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Red Lake Watershed

Updated 03/25/2005

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Description of Watershed

The total estimated area in the watershed is 850,900 acres. This watershed is located in Beltrami, Clearwater, Marshall, Pennington, Polk, and Red Lake Counties in Northwest Minnesota.

The land uses in this watershed consist of cropland, forestland, pastureland and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land. The watershed area is a combination of the Red River Valley of the North and the Northern Minnesota Swamps and Lakes resource areas. The topography ranges from nearly level glacial lake plain to outwash, gravelly beaches and dunes on the eastern border of the lake plain. The soils range from deep, poorly drained, fine and medium textured soils in the lake plain part of the watershed to gently sloping, well drained soils on the former beach ridges and shorelines. Organic soils occur in wetter depressional areas.

In the cropland areas of the watershed, there are about 1,100 farms. Cropland covers about 462,500 acres. Primary crops include small grains, sugar beets, corn and soybeans. Other crops include sunflowers, potatoes, and vegetables.

Pastureland covers about 59,700 acres. Most of the pastureland in this watershed is located in wet or stony areas. Most of these pastures are overgrazed. The primary forage species are Kentucky bluegrass, redtop, Canada bluegrass, and Canada bluejoint on uplands and reed canarygrass in wet sites. When upland sites are managed with prescribed grazing other species such as timothy, and quackgrass express themselves.

There are a few producers who have improved their pastures or converted cropland to pastures for dairy and stocker operations. These pastures are often improved cool season grasses along with legumes such as alfalfa or various clover species.