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CA-SAC-43:
THE BRAZIL SITE
THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT: PAST AND PRESENT
California's Great Central Valley is drained by two major rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. These rivers come together just east of San Francisco Bay, forming a delta landscape with an intricate pattern of islands, marshes, and sloughs. From here the water flows westward into the Bay and, ultimately, to the Pacific Ocean. In prehistoric times, before the area was drained for agriculture through the construction of flood-control dams and levees, lush stands of grasses, tules, sedges, rushes, and cat-tails grew along the freshwater marshes and sloughs. Herds of tule elk moved down into the marshes during the drier months, where they mingled with populations of river otters, beavers, minks, raccoons, eagles, pelicans, and other species of mammals and birds. The delta also was (and still is) a wintering ground for vast flocks of migratory waterfowl, especially ducks, coots, grebes, geese, swans, and brants.
The marshland basins drained
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