Watersheds
Watersheds
John Wesley Powell, geologist and explorer of the American West, accurately described a watershed as such:
"that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."
A watershed is an area of land in which all the water that is under it (groundwater) or drains off of it (surface water) drains into a common waterway such as a stream, lake, estuary, aquifer, or ocean.
Powell made an important point: we all live within a watershed. Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes; they cross county, state, and national boundaries. Large watersheds, such as the 668,220 square kilometer Columbia River watershed, may be made up of many smaller sub-watersheds, and those sub-watersheds made up of even smaller sub-watersheds fed by small tributaries. In this way, any given watershed may be part of a larger watershed and itself be made up of even smaller watersheds.
There are 2,110 watersheds in the continental U.S!
A watershed approach to natural resource management has proved to be more effective than managing resources individually because everything within a watershed is connected: air, water, soil, flora, fauna, human communities, and ecosystems.
A watershed approach:
includes all stressors (air and water)
is community based
based on sound science
uses adaptive management
source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, epa.gov