Welcome to Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge! Located five miles south of Cheney, it sits between the Palouse, Columbia Basin, and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. This land was inundated by large floods as late as 12,000 years ago, which carved through what is now known as the Channeled Scablands. These floods were caused by the breakage of an ice dam that created Lake Missoula, a glacial lake that at one point was 2,150 feet deep. The scablands are called such due to the loss of fertile soils from the continuous flooding in the area, revealing basalt that was buried underneath. Turnbull is lucky enough to have kept its fertile soil, allowing wildlife and plants to flourish while still showing evidence of the floods with various buttes, wetlands, valleys, and lakes situated around the refuge.
Explore what Turnbull has to offer! This series of Earthcaches is designed to allow you to see what centuries of geological and ecological processes can do for a region. Providing a diverse landscape for many species of plants and wildlife is important for the future of our planet. As humans develop the land, refuges provide a place that won’t be transformed for human use.
The refuge sits in a unique location, making it one of the few refuges in the national refuge system to have such a diverse ecosystem. But what makes it diverse? The refuge sits between the Columbia Plateau and the foothills of some of the various ranges within the Rocky Mountain mountain range. Floods from Glacial Lake Missoula came through the area and carved some of the river valleys we see today. It also carved through the plateau, creating the channeled scablands. These scablands are host to either seasonal creeks and farms the farther south they go, or to wetlands. The channels formed are surrounded by mesas of varying sizes, from small hills to extreme cliffs. Within Turnbull, varying-sized channels are host to various lakes and wetlands, and the mesas are host to a varting variety of wildflowers, Palouse grasses, and ponderosa pines that like the dry grounds that surround the area. You will also see varying sizes of Basalt outcroppings throughout the refuge.
To claim this cache, please answer the questions below and message your answers to me. If you are answering for a group, please state who you are answering for. If I don’t receive answers, your log will be deleted. I do not require a picture of yourselves, but they are encouraged. A picture of just your GPS or notepad will do if you want. Your questions are
1. What type of prairies are the wetlands called?
2. How many species of waterfowl reside here at the refuge?
Sources:
Google
Wikipedia
Turnbull NWR website