Talk:Interior Plateau

Merge of Columbia Plateau with Interior Plateau?

I don't see the relation between the Columbia River Plateau and the Interior Plateau. I have lived in Washington all of my life and am actively interested in the geology of the state, but i have not hear of the Columbia plateau being considered part of the Interior Plateau of British Columbia. I would recommend against merging these articles. Kevmin 03:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I also suggest against the merge of the Interior Plateau and Columbia River Plateau, but I do agree with the merge of the Interior Plateau and History of the Interior Plateau.

For myself I was taken aback at the broad application of Interior Plateau to the Interior of Washington and Oregon (and ajoining bits of Idaho) but was prepared to accept it, as I'm Canadian and wouldn't know the specifics of how Washingtonians and Oregonians refer to what's east of the Cascades. I'd always thought Columbia Plateau, and if anything I've heard BC's Interior Plateau as a subset or extension of the Columbia Plateau, although there's a narrow "bight" in between them in the Okanagan area (where plateau-type country is throttled between the Cascades to the west and the Monashees to the east); in other words, they're physically somewhat separate, although certainly in biome/bioregion terms there is a unity of a sort; the southern tip of the British Columbia's Interior at Osoyoos, however, is considered the last outpost of the Great Basin-type desert in bioregion classification systems, and nothing to the north of that is (though resembling other plateau areas of the Great Basin quite a bit); and despite that bioregion classification, which I'll dig out somewhere if you're interested, it's obvious that Osoyoos and its neighbours Omak and Oroville (WA) are not in the Great Basin; so nomenclature's a weird thing is I guess what I'm saying.

As to the merge, sounds like there's good reason for it NOT to proceed; except maybe with a rider in the Columbia Plateau article that it might also be referred to by some as the Interior Plateau, and likewise in the Interior Plateau article that it is considred by some to be an extension of the Columbia Plateau. The Interior Plateau as such, i.e. in BC, has a number of sub-plateaus: Thompson, Bonaparte, Chilcotin, Nechako, McGregor, and Cariboo, plus a number of small mountain ranges on its perimeter as well as the Okanagan Highland, Shuswap Highland, and Quesnel Highland, which skirt the Monashee and Cariboo Mountains respectively. Current linking uses Interior Plateau as the destination for (the Interior (and The Interior) redirects, and while I established that norm it's not quite correct; "the Interior", which is one of the three/four main subdivisions of British Columbia (the Island, the Lower Mainland, the Interior, then the Central/North Coast or North depending on what's being talked about - "South Coast" is generally only used in weather reports, not as a region in any other sense where South Island or the Islands and Lower Mainland will do) needs a separate article as it is as much or more of a political-cultural-economic sphere than a precisely geographic one, and includes more than the Cariboo Plateau, namely the Kootenays (not part of the Interior Plateau) and the North (beyond the McGregor and Nechako Plateau, i.e. N. of 55 latitude, including the Peace Country, although the Stikine Plateau and areas north of Lake Williston are usually considered much more "the North" than they are "the Interior".Skookum1 23:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

intended creation of Interior of British Columbia

At present all Interior links redirect to this article, in the context of the British Columbia Interior or Interior of British Columbia. This is a different context than the purely geographic-feature nature of this article, so I'm proposing a new article on "The Interior" be created; an italicized dab at the start of the page could say for the Interior region of British Columbia see Interior of British Columbia; for the Interior of Washington see Eastern Washington (or Columbia Plateau?).Skookum1 21:55, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Location of Interior Plateau

Edited the location of the plateau from between the Great Basin and the Pacific Ocean to between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast Ranges.

The Great Basin is south of the Interior Plateau; the Rocky Mountains arc from east to northwest north of the Interior Plateau. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NCDane (talk • contribs) 01:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I was wording that (if it was me...) to try and embrace the US side of the Plateau, as I wasn't sure whether it embraced the Columbia River Plateau/Columbia Plateau or not; if so maybe the wording should include "and to the north of the Great Basin"; if Interior Plateau is solely a Canadian usage (?) then it could say "to the north of the Columbia Plateau". In ethnography there's Northwest Plateau or North American Plateau, as in Category:Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau; maybe it's synonymous if Interior Plateau is also a stateside usage. The bit on the map jutting south of the line is the lower end of the Okanagan Highland, included on the map (like the Shuswap and Quesnel Highlands) as it can be reckoned either in the Monashees or in the Plateau. If it's BC-only, the term Interior Plateau, that is, then "Pacific Coast Ranges" in this context is exclusive of the Cascades et al. but we can't say "Coast Mountains" because the Hazelton Mountains (not part of the CM) are the northwestern perimeter of the plateau; the Interior Mountains to the north.Skookum1 (talk) 02:25, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to answer/clarify further re this:

the Rocky Mountains arc from east to northwest north of the Interior Plateau.

