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Exploring the beautiful nature of California


California Nature:  San Joaquin River


Depended on by nearly 25 million Californians for drinking water, thousands of farmers, and the state’s commercial and sport salmon fishing industries, the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system is arguably California’s single most important natural resource. The San Joaquin River receives water from tributaries draining the Sierra Nevada and Coast Ranges. The water quality of the San Joaquin River is of critical interest because it flows to the delta.

The San Joaquin River, at 330 miles long, is the second-longest river in the state of California. It originates high in the Sierra Nevada and drains most of the area from the southern border of the American River catchment, south to Kings Canyon National Park, making it the second largest river drainage entirely in the state. The San Joaquin River's tributaries include the Stanislaus River, Tuolumne River, Merced River, Calaveras River and Mokelumne River. It eventually drains into Suisun Bay, an arm of the San Francisco Bay, and thence to the Pacific Ocean.
San Joaquin River is a major river in California nature The San Joaquin River meets the Sacramento River near the city of Antioch. Together they form the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, one of the largest estuaries in the United States, before draining into Suisun Bay. Before meeting the Sacramento River, the San Joaquin River has two distributary rivers, the Old River and the Middle River, both of which once were the main channels of the river.

Due to the bend in the San Joaquin River channel at the head of the Old River, a significant portion of the San Joaquin River flow continues down the Old River instead of heading northward along the San Joaquin. This flow split causes problems for out-migrating salmon, as the flows along the Old River are eventually divided between the Old River, Middle River, and Grant Line Canal. Lower flows in these channels place the salmon in danger of predation and entrainment via agricultural diversions and urban drinking water exports. In response to this problem, the California Department of Water Resources and California Department of Fish and Game construct and manage temporary rock barriers at the head of the Old River in order to keep fish in the main channel of the San Joaquin River.
From its headwaters in the high Sierra Nevada, southeast of Yosemite National Park, the San Joaquin travels some 350 miles, first flowing west past the Central Valley cities of Fresno and Mendota, then turning north past Stockton to its confluence with the Sacramento to form the Bay-Delta. Along its journey, it picks up flows from three major tributaries, the Merced, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers.

The San Joaquin once nourished one of the richest ecosystems in California. Native Americans and California's early explorers once canoed the length of the river through dense wetlands and forests that teemed with waterfowl and other wildlife. And, when California's population boomed and fanned out across the Sierra Nevada following the discovery of gold in 1849, steamboats appeared on the river, towing barges of supplies and transporting passengers upriver from Stockton for more than two hundred miles.
San Joaquin River flows through California nature The river's native fish populations included one of the largest Chinook salmon runs on the Pacific Coast. People who lived along the river likened the noise of spawning salmon to a waterfall, noting the fish were so abundant you could practically cross the river on their backs. These magnificent salmon runs migrated upriver each year, supporting a vibrant commercial fishery in addition to plentiful recreational and subsistence fishing.

Since the completion of Friant Dam in the 1940s, nearly 95 percent of this once-mighty river's flow has been diverted for irrigation, causing over 60 miles of the river to run dry, harming fish and wildlife and degrading water quality for nearly two-thirds of all Californians.

Today, more than 60 miles of the San Joaquin's channel lie bone dry in all but the wettest years. The greatly reduced flows have also concentrated the polluted agricultural runoff from farms, contaminated with pesticides, selenium and other toxic chemicals, contributing to poor water quality in the Bay-Delta.
The San Joaquin River Restoration Program (SJRRP) is a comprehensive long-term effort to restore flows to the San Joaquin River from Friant Dam to the confluence of Merced River and restore a self-sustaining Chinook salmon fishery in the river while reducing or avoiding adverse water supply impacts from restoration flows. 

The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge encompasses more than 6,500 acres of riparian woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands that host a diversity of wildlife native to California's Central Valley. Established in 1987 under the authority of the Endangered Species and Migratory Bird Conservation Acts, the refuge has also played a major role in the recovery of Aleutian cackling geese.
 
 
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