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New Resources Help Youth, Adults Identify Their Local Watershed
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When you’re visiting a nature center, local park, or even driving on the highway you often see signs that identify the name of the local watershed that you are in. However, when you return home that same sign doesn’t hang at the entrance to your neighborhood or at end of your driveway. So how do you know what watershed you live in? This is a common question without one simple answer. Fortunately, there are several new resources available to help guide the process of identifying your local watershed.
From the Penn State Extension 4-H Stream Teams Program, a new curriculum supplement called 4-H Stream Teams: How To Identify Your Local Watershed in Pennsylvania guides readers through various methods for identifying a watershed.
This resource briefly explains what a watershed is and also that they come in many sizes (from oceanic basins to small tributary watersheds). It then offers several options for identifying your local watershed, including where to seek out existing maps of state, regional, and local watersheds.
The new guide also introduces a valuable Internet-based resource that can be used to create watershed maps when none exist. Finally, the 4-H Stream Teams How To guide provides ideas for how to make the most out of knowing the identity of your local watershed.
This guide and other watershed guides can be found online.
Also from Penn State Extension’s 4-H Stream Teams program is a new online video titled 4-H Stream Teams: How To Identify & Map Your Local Watershed Using USGS StreamStats. USGS “StreamStats" is a web-based Geographic Information System program that provides users with access to an assortment of analytical tools, useful for water-resources planning and management and for engineering design applications, such as the design of bridges.
StreamStats allows users to easily obtain streamflow statistics, drainage-basin characteristics, and other information for user-selected sites on streams. StreamStats users can choose locations of interest from an interactive map and obtain information for these locations.”
StreamStats is also a powerful tool for delineating the boundaries of any size basin or watershed from a point on any stream. By locating your home or other point of interest on a map, you can quickly delineate the watershed boundaries of the nearby tributaries and ultimately determine which one your point of interest falls within.
This video guides you through the basic functions of the USGS StreamStats Interactive Map to help you identify your watershed. The video can also be found online.
Note: The Penn State Extension Service may have to close some offices to meet state budget cuts. NewsClip: Penn State Extension Offices May Face Layoffs
(Written By: Jennifer Fetter, Watershed Youth Development Educator, Penn State Extension, Dauphin County, and reprinted from Penn State Cooperative Extension Watershed Winds newsletter.)
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9/12/2011 |
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