It may look like that on the map, but the Rockies are delimited by the Rocky Mountain Trench on the west and do not arc to the north of the Interior Plateau; those mountains, to the north and northwest of the Interior Plateau, are the Interior Mountains.Skookum1 (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Revised intro

The intro is still as it was before the addition of material on the Columbia Plateau, i.e. ending on the south with the southward extensions of the Thompson Plateau and Okanagan Highland into Washington; I'd thought when first composing this article that "Interior Plateau" was a Canadian-only designation so hadn't presumed to write in the US portions of it, as User:Murderbike and others have since done. Which is all fine and dandy, and noting also taht we need a wider-scope map, maybe showing the Fraser/Thompson/Columbia/Snake Plateau divisions on it (unless the Snake is a subdivision of the Columbia, I'm not clear on that...), here's a copy-paste of teh current intro, plus a few changes:

The Interior Plateau comprises a large region of central British Columbia, [[Washington, Oregon and western Idaho, and lies between the Cariboo, Monashee Mountains, Selkirk, Salish and Rocky Mountains on the east, and the Hazelton Mountains, Coast Mountains and Cascade Range on the west. To the north the plateau is limned by the Omineca Mountains, a division of the group of ranges spanning the Northern Interior of British Columbia known as the Interior Mountains. The Interior Plateau has three main subdivisions, the Columbia Plateau, the Thompson Plateau, and the Fraser Plateau. The Thompson Plateau includes sub-plateaux including the Bonaparte Plateau, while the Fraser Plateau is subdivided into the Cariboo Plateau, Chilcotin Plateau, Nechako Plateau and McGregor Plateau, plus a number of mountain ranges. Physiographically, the Interior Plateau is a section of the larger Northern Plateaus province, which in turn is part of the Intermontane Plateaus physiographic division.

That's for starters; I omitted a second sentence describing the Interior Mountains which would get too cumbersome if fully re-detailed; also in there somewhere the putative inclusion of the Quesnel, Shuswap and Okanagan Highlands, and I didn't bother listing hte many named subranges of the Fraser Plateau, not for the intro anyway. Re the mention fo the Rockies, I'm unclear as to the actual named ranges on the eastsern flank of hte Columbia Plateau, the Selkirks and Salish (or is it the Cabinets) on the northern part; is it the Clearwater Mountains to their south? Naming "the Rockies", which those are considered part of in the US reckoning (whereas teh Selkirks in BC are not) seems too vague, it would be better to specify the ranges; and I put Oregon in there; "North of the Great Basin" got taken out in some edit, but it should be in the area description, following the "wahts' the north" I'd think. Anyway I'll leave this for now, hoping an American editor will tweak what I've put together; before I wiki-leave again I'm going to try and straighten out Fraser Plateau, which was miswritten (by me) and I haven't had time/inclination to fix it.....but fixing htis was a precurosr to that, so....Skookum1 (talk) 00:17, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

History section needs re-vamp

Almost the entire history section needs to be rewritten. It is largely false and isn't consistent with any current or past publications or gray literature.

WP:Sofixit and please sign your posts ~~~~Skookum1 (talk) 01:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

note on coords

Just to note that the coords I placed to make AnomeBot happy are from BCGNIS ("Interior Plateau". BC Geographical Names.) and do not reflect the wider definition which may include Washingont-Idaho-Oregon (but which I still haven't gotten a clear answer to, despite the presence of some content relating to the Columbia Plateau). The coordinates may have to be adjusted, arbitrarily, if the definition is widened from the one used by the BC Govt/Holland. Thoughts please if any....Skookum1 (talk) 03:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

to do

What is the altitude of the plateau? Geo Swan (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)