Channel centerline for Hunter Creek, Oregon in 2005

Hunter Creek is an unregulated system that drains 115 square kilometers of southwestern Oregon before flowing into the Pacific Ocean south of the town of Gold Beach, Oregon. 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 12.4 kilometers Hunter Creek. To support these analyses, digital channel maps were produced to depict channel and floodplain conditions along the Hunter Creek system from different time periods. GIS layers defining the wetted channel and bar features and channel centerline of Hunter Creek were developed for four time periods: 1940, 1965, 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 1940 and 1965 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.