Description:
The Yakima River Basin encompasses an area of just over 6,100 square miles in south central Washington. It is bordered on the west by the crest of the Cascade Mountains, on the north by the Wenatchee Mountains, on the east by the breaks of the Columbia River, and on the south by the Simcoe Mountains and the Horse Heaven Hills. The major geologic actions affecting the formation of the Yakima basin have been volcanoes and lava flows, glaciation, and uplifting.
The basin contains a variety of aquatic habitats; the large mainstem of the Yakima River; medium-size rivers such as the upper Yakima, Cle Elum, and Naches; and many smaller tributaries, such as the Little Naches River, Satus, Ahtanum, and Taneum creeks, and the headwaters above the basin»s reservoirs.
Private ownership totals 32 percent or over 1.2 million acres of the 4 million acres in the Yakima Subbasin. The single largest landowner is the U.S government with 1.5 million acres or 38 percent of the land area. Most of the federal land is within the Wenatchee National Forest. Other large federal land holding include the U.S. Army Yakima Training (YTC) Center, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and Bureau of Land Management lands (BLM). Other public ownership (state, county, and local governments) total over 400,000 acres. The YN Reservation covers 1,573 square miles (1,371,918 acres) in southern Yakima County and a smaller part of Klickitat County. The YN and its members have over 880,000 acres held in trust; only a small portion is deeded land.
Nearly 40 percent of the basin is forested, another 40 percent is rangeland, 15 percent cropland, and the remaining acreage includes other land uses and water bodies. The predominant types of land use in the Yakima Subbasin include grazing (2,900 square miles), timber harvesting (2,200 square miles), irrigated agriculture (1,000 square miles), and urbanization (50 square miles).
Source: Yakima Subbasin Plan
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