The Lower Great Miami IBA extends along the Great Miami River south from the city of Hamilton in Butler County to the confluence with the Ohio River in Hamilton County. From Hamilton, the Great Miami River meanders south and west for about 32 river miles. The habitat along the riparian corridor varies in width and includes several important recognized natural areas that, in highly urbanized Hamilton County, are still fairly contiguous. The Whitewater River joins the Great Miami approximately 6 miles upstream from the Ohio River with important associated sites within its valley. The IBA has a wide diversity of habitats including bottomland forest, mixed-species mesic hardwood forest with a dense herbaceous layer, coniferous woodlands, and riparian and mudflat herbaceous communities. Much of this 32-mile corridor is wooded and sycamore, cottonwood, and maple trees predominate. Most of this stretch is semi-rural and still used as farmland, with several small parks along both sides of the river, many abandoned and overgrown gravel pits in the valleys that provide successional and scrubby habitats, some light industry, and several active gravel mining operations. Most of the hillsides in the valley are still heavily wooded, even where homes have been built. And there are still some large contiguous tracts of mature forest, both upland and bottomland, including at least one undisturbed 300-acre tract.