British Columbia has some excellent data, if being otherwise quite POV for the most part; if anyone here sees it in their local bookstore or library, snap it up, it's very useful for population estimates, disease dates/casualties, migrations etc....Skookum1 (talk) 03:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
On the topic, I've wondered about the modern and historic tribes listed under the Indigenous peoples section. It strikes me as a bit of a grab bag without a lot of logic to why these particular tribes are mentioned and not others, and in that the particular order. A while ago I made a small attempt at writing something more... logical? ...but got stuck in the illogic of PNW tribal identities. Maybe there isn't a better way to do it, but at the least it seems that it could be written a little better. Perhaps something explaining how there are now a number of tribal "amalgamations" such as the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, which is mentioned only piecemeal, and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, which is mentioned and linked. Perhaps something could be said of the cultural and language variations, eg, Sahaptian vs Salishan, etc. Of course the article is already quite long as it is, so additions ought to be terse! On the mid 19th century wars and creation of the Indian Reservations (at least in the US, I am not up on the Canadian aspects of this history), it might be worth at least a mention and a linking to Yakima War Spokane–Coeur d'Alene–Paloos War, Cayuse War, Nez Perce War, and others that may be of note. If nothing else the resulting reservations and treaty rights continue to play a role in Columbia River politics. Pfly (talk) 02:23, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Also, the final bit about horses need not stay, or stay in that form. I added it a while back as a way to add to the notion that Celilo Falls was a major point of indigenous cultural contact. Just pointing out there were other important zones of contact. But if the section is rewritten a bit, feel free to edit/delete the horse bit as needed. Again I feel a need to keep things terse, as the article is pretty long. Pfly (talk) 02:36, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Found another map (Karl pls note)

Yo folks; was cruisin' around looking up Fort Shepherd, which was located between Trail and the border after the Brits had to pull northward from Colville, and found this map on a Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program webpage (in the old days companies used to tout "conservation", now the buzzword is "compensation"...cute, huh?). There's a dam south of Revesltoke I'm unfamiliar with, can't see its name, but the classification of projects used might be worth considering for purposes here. There's a Fort Shepherd Conservancy Area or is that Fort Shepherd Conservation Area also in the Trail-Waneta area for which there's info on that site; along with a lot of other stuff - see this list of reports and their links page may prove useful. I particularly like the report titled "Kinbasket Moose Inventory".....is the number of moose munching on the Columbia's banks relevant? Perhaps it is....(the wildlife were here before the Indians, see above).Skookum1 (talk) 03:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Continuing on the wildlife theme, also among those reports is one on the Cranberry Marsh, up by Valemount and it's a reminder that fauna and habitat conservation/issues are numerous in the region; I'd imagine similarly in the US. The article so far seems to concentrate on industry and geology "and and" but coverage of teh conservancy/conservation issues isn't maybe what it could be....Skookum1 (talk) 03:33, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
The dam marked on the that map as Coursier is almost certainly the Walter Hardman dam [6], it's on my map but not labeled.Kmusser (talk) 15:10, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Fish

I have no idea (and I don't want to study all the archived debates) whether anyone has pointed to this article before: Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish That Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River And I also have no idea whether there is some useful information that could still be included in the article. I just thought I'd drop a note here, just have a look and decide whether you still want to further expand this article;-) --X-Weinzar (talk) 00:42, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Hudson Bay is NOT the Arctic Ocean

