page_title: Mount Mazama
section_title: Ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Mount Mazama / Ecology
caption_attribution_description: When a “trout” is not a trout: The common names used for fishes sometimes have little to do with how they are classified biologically. Bull Trout (Salvelinus confluentus) are members of the “trout” family Salmonidae as are salmon, grayling, and whitefish. However, technically speaking, Bull Trout are actually classified as char (Genus: Salvelinus). One general difference between trout and char is that trout have light colored bodies with dark spots and char have dark-colored bodies with light spots. Since 1997, the Montana Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office continues to work cooperatively with the Blackfeet Tribe, Glacier National Park, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to focus on gathering important information on the status and biology of the federally threatened St. Mary River Bull Trout population in north-west Montana. Photo Credit: Jim Mogen / USFWS
context_page_description: Mount Mazama is a complex volcano in the state of Oregon, United States, in a segment of the Cascade Volcanic Arc and Cascade Range. Most of the mountain collapsed following a major eruption approximately 7,700 years ago. The volcano is in Klamath County, in the southern Cascades, 60 miles north of the Oregon-California border. Its collapse formed a caldera that holds Crater Lake. The mountain is in Crater Lake National Park. Mount Mazama originally had an elevation of 12,000 feet, but following its climactic eruption this was reduced to 8,157 feet. Crater Lake is 1,943 feet deep, the deepest freshwater body in the US and the second deepest in North America after Great Slave Lake in Canada.
  Mount Mazama formed as a group of overlapping volcanic edifices such as shield volcanoes and small composite cones, becoming active intermittently until its climactic eruption 7,700 years ago. This eruption, the largest known within the Cascade Volcanic Arc in a million years, destroyed Mazama's summit, reducing its approximate 12,000-foot height by about 1 mile. Much of the edifice fell into the volcano's partially emptied neck and magma chamber, creating a caldera.
context_section_description: Crater Lake National Park and the area surrounding Mount Mazama range in elevation from 4,000 to 8,929 feet (1,219 to 2,722 m), providing diverse habitats. In the Cascades, the topography and elevation have influenced local climate patterns, also shaping global climate when volcanic gas and dust have been released into the atmosphere. The southern region of the park supports ponderosa pine forests, and for elevations from 5,000 to 7,000 feet (1,500 to 2,100 m), mixed coniferous, fir, and hemlock forests are common. Subalpine zones occur above 7,000 feet (2,100 m), often featuring whitebark pine.
  Ecological disturbances tend to cause decreasing damage with increasing distance from the source, but volcanic eruptions can lead to more uniform patterns of disruption for their surrounding landscapes. The immediate surroundings of Mazama continue to recover from the eruption.
  There are more than 50 mammal species in Crater Lake National Park. Opossum species such as the Virginia opossum can be found infrequently, while shrew and mole species in the park area include marsh shrews, Pacific shrews, American water shrews, fog shrews, Trowbridge's shrews, vagrant shrews, American shrew moles, and broad-footed moles. Bats frequently sighted within the park area include the little brown bat, hoary bat, and big brown bat, while the California myotis, silver-haired bat, Yuma myotis, long-eared myotis, long-legged myotis, and pallid bat are more rare. There are populations of American pikas, snowshoe hares, and white-tailed jackrabbits in the region, as well as many rodent species. Chipmunks like yellow-pine chipmunks, least chipmunks, Siskiyou chipmunks, and Townsend's chipmunks can be seen, along with various beaver species including mountain beavers and North American beavers. The mammals of the National Park area also include various species of squirrel, mice, vole, and gophers, as well as yellow-bellied marmots and North American porcupines. Carnivorous mammals consist of coyotes, red foxes, gray foxes, American black bears, raccoons, martens, fishers, ermines, long-tailed weasels, minks, wolverines, American badgers, western spotted skunks, striped skunks, North American river otters, cougars, and lynxes such as bobcats. Elk, mule deer, and pronghorns can also be found, though more frequently during the summer season.
  Bird species in the Crater Lake National Park area include various biological families. Common bird species include hairy woodpeckers, great horned owls, blue grouse, common ravens, dark-eyed juncos, mountain chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches, brown creepers, Clark's nutcrackers, and Canada jays, which are visible throughout the year; American kestrels, northern flickers, golden-crowned kinglets, Cordilleran flycatchers, Steller's jays, western tanagers, Swainson's thrushes, hermit thrushes, American robins, and rufous hummingbirds that frequent the area in the summer season; and mountain and western bluebirds in the fall and summer. Olive-sided flycatchers and chipping sparrows are common during the spring and summer seasons, while yellow-rumped warblers, pine siskins, and Cassin's finches can frequently be seen during spring, summer, and fall.
  In the early 20th century, Bull trout were present in many streams and river throughout the National Park area, particularly the Sun Creek and lower Annie Creek areas. Locals began stocking streams with non-native trout populations, forcing Brook trout to compete for resources and leading to their local extinction in Annie Creek, along with a significant decline in Sun Creek by the end of the 1980s. By 1992, Crater Lake National Park initiated a bull trout conservation project, removing invasive fish populations with electrofishing, snorkeling, and introduction of the toxin and inhibitor of cellular respiration antimycin A. They also created small barriers to keep new trout from reaching Sun Creek. In 1999, Bull trout were considered a "threatened" species by the Endangered Species Act, though locally, there are now about 2,000 Bull trout in the stream, almost ten times as m
caption: Bull trout in the Crater Lake National park area saw a significant decline during the early 20th century, but conservation programs have expanded their distribution
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