Environmental Setting and Its Relations to Water Quality in the Kanawha RiverBasin. National Water-Quality Assessment Program

摘要

The Kanawha River and its major tributary, the New River, drain 12,233 squaremiles in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Altitude ranges from about 550 ft to more than 4,700 ft. The Kanawah River Basin is mountainous, and includes parts of three physiographic provinces, the Blue Ridge (17 percent), Valley and Ridge (23 percent), and Appalachian Plateaus (60 percent). In the Appalachian Plateaus Province, little of the land is flat, and most of the flat land is the flood plains and terraces of streams. This has caused most development of this part of the basin to be near streams.