Moses Coulee till, up to thick in places. This glacial till, made up of clay, silt, sand, gravel, cobblestones, and erratic boulders, covers most of the upper coulee. Today Moses Coulee supports an excellent example of a shrub-steppe ecoregion. Vegetation includes sagebrush, rabbitbrush, greasewood, hopsage, bitterbrush, bunchgrass, buckwheat and other vegetation once common to most of the Columbia Plateau. The Nature Conservancy has established the Moses Coulee Preserve, which is a contiguous, intact shrub-steppe habitat. It is located south of Jameson Lake near the head of Moses Coulee. It provide habitat for a rich variety of birds (lazuli bunting, common goldeneye, sage
Columbia River known as the Grand Coulee. After the floods, the river found its present course, and the Grand Coulee was left dry. The construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in the mid-20th century impounded the river, forming Lake Roosevelt, from which water was pumped into the dry coulee, forming the reservoir of Banks Lake. The river flows past The Gorge Amphitheatre, a prominent concert venue in the Northwest, then through Priest Rapids Dam, and then through the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Entirely within the reservation is Hanford Reach, the only US stretch of the river that is completely free-flowing, unimpeded by dams