Battle Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data
The National Map
, accessed March 10, 2011 creek located in Shasta and Tehama counties,

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. It is a major tributary to the

Sacramento River The Sacramento River ( es, Río Sacramento) is the principal river of Northern California in the United States and is the largest river in California. Rising in the Klamath Mountains, the river flows south for before reaching the Sacramento� ...

. The eastern side of the Battle Creek watershed falls within the northernmost part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, as it transitions into the southern Cascade range. The undisturbed part of the watershed is richly diverse in both plant and animal species. The tributaries of Battle Creek originate from dozens of underground springs. The creek is part of a $67 million

Chinook salmon The Chinook salmon (''Oncorhynchus tshawytscha'') is the largest and most valuable species of Pacific salmon in North America, as well as the largest in the genus '' Oncorhynchus''. Its common name is derived from the Chinookan peoples. Other ...

restoration project, a

PG&E The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building, in San Francisco, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 millio ...

Battle Creek Hydroelectric Project. Many adjacent properties hold

conservation easement In the United States, a conservation easement (also called conservation covenant, conservation restriction or conservation servitude) is a power invested in a qualified private land conservation organization (often called a "land trust") or gover ...

s protecting them from development. In addition to the Chinook salmon, the creek has

steelhead Steelhead, or occasionally steelhead trout, is the common name of the anadromous form of the coastal rainbow trout or redband trout (O. m. gairdneri). Steelhead are native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific basin in Northeast Asia and ...

rainbow A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky. It takes the form of a multicoloured circular arc. Rainbows c ...

, and brown trout. Counterintuitively, first-year data from a post-wildfire soil erosion study funded by

Sierra Pacific Industries Sierra Pacific Industries is the second-largest lumber Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construc ...

, a large industrial timber company, show that control sites disturbed only by fire produced substantially more water runoff and soil erosion than did sites that received post-wildfire

salvage logging Salvage logging is the practice of logging trees in forest areas that have been damaged by wildfire, flood, severe wind, disease, insect infestation, or other natural disturbance in order to recover economic value that would otherwise be lost. Alt ...

. However, given this document was written by an employee of the large timber company which has extensively salvage logged the watershed, the results are questionable. Reviews of the document prepared by two hydrologists on behalf of Battle Creek Alliance, a local environmental group, argued that it contained substantial flaws. The industrial timberland in the Battle Creek watershed is upstream of the restoration project. The clearcutting and post-fire salvage logging which has been occurring since 1998 is the subject of the documentary film "Clearcut Nation", produced by Battle Creek Alliance. A Citizen’s Water Monitoring Project has been collecting water quality data both upstream and downstream of the industrial timberland since 2009. This data was analyzed by a statistical hydrologist in 2014. Battle Creek was named in commemoration of an 1849 battle between Indians and early white trappers.

References

"Clearcut Nation"

External links

*http://www.usbr.gov/mp/battlecreek/public.html *http://www.battle-creek.net/restoration.html

*https://web.archive.org/web/20150408082925/http://www.spi-ind.com/forests_research.aspx *http://www.thebattlecreekalliance.org/ * {{Central Valley Rivers Rivers of Shasta County, California Rivers of Tehama County, California Tributaries of the Sacramento River Rivers of Northern California