Summary

Description

The Rogue River drains 13,390 square kilometers of southwestern Oregon before flowing into the Pacific Ocean near the town of Gold Beach, Oregon. The Rogue River begins in the Cascade Range and traverses the Klamath Mountains, where it gains its largest tributaries, the Applegate (1,994 square kilometers) and Illinois (2,564 square kilometers) Rivers, on its way to the coast. In cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Geological Survey completed a reconnaissance-level assessment of channel condition and bed-material transport relevant to the permitting of in-stream gravel extraction in the lower 178.6 kilometers of the Rogue River, 56.7 kilometers of the Applegate River, and 6.5 kilometers of the Illinois River. To support these analyses, digital channel maps were produced to depict channel and floodplain conditions in the Rogue River basin from different time periods. GIS layers defining the wetted channel and bar features and channel centerline of the Rogue, Applegate, and Illinois Rivers were developed for three time periods: 1967-69, 2005, and 2009. For this project, the active channel was defined as area typically inundated during annual high flows, and includes the low-flow channel as well as side channels, islands, and channel-flanking gravel bars. The wetted channel and bar feature datasets were developed by digitizing from aerial photographs. Aerial photographs from 1967-69 were scanned, rectified, and mosaicked for this project (See metadata for each photograph set for more information on the rectification process and resolution of each dataset). Digital orthophotographs from 2005 and 2009 are publicly available.