The Geography of the Columbia River
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Tributaries
The major tributaries of the Colombia River are: the Pend Oreille/Clark’s Fork/Flathead, Spokane, Okanogan, Methow, Yakima, Snake, Umatilla, John Day, Deschutes, White Salmon, Wind, Sandy, Willamette, Lewis and the Cowlitz Rivers.
Out of these major tributaries, stands the Snake River. This body of water is 1,083 miles long, and has an average discharge of over 54,00 cubic feet per second. The Snake River is the longest tributary of the Columbia River, drawing form its source in Yellowstone National Park. It intersects with the Columbia near the Tri-Cities in East Washington.
Headwaters
The headwaters of the Columbia River are from its headwaters in British Columbia, Canada, to its mouth at Astoria. They are formed in the Columbia lake at an elevation of 2,690 feet in the Canadian Rockies of southern British Columbia. The Columbia River travels into eastern where it continues to flow southwest. It eventually ends up marking the southern and eastern borders of the Coville Indian Reservation and the western border of the Spokane Indian Reservation. As the Columbia travels to lower altitudes, plants of the shrub-steppe variety, like sagebrush and bunchgrasses, begin to become more frequent, taking over the majority of the native vegetation. In the higher altitudes however, the Columbia its surrounding vegetation replaced by ponderosa pine, fir, larch, and other pines that replace the invasive low-altitude shrubs.
The major tributaries of the Colombia River are: the Pend Oreille/Clark’s Fork/Flathead, Spokane, Okanogan, Methow, Yakima, Snake, Umatilla, John Day, Deschutes, White Salmon, Wind, Sandy, Willamette, Lewis and the Cowlitz Rivers.
Out of these major tributaries, stands the Snake River. This body of water is 1,083 miles long, and has an average discharge of over 54,00 cubic feet per second. The Snake River is the longest tributary of the Columbia River, drawing form its source in Yellowstone National Park. It intersects with the Columbia near the Tri-Cities in East Washington.
Headwaters
The headwaters of the Columbia River are from its headwaters in British Columbia, Canada, to its mouth at Astoria. They are formed in the Columbia lake at an elevation of 2,690 feet in the Canadian Rockies of southern British Columbia. The Columbia River travels into eastern where it continues to flow southwest. It eventually ends up marking the southern and eastern borders of the Coville Indian Reservation and the western border of the Spokane Indian Reservation. As the Columbia travels to lower altitudes, plants of the shrub-steppe variety, like sagebrush and bunchgrasses, begin to become more frequent, taking over the majority of the native vegetation. In the higher altitudes however, the Columbia its surrounding vegetation replaced by ponderosa pine, fir, larch, and other pines that replace the invasive low-altitude shrubs.
The Columbia River runs through Oregon, Washington and parts of Western Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_River