I know http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Columbia_River&action=edit&section=40that the refs cited say that Triple Divide Peak includes the drainage of the Arctic Ocean, but this is a major fallacy and should not be repeated in Wikipedia even if countless US textbooks and tourist/parks publications say it's the case. Take a look at a map, for pity's sake - Hudson Bay opens via Hudson and Frobisher Straits into Davis Strait, which is an extension of the Labrador Sea, which is an extension of the North Atlantic. The divide with the Arctic drainage is that between teh North Saskatchewan and the Athabasca, and nothing farther south than that; I know it's part of the mythology of the American Rockies, but it's wrong. I corrected it on Continental Divide of the Americas and here only, so far; please do not repeat it; maybe if Wikipedia starts getting the continent's geography right, American academic and popular publishing may follow suit. Yes, Hudson Bay is part of Canada's Subarctic - the norhtern part of it; but the mouth of the Nelson River (the outlet of the Saskatchewan) and James Bay are clearly Subarctic - and nowhere near the Arctic Ocean. This was my edit about this.Skookum1 (talk) 06:09, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I realize there is no real authority that can define these kind of things, especially internationally. The closest thing to an authority for ocean definitions I'm aware of is the International Hydrographic Organization, which does define Hudson Bay as part of the Arctic Ocean. I know not everyone agrees. There are even some oceanographers who do not consider the Arctic Ocean as ocean, but rather a sea of the Atlantic. Perhaps the IHO is not as respected as I thought. But at least it seems to me neither right or wrong to say Hudson Bay is part of the Arctic Ocean. Rather, opinions differ. I know of no other well established international body that defines such things other than the IHO. And while I understand the logic and reasonableness of saying Hudson Bay is not part of the Arctic Ocean, I have not seen as good a source as the IHO that says so. Then again, maybe I have not looked very hard. And although I understand your point about "look at a map", that's hardly a reliable source. Personally I'm inclined to agree with you, but still, it does not seem completely obvious that Hudson Bay is part of the Atlantic and not the Arctic Ocean. Thus the desire to turn to sources. Anyway, in short, when I wrote of Hudson Bay as being part of the Arctic, I was not using US sources but the international (and apparently quite French) IHO. Pfly (talk) 07:16, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Reading the 1953 definition at least, the Arctic Ocean itself is defined way north of Hudson Bay, with the Northwest Passages in between. That document also says that the limits of oceans do not include the seas they contain, so it actually says nothing about Hudson Bay being a "contained sea". Do you have a better reference? Franamax (talk) 07:48, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
I'll endorse Skookum here. I found it curious when I first read this article, since my impression was always that the Columbia Glacier fed three different oceans. I let it go, in deference to the other triple-divide mentioned in the article in the USA. Now as to how Skookum got the Great Lakes in there, that's another story, I think they meant Gulf of Mexico... Franamax (talk) 07:19, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
That PDF on the limits of the oceans says "The limits of the Arctic, Atlantic, [and other] Oceans excludes the seas lying within them, the limits of which are described elsewhere in this publication." But after a quick look though their elsewhere I could not find the full definitions. Since I don't have the time to dig down much, I can only fall back on what the wikipedia pages claim about the Arctic Ocean, with reference to a source not on the web. So, I don't have a strong case, and don't really care one way or the other. Just wanted to explain the reasoning. I don't mind if it is changed, and sorry I don't have the time these days to delve into such things. Pfly (talk) 08:13, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Hudson Bay references Special Publication 23, Fourth Edition, which is not the one on the IHO website. I did see a 2000 update mentioned somewhere, which defined the Southern Ocean, so there may be more to the story. I'll try to find that Fourth edition. Franamax (talk) 08:19, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
