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4 <br />features -- a high degree of geologic control and a high degree of endemism- suggests <br />that the two may be linked. This paper examines one element of that linkage by focusing <br />on the way geology controls the distribution of age-0 Colorado squawfish Ptychocheilus <br />lucius in the Green River. <br />STUDY AREA AND GEOMORPHIC OVERVIEW OF GREEN RIVER <br />This paper focuses on the Green River in Colorado and Utah, a study reach of <br />approximately 650 km between Flaming Gorge Dam and the confluence with the Colorado <br />River (Fig. 1). Flaming Gorge Dam alters the hydrology and sediment transport of the <br />river (Andrews, 1986). Upstream from the Yampa River, mean annual discharge of the <br />Green River is approximately the same as that of the Yampa, and the annual flow has not <br />been affected by dam operations (Table 1). The magnitude of the Green River's 2-yr <br />recurrence flood has been reduced by 60 percent upstream from the Yampa River, <br />however, and the magnitude has been reduced by about 25 percent downstream from the <br />Yampa. <br />The Green River encounters geologic formations of differing erosional resistance <br />because the river crosses regional geologic structures perpendicularly. Formations <br />vary between hard, cliff-forming rocks such as the metasediments of the Uinta Mountain <br />Group exposed in the Canyon of Lodore and erodible, slope-forming rocks such as the <br />Mancos Shale exposed near the town of Green River (Table 2). Alluvial valley width and <br />bankfull channel width alternate between narrow and wide segments which are <br />controlled by the stratigraphic arrangement of resistant and erodible bedrock <br />formations that in turn result from the region's geologic history. The alluvial valley of <br />the Green River is typically more than 2 km wide where the river crosses erodible <br />formations, but the valley may only be 200 m wide where resistant formations are <br />crossed (Fig. 2). Channel width is greatest where the alluvial valley is wide, but the