Would you say Vancouver is in the Willamette Valley? (Olympia: floor, land)

[texasdiver]

I had never really thought of Vancouver as being part of the Willamette Valley. It always seemed to end for me at about the Terwilliger Curves when you are entering Portland. But it seems that the EPA considers Vancouver to be part of the Willamette Valley Ecoregion. See this map:



If not the Willamette Valley, what do we actually call the lowlands in Clark County that lie between the Columbia and the foothills of the Cascades? Anyone know?

[pnwguy2]

The Willamette Valley is defined by the Willamette River. So Vancouver, WA should not be included, as it is clearly north of the Willamette River. I think this is pretty simple.

As for a definition of the area north, I would use the "lower Columbia", as the river tends to come to an end just west of Vancouver and Astoria.

[PNW-type-gal]

It is the same climate zone, so, yes, part of the Willamette Valley region. The Willamette River has emptied into the Columbia by then, but since the weather/growing season/plant zone is identical, it is, for all uses, part of the Willamette Valley. It was also formed by the same geomorphic processes (volcanic, river erosion, Missoula floods, etc).

[grega94]

No it is not since Vancouver is not part of the watershed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...er_map_new.png

[Ttark]

I was taught in WA history/geography class that Vancouver is in the southern Puget Sound Lowlands region. Actually I would think it shares land between it and the far southwestern part of the Cascade Range, depending which part of town you're in.

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by grega94

No it is not since Vancouver is not part of the watershed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...er_map_new.png

A valley and watershed are not synonomous. Something like 70% of the states of Oregon and Washington and over 90% of the state of Idaho fall into the Columbia River watershed but they are obviously not all one valley.

If you look at the actual topography of the region then it appears that the north end of the valley extends across the Columbia to cover most of Clark County. The Missoula Floods at the end of the Pleistocene changed the course of the Columbia many times and at one point or another the river may have cut across the north side of Clark County in a more direct path to the Longview area.

The point is that colloquially speaking the Willamette Valley is generally understood to end south of Portland and doesn't include the Tualatin River watershed. But geographically speaking one could easily include the lowlands part of Clark County as the EPA has done in defining the Willamette Valley ecoregion.

Myself, I have never heard of Clark County referred to as part of the Willamette Valley. But I have never actually heard a name used for the valley floor that Vancouver sits on (and it is indeed a valley floor bordered by the foothills of the Cascades on one side and the Columbia on the other.

I have also never heard it referred to as Puget Sound lowlands region. We aren't part of any Puget Sound watershed. You don't reach the Puget Sound watershed until just south of Olympia

[grega94]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

A valley and watershed are not synonomous. Something like 70% of the states of Oregon and Washington and over 90% of the state of Idaho fall into the Columbia River watershed but they are obviously not all one valley.

If you look at the actual topography of the region then it appears that the north end of the valley extends across the Columbia to cover most of Clark County. The Missoula Floods at the end of the Pleistocene changed the course of the Columbia many times and at one point or another the river may have cut across the north side of Clark County in a more direct path to the Longview area.

The point is that colloquially speaking the Willamette Valley is generally understood to end south of Portland and doesn't include the Tualatin River watershed. But geographically speaking one could easily include the lowlands part of Clark County as the EPA has done in defining the Willamette Valley ecoregion.

Myself, I have never heard of Clark County referred to as part of the Willamette Valley. But I have never actually heard a name used for the valley floor that Vancouver sits on (and it is indeed a valley floor bordered by the foothills of the Cascades on one side and the Columbia on the other.

I have also never heard it referred to as Puget Sound lowlands region. We aren't part of any Puget Sound watershed. You don't reach the Puget Sound watershed until just south of Olympia

Vancouver is part of the lower Columbia river, which is everything west of the gorge and includes the northernmost parts of the Willamette.

[Ttark]

I have also never heard it referred to as Puget Sound lowlands region. We aren't part of any Puget Sound watershed. You don't reach the Puget Sound watershed until just south of Olympia

Yeah, I remember that struck me as a bit odd as well. The filmstrip from the mid 1980s that Mrs. P-- M-- showed us in the late 1990s also horribly oversimplified Washington's regionalization by dividing the state into five (?!?) very broadly-defined regions. It showed the PS Lowlands region as stretching from Canada down to the river. Apparently that was where she got her information from as I tried to challenge it by saying we're in the western Columbia River lowlands and Cascade Range, and true to the Cascade Jr. High mentality then (and maybe even today, because old habits die hard), was promptly shot down as "wrong" and "disrupting the lesson".

Well, you can't blame a guy for trying.

(In fact that same nice bright red/pink filmstrip series made its way around to me just a couple years ago and the brilliant blue and green scenery we kids enjoyed 20 years ago have completely faded into oblivion. Eastmancolor sucks.)

[Bronze]

OP. No, Vancouver is not part of the Willamette Valley. I has seen it described in terms of geography as the Western Lowlands.


https://images.search.yahoo.com/sear...g&action=click

[NW4me]

Originally Posted by Bronze

OP. No, Vancouver is not part of the Willamette Valley.

But you can see it from there.