IHO SP23 (1953) is the published standard. S.P. 23 Fourth Edition (1986) is unratified. There is apparently a 2002 4th Ed. Final Draft [7], but it appears to be unavailable. CIA Factbook defines Hudson Bay as part of the Arctic Ocean [8] apparently based on the unratified 4th Ed. [9]. I also found this http - - (spam filter www.) acquisitionreport.com/BASE_FOLDERS/REFERENCE/oceans.htm] which seems to say that IHO 23-4th and ACIC M 49-1 say Arctic Ocean, but IHO 23-3rd and DIAM 65-18 say not related to the Arctic Ocean. There's really no doubt the actual water goes through Hudson Strait to the Atlantic (which extends up to Davis Strait), but if Hudson Bay is defined as part of the Arctic Ocean (which to me seems patently silly, there's an entire Arctic Archipelago in between) then I guess the Saskatchewan basin empties into the Arctic Ocean after all. I've asked the RCGS for help, we'll see what develops. Franamax (talk) 09:51, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the legwork, guys; I'll look into Natural Sciences Canada and/or the Geophysical Survey of Canada, and I was looking last night for some kind of international oceanographic body; as opposed to hydrographic, but there's a bunch of different institutions and orgs dealing with the oceans.....the hydrographers are, I think, river-oriented, which is to say, landlubbers; and it was very late last night, and my eyes/mind glazed from the quarrels and wiki-struggle going on at Talk:2008 Canadian political dispute which has diverted the energies of a lot of Cdn Wiki-ites this week; I actually started going to geographic articles/issues just for a break. That the IHO is based in France, too, says something to me (much the same as having an American geographic body decide that the Columbia Mountains are part of the Rockies. or the Coast Mountains only an extension of the Cascades)....I'm reasonably sure there is an "official" body re the oceans, and they're not it; similar changes I made late last night on Triple Divide Peak likely need checking, I just got up from a semi-sleepless night (mice, not politics but the politics didn't help) so will drink more coffee and come back later.Skookum1 (talk) 13:21, 6 December 2008 (UTC)
Please note my comments at Talk:Continental_Divide_of_the_Americas#Hudson.2C_James.2C_and_Ungava_Bays_not_.22Arctic_Ocean.22; interestingly there is no article as yet for Geophysical Survey of Canada, I'll look into why not, and it just so happens that a regular contributor to WP:Canada lives in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, so I'll run this by him as well....Skookum1 (talk) 01:26, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
Don't think I can really help here. I've never seen or heard anything from the Nunavut government as to what they consider the boundaries of the Arctic Ocean. Personally, it looks odd to say that it's part of the Arctic Ocean but without a source saying otherwise there would seem to be little choice. CambridgeBayWeather Have a gorilla 03:10, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Thinking about it more, it doesn't matter, for this article, whether Hudson Bay is or isn't defined as part of the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Hudson Bay's watershed is clearly important in its own right, historically and today, and seen as distinct from both the Arctic and Atlantic drainages. The two divides being discussed here separate the major watersheds of the Mackenzie, Nelson-Saskatchewan, and Mississippi-Missouri, which flow, respectively, to the Arctic Ocean proper, Hudson Bay, and the Gulf of Mexico (the Great Lakes watershed does not extend to the Continental Divide--I'll fix that now). When I helped write up the text about the divides, I tried to organize it in a kind of hierarchical fashion--ocean separating divides first, then divides that separate major seas, bays, gulfs, etc. But there is no need for the text to be ordered this way, or for explicit statements about "first order" ocean divides vs "lesser" divides. Given the special status of Hudson Bay, perhaps the text can be edited so that the bay is not said to be either Arctic or Atlantic. Or something could be said about the special status of Hudson Bay's drainage, which if nothing else had important historical meaning. Anyway, again I have little time, but thought perhaps we need not solve the issue of whether Hudson Bay is defined as part of the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. Apart from the obviously important Continental Divide, all the others are just major divides of one sort or another. Finally, as I think I've said before, I'm not sure whether the divide section actually benefits the article. One could always decide to take scissors to it ruthlessly. (and, in reply to Skookum, despite its name the International Hydrographic Organization appears to focus on the ocean and seas, not rivers; and although based in France (Monaco actually) was apparently created by Britain and France cooperatively) Pfly (talk) 07:46, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Britons habitually refer to Canada as being America as in "oh, youre from America?' They mean the continent/New World....aside from that observation (i.e. the British are no better with Canadian geography than the French are...), the Hudson's Bay Company charter should probably be mentioned; i.e. Triple Divide Peak would have been the southwesternmost extremity, or close to it, of Rupert's Land ("all lands flowing into "Hudson's Bay", as the wording is in the document); and sorry for the Great lakes mistake, it was late, I do know where the Missouri drainage goes to LOL....Skookum1 (talk) 16:14, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Okanagan/Okanogan Basin

