The Carson River, located in southern Nevada, is over 180 miles long. The river has a watershed area of nearly 4,000 square miles, and drains into Great Basin, never reaching the ocean. The headwaters begin south of Lake Tahoe, high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Much of the land within the Carson River watershed is managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In 2001 the BLM began an assessment of the river basin to: 1) assess the physical environment of the river 2) characterize the geology, geomorphology, hydrology, and sediment transport, 3) assess the condition of the flora and fauna within the Carson River corridor, and 4) develop recommendations for future conservation strategies. Allred Restoration teamed with Otis Bay for this watershed-scale study.
The Carson suffers from many of the problems that plague western rivers, including dewatering and bank instability.