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Watershed

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ACTIVITY ONE
Model a Watershed

Summary

What is a watershed? This activity will educate students about what a watershed includes as well as issues of pollution in a watershed. As a part of this, students will model a watershed to get an idea of higher and lower elevation, and then identify point and nonpoint source pollution. This activity will have alternate activities, so that it may be done in a group, in class or individually at home or school.

Engineering Connection

Engineers use watersheds to plan for flood management and control by providing information on elevation and data on wetlands and water bodies. This provides information on flow capacity, native vegetation and depth of groundwater. This activity will introduce the concept of a watershed as well as the basic attributes of a watershed.

Learning Objectives

After this activity, students should be able to:
‍
  • Identify different part of a watershed
  • Identify point and nonpoint source pollution
  • Explain what a watershed is and be able to identify local watershed

Motivation

Introduce the vocabulary of a watershed, ask students what they think it means. Show a satellite image of Camp Creek and of Atlanta to show other watersheds. Where do you think all that water comes from? Talk first about the water supply in your community - does it come from a lake? A river? Underground? Whatever the source, your water ultimately comes from rain or snow that is collected by watersheds (land area that collects water) and delivered by streams and rivers.Then explain that a watershed is the land area from which surface runoff drains into a stream, channel, lake, reservoir, or other body of water. Tell students that people are either directly or indirectly connected to bodies of water, which connect to land.

Investigation Questions

  1. Where does water collect, where does it flow?
  2. How does rainfall travel through a watershed? (higher-lower elevation)
  3. What are the parts of a watershed?
  4. Where does contamination come from and travel to in a watershed?

Materials List

For at home activity:

  • A sheet of paper
  • Three different colors of water soluble markers
  • A spray bottle of water

For in-class (per group):

  • 1 tray (lunch tray, lid of a plastic storage container)
  • 2 tall containers (e.g., 12-oz. cups or soda bottles, coffee can, etc.)
  • 2 short containers (e.g., soup or soda can, 6-oz. paper cup, yogurt container, etc.)
  • 1 sheet of clear or light-colored plastic (e.g., cut-open garbage, dry-cleaner, or shopping bag)
  • 1 spray bottle
  • 2 bottles of food coloring
  • cooking oil
  • glitter, dried spices, cake sprinkles, pieces of confetti, or other small objects
  • towels for cleaning up spills

Procedure

Before the Activity:

With Students At School

  1. Have students complete a watershed component worksheet (Answers: 1. River Source, 2. Upstream, 3. Downstream, 4. Main River, 5. Tributaries, 6. Floodplain, 7. Watershed Boundary, 8. Meanders, 9. Wetlands, 10. River Mouth).
  2. Tell students that people use water for agriculture, industry, manufacturing, power, transportation, and recreation. Explain the meaning of terms point source pollution and nonpoint source pollution. Show students the photo gallery and ask students to identify examples of each. Point sources include facilities such as sewage treatment plants and factory discharges; Nonpoint source pollution includes excess fertilizers from lawns and farms, oil from roads, overflows from city sewers, and animal waste.
  3. Build a 3-D Model.

If At Home

  1. To create the watershed, crumple a piece of paper into a tight ball. Gently open up the paper, but don’t flatten it out completely. The highest points on
    the paper will be mountain tops, and the lowest wrinkles will be valleys.
  2. Choose one color of marker and use it to mark the highest points on the map. These points are the mountain ridge lines.
  3. Choose a second color and mark the places where different bodies of water might be. Are there creeks? Lakes? Rivers?
  4. With a third color, mark four to five places to represent human settlements. For example, houses, factories, shopping centers, office buildings, schools, etc.
  5. Make rain fall into your watershed by spraying it with the spray bottles. Watch
    how the water travels through the system.

Reflect on the experience:

What changes did you observe in the watershed? Where does most of the rain fall? What path does the water follow? Where does erosion occur? What happens to the human settlements - are there any buildings in the way of a raging river or crumbling hillside? How does the flow of water through the watershed affect your choice of building sites?

Additional Resources

Adapted from:

In Your Watershed
Watershed Explorer Curriculum
Build A Watershed

Useful resources:

Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (PDF)
Watershed Basics
What is Groundwater?

Safety Issues

  • Keep paint, food coloring, markers glitter, dried spices, cake sprinkles, pieces of confetti, or other small objects away from children's mouths and clothes.