Hi gang; please see Talk:Okanagan_Basin#Content re some expansion I've made; this article needed cites, some of which are probably on this page; I've treated it as parallel to Columbia Basin but didn't know enough about Washington to write it properly; did my best on the basic expansion but it needs some US-side expansion; I think on Category talk:Okanagan Country someone from stateside made related comments, ahven't looked there in a while...without hte expansion and going with teh original author's content/context, it was otherwise liable for a merge with Okanagan, the main region article for that area within BC.....Skookum1 (talk) 00:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Plateau articles

This page is something of a clearing-house for Columbia-related and Northwest-regional articles so I'm bringing this here; I just discovered that the article on teh Columbia Plateau is entitled Columbia River Plateau whilst the plateau-name is co-opted by the ecoregion series of articles; it may have been me, in fact, who added "(ecoregion)" as a dab to teh latter's title, as Iv'e done that with a few articles where WWF-classification articles had co-opted regular geographic terms for their own classification system. Essentially a move of Columbia River Plateau to Columbia Plateau is needed, as now the ecoregion article is properly disambiguated and labelled for what it is (i.e. so Columbia Plateau wasn't misrepresentative as a title). "Columbia River Plateau" is clunky, nobody uses it, and clearly "Colubmia Plateau"'s most common usage is the geographic sense, not the ecoregion. I guess I'll start a rename discussion at Talk:Columbia River Plateau; on a related subject I've added some Washington/Oregon content, as best I could, to Interior Plateau and maybe there should be some more Washington content on Thompson Plateau and Okanagan Highland....the ethnographic term "Northwest Plateau" had been a redlink until just now; I found it last night, but once I finish this post will redirect it to Interior Plateau as the definitions are near-identical, except the ethnographers, for unknown reasons, exclude the indigenous people of the Nechako Plateau who are classed in Sub-Arctic even though their southward kin are in the Plateau group...(i.e. the Tsilhqot'in and the extinct Nicola Athapaskans.Skookum1 (talk) 13:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Nikolai Rezanov's intentions to claim the Columbia

The last few days I've been puttering around Russian America-related articles, including moving claims from many of them that there were Russian settlements in Oregon, Washington and BC (?!) and just now came across this in the entertaining and a bit peacockish Nikolai Rezanov article:

He cast anchor in the harbor of San Francisco early in April 1806, after a stormy voyage which had defeated his intention to take possession of the Columbia River in the name of Russia.

Sounds like that should be incorporated into this article somewhere, and in any related split-off, mabye the Capt Bob Gray article....the cite is the Encyclopedia Brittannica 11th Ed., which most of the Rezanov article seems based on.....Derek Pethick, by the way, makes an interesting speculation at the end of his The Nootka Connection that the Russians were free to take possession of Fort San Miguel (Nootka Sound) but chose not to; like everyone else, they were distracted by Bonaparte...how differently things might have turned out huh? Likewise had the RAC been more assertive re Fort Astoria at some point...Skookum1 (talk) 21:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Columbia Plateau

Please see Talk:Columbia Plateau#name/redirect issue. And also Talk:Interior Plateau as to whether or not that term is used inclusive of the Columbia Plateau; I'm going to fix up the Interior Plateau article but wanted that clarified; because of the multi-state/province nature of the workign group here this seems to be the best place to raise this subject.Skookum1 (talk) 15:13, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Mapping jackpot

