This document presents brief portraits of various aspects of the Trask River study area. For each portrait, there is more information that can be derived from it however, in an effort to at least provide an initial look at the watershed the narrative was kept brief. For example, the section on geomorphology is evolving with the linkage of the terrain map with the channel gradient map to help us predict where we would expect to find more sediment accumulation. This contextual analysis is meant to help bound expected responses to management given the physical and biological template of the watershed. In the next installment I will look in more detail at the small catchments and how they vary. Some of the salient features of the physical and biological Trask Study landscape are summarized below with the more detailed sections following.