Fluvial Landscape: Chino Hills State Park
Chino Hills State Park is located in the Chino Hills, which are in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. Chino Hills State Park is located almost entirely in the city of Chino Hills, California. Chino Hills State Park is a link in the Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor, which enables migrating wildlife to retain their normal migratory patterns despite widespread human habitation in the surrounding area. It provides open space for human recreation, but its most important functions are to provide a natural habitat for native vegetation, water resource protection, and wildlife protection.
Chino Hills State Park is just over 14,000 acres and can be found near where Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties intersect. The park includes some of the Santa Ana Mountains and a significant portion of the Puente-Chino Hills Located in the hills; it is no surprise to find a wide range of elevations in the park. The elevation in the park ranges from 430 feet to 1,781 feet (California State Parks). The Puente-Chino Hills is the northern end of the Peninsular Ranges in Southern California, a range that interrupts the otherwise flat Los Angeles Basin with rolling hills, mountains, and canyons (California State Parks). These geographical features are the result of uplift and folding along the Whittier and Chino faults. The Puente-Chino Hills consist of sedimentary rocks of the Puente Formation (California State Parks). These rocks were deposited 5 to 15 million years ago (California State Parks). In addition o the rocks, one can find fine clay soils and some alluvial...
This wide variety of soils and the alluvial deposits means that one can find a wide variety of minerals in Chino Hills State Park. The area has been used for petroleum and natural gas exploration, and has substantial subsurface minerals. In addition, the alluvial deposits make it possible to discover a wide variety of minerals within the park's boundaries, notably copper.
Chino Hills State Park features a number of water types. There are a substantial number of creeks in the park, and some of these are seasonal, dependent either upon winter rains or the spring melt of water coming down off the mountains and hills. There are not standing above ground water features like lakes, but there may be seasonal ponds or other collections of water, depending on runoff patterns, rainfall, and other features. There are a number of different underground water sources, also known as aquifers or water basins, that may be impacted by conditions across the park, since these aquifers, even if not located in the park, are fed by the same winter-run off as the water sources in the park. These aquifers include: Lower Canyon Basin, Lytle Basin, Devil Canyon Basin, Rialto-Colton Basin, Bunker Hill Basin, Yucaipa Basin, Beaumont Basin, San Timoteo Basin, Riverside North Basin, Riverside South Basin, and Arlington Basin.
The Chino Hills are in the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion of the California Floristic Province. Native vegetation in the park falls into three main categories: chaparral, oak woodland plants,…