Karl, pfly and others who muck about with maps - LRDW Data Store Atlas of Canada datasets, free of charge. It and other very interesting things are in a directory of Data Custodians with the BC Govt (that title seems worth linking...like Gold Commissioner) on this page, which has all kinds of interesting stuff/access. Somewhere on this page I'll be approaching them about exactly what in the range of government databases is non-copyright; who knows there may be a ream of old photos that are archived online but technically either public dombain or which can be gdFL'd for public education; certainly the many pics from S. Holland's Landforms of British Columbia aren't quite at PD-Canada50 yet (publ. date was 1964) but there are govt photo collections that aren't part of the BC Archives site; I'm thinking remote areas, or in the case of this article maybe a good aerial of the Rocky Mountain Trench at Columbia Lake, or showing the curve of the Big Bend near Boat Encampment, or the four-way valley junction at Castlegar etc. Whatever, it's just hte MoF (Forests ministry) EMR (Energy Mines and Resources), highways and other departments have other databanks; a lot of it might be available, or be made to be available for "the public database", which is slowly what wikipedia seems to be turning into; a nexus of data-access and assembled info on name-a-topic....I think they might be quite happy to find a use for a lot of their unsaleable data; it's worth more as p.r.....Skookum1 (talk) 00:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I've asked in a somewhat garbled way here how widely we can use that data based on their existing license terms. The question to me is that is the government says you can use, modify and distribute this as long as you acknowledge the source - how is that different than a WP:GFDL license? In other words, it looks pretty close to a free source that we can use wherever we want. Skookum1, maybe if you ask questions, you could also ask whether they are willing to modify their terms to be fully compliant with GFDL. Here's hoping. Franamax (talk) 02:01, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Sometime late last year Natural Resources Canada changed their licensing so that almost all of their data is free to use for any purpose now - GIS users will want http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/ but you can also use stuff straight off of http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/ which wasn't usable before. Kmusser (talk) 02:58, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Thing is, I'm not sure but...I think GeoGratis/Atlas of Canada includes landform-outlines and is indexed, which maybe that other material isn't; not that the boundaries of mountain ranges or plateaus matter to this particular article at all, but I just get the feeling it's a "deeper" source, multi-layered with info....that whole page that's listed on, though, seems to have various research materials from different govt depts/fields which may also have useful resources for this page, or others like it, i.e. water records and such...Skookum1 (talk) 03:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
Do we have a WP:Geographical resources page? Or WP:Canadian resources? That's where this kind of find should be posted, also Kmusser's comments on usability of NRCAN. This kind of stuff is gold, I'd browse it for days even if I wasn't a wikipeder - I love data and I love maps! :) Franamax (talk) 03:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
The awesome machine of the Wikipedia community responded to my query with a new template to cover GeoGratis usage: {{GeoGratis}}. Hopefully we can all get that baby widely transcluded. Thanks for the find Skookum1. :) Franamax (talk) 01:30, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
I have a sandbox page I've been meaning to add a bunch of stuff too; an overlycomplicated title I guess I could shorten so I could remember it easily LOL ....mostly it's a bunch of NASA/JPL images I assembled, of varying size and range; one was used for the map on Monashee Mountains; but I was meaning to add in Atlas of Canada, BCGNIS etc and various other things I know of (though the others I don't use regularly like BCGNIS and can't always remember what they're called or where they are) ditto some links to terrain maps used on stuff like Clear Range and Skeena Mountains, but I've never been happy with the resolution on those and they're not of the right orthoprojection to enable pin-drop x-marks-the-spot coordinate placements. I also have on hand (though not on this hard drive) the full range of ArcView data, maybe I mentioned that before; hillshades for the whole province....but you really have to be a map-artist to put them to any effective use ,but I suppose that's true of any data collection.....riffing off this being a river page, this last couple of days I've been adding stubs for the cross-border rivers along the Alaska Panhandle and was also going to try and get all the Stikine and Skeena tributaries on-board (User:Black Tusk has been doing all the sub-mountain ranges in those areas btw...). The cross-border of the needed map means combining two different data sets; maybe GeoGratis simplifies that and has more than is just withijn Canadian boundaries; otherwise mapping the Whiting, Craig, Unuk, Bradfield, Blue River etc is kinda tricky. The Panhandle in general is tricky for mapping; no nice straight lines or rivers to follow, only peak-to-peak/monument-to-monument staggering across the icefields and canyons, and a complicated coastline to boot; I was thinking of a general basemap for the area where individual river-lines could be highlighted somehow/easily...any takers? The same issue, though with less of a boundary complication, applies to the international rivers that are secondary tributaries of the Columbia - the Pasayten, Ashnola Kettle River and its tribs, the Moyie, the Yahk, the Flathead etc. Anyway yes, a central map resource for materials re geography et al. is a good idea; ditto with historical resources for our shared region (see http://www.livinglandscapes.ca btw for some interesting local-detail coverage...)....BTW about the {{GeoGratis}}, I've asked whomever it was (?) who made {{BCGNIS}} to also make {{CGNDB}} (Canada GeoNames Database, which is the basis for Atlas of Canada) but I suppose a similar/parallel one for {{Atlas of Canada}} might also be a good thing, no? Ditto http://www.inac.bc.ca for the Indian Reserve/band system entries.....makes me wonder if a subproject for the WikiMedia Foundation to look into might be "WikiBase" for collation/referencing of public databses....?? !! ??Skookum1 (talk) 02:57, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

[unindent]Just sharing with map-lovers; I wound up making Biogeoclmatic zones of British Columbia and found versions of this map, which I used to have wall-size in my old place and is downright one of the prettiest maps I've ever seen; this and other sites linked on that page are interactive, but this one allows you to zoom in and also use other layers, e.g. ownership, protected area, watersheds, political boundaries.....just a very nice bit of mapwork, likely using the technology in Basemap Online Store (which despite its name is still free-access, at least to look).Skookum1 (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Also here are a nubmer of various kinds of things, some pay-for, but hidden among hte pay-for services are free nuggets of one kind or antoher, like the biogeoclimatic zones map; such material can at least be used as a basis, or point-of-reference for other mapmaking.....Skookum1 (talk) 03:50, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Rampart Dam ('50s proposal on Yukon R

Please see Talk:Rampart Dam#Fisheries.2C_IJC.2C_Canada and/or its FAC/GAC about international content re this '50s project, since dropped. I'm wondering if any of you here might have something to add or might know of any Canadian POV sources on it that you may have come across in international-rivers deliberation for this or related articles.Skookum1 (talk) 16:56, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

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