Sugar Creek Research Natural Area Establishment Record

The Sugar Creek Research Natural Area is distinguished by its exceptional diversity of conifers, unsurpassed in the world. It is also notable for its well-developed and varied Sierran mixed-conifer forest on lower elevation slopes. The area occupies the entire upper watershed of Sugar Creek, thus including portions of all four major vegetation zones characteristic of the mid- to upper elevations of the eastern Klamath Mountains. 

The area is underlain entirely by granitic rock. Therefore, diversity of plant associations and species is not related to a diversity of parent materials, as is often the case elsewhere in the Klamath Mountains ecological section. Pleistocene glaciation has greatly altered the physiognomy of the area. The entire drainage within the RNA has been glaciated. Several cirque lakes and tarns exist, as do ponds dammed by lateral moraines.