TNBL: Red Cedar OO Traditional Geocache
Wis Kid: No response from owner. If you wish to repair/replace the cache sometime in the future, just contact us (by email), and assuming it meets the current guidelines, we'll be happy to unarchive it.
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Caution!! An alien is guarding this cache.
The Red Cedar River originates in southwestern Sawyer County and flows south into the Chippewa River in southern Dunn County. It drains portions of seven counties: Barron, Chippewa, Dunn, Polk, Rusk, Sawyer, St. Croix and Washburn. The Red Cedar River and its tributaries drain eight of the 24 watersheds in the Basin. The Red Cedar drainage area makes up a third of the Lower Chippewa River Basin, nearly 1,900 square miles. Land use ranges from mostly forested in the north to predominantly agricultural in the south. The Red Cedar River drainage area is located in the North Central Hardwood Forest Ecoregion (Omernik and Gallant, 1988). This EPA ecoregion is characterized by nearly level to rolling glacial till plains and significant agricultural land use. Within this area there are approximately 255 streams with a total length of 1,302 mi. Of these 141 are unnamed creeks and ditches. The average gradient for the Red Cedar River is 4.6 ft/mi. The average discharge at Menomonie (94% of drainage area) is 1,235 cubic feet/sec. The Red Cedar River bottom is composed primarily of sand, gravel, and rubble with limited areas of boulder, bedrock, muck and silt. Land use in this sub-basin ranges from mostly agriculture (64%) in the south to predominately forest (27%) in the north. Red Cedar Lake, Rice Lake, Tainter Lake and Lake Menomin are large man-made impoundments on the Red Cedar River. The river also receives water via tributaries from other impoundments including Beaver Dam Lake, Long Lake, Bear Lake and Lake Chetek.
Water Quality: Documented water quality problems related to phosphorus include impoundment eutrophication and dissolved oxygen problems in heavily vegetated stream reaches. Tainter Lake and the Red Cedar River above Tainter Lake suffer from high levels of mercury in sport fish and are subject to consumption advisories. Water quality problems related to phosphorus have been documented in the Red Cedar River system; impoundment eutrophication (Schreiber 1992; Dunn Co. LWCD, 1992) and dissolved oxygen depletion take place in heavily vegetated stream reaches (Borman and Schreiber 1992). While these problems were evaluated in detail only in Tainter Lake and the Red Cedar River below Rice Lake, they likely exist in other, similar environments elsewhere in the sub-basin.
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency provided funding for further evaluation of the frequency, extent and duration of these problems as well as an evaluation of the significance of point and nonpoint sources of phosphorus in the seven upper watersheds (LC05-LC11). The goal of the project was to develop an implementation plan for phosphorus control in the basin, based on site-specific impacts to waterbodies. Project stakeholders include local governments, municipalities, industries and water user groups.
Voss, Karen and Sarah Beaster. 2001. The State of the Lower Chippewa River Basin. PUBL-WT-554 2001. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Madison, WI.
The TNBL Series will introduce you to the many boat landing and lakes around the area. Caches are set up as Park and Grabs and hopefully not so easy that you lose interest, but as you will see some areas are hard to find places to put a cache, that will last, so those will be pretty easy after you find a few. You will need to bring your own pen and please share pictures especially if you catch any fish.
VERY IMPORTANT!!! Please re-hide these caches well. They are located in high muggle traffic areas.
We hope you enjoy this series.
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