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<br />~ <br />oI:lo. <br />co <br />c <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />2 <br /> <br />OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY AREA <br /> <br />The Upper Colorado Region includes the Upper Colorado River Basin <br /> <br />and the Great Divide Basin, a closed basin in Wyoming. In this report, <br /> <br />the term "Region" is used to reference the study area. The Region <br /> <br />comprises about 45 percent of the total Colorado River Basin and has <br /> <br />113,469 square miles (72,600,000 acres) of drainage area. It encom- <br /> <br />passes portions of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. <br /> <br />This report uses the multicounty "assessment subareas" (ASAs) of <br /> <br />the U.S. Water Resources Council Second National Water Assessment (Figure <br /> <br />1). For this regional assessment, the basic geographic unit is the WRC <br /> <br />"water accounting units" (WAUs), which are coterminous with major river <br /> <br />subbasins (Figure 2). Selected WAUs have been further divided into <br /> <br />study subunits along State boundaries. <br /> <br />Re~ion Characteristics <br /> <br />Mountains, plateaus, and valley basins characterize the Region, <br /> <br />with the mountains forming a perimeter on the west, north, and east. <br /> <br />Uplifting of mountain ranges, stream erosion, glaciers, and wind were <br /> <br />the active geomorphic agents. <br /> <br />The geology generally consists of igneous and metamorphic rock <br /> <br />boundaries in the mountainous perimeter and sedimentary rocks in the <br /> <br />2-1 <br />