Watersheds
Engage/Explore
Materials: white plastic garbage bags, spray bottles, water, blue food coloring, paper towels, pans
Students work in small groups to make a landform model. Crumple up four to six sheets of newspaper and place into a pan. Cover with a sheet of white plastic such as a kitchen garbage bag cut to make one layer. Invite students to use their imaginations to pretend that the uneven surface they are looking down on is an area of land. Select students to describe the shape of the land that they are viewing, and highlight the fact that there are high and low places which are separated by peaks or ridges.
Students use a spray bottle filled with blue colored water to simulate “rain” falling on the landform. Students observe and describe the behavior of the water when it falls on higher and lower areas of the landform. Highlight the facts that water will run in “streams” from higher to lower places and that it will collect in lower places to form water bodies similar to lakes. Inform students that they have made a model of a watershed (or perhaps several watersheds).
Clean – up before moving on to the next part.
Explore/Explain
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Watersheds
A PowerPoint presentation on What is a Watershed. Pass out maps (US, KY and county) before beginning the presentation.
Notes on the slides are a guide for the lesson. Students will be using the maps to determine where the breaks between rivers occur – these are the divides. Divides separate watershed from each other – refer back to the engage activity. The US map has two main divides – the Western
Continental Divide and the Eastern Continental Divide. These separate the continental US into three major watersheds – the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico. Major watersheds are also called basins as in the Mississippi River Basin or Ohio River Basin.
The Kentucky map is to help students become familiar with the major waterways in Kentucky.
Most of Kentucky’s watersheds end up in streams and rivers as our lakes are all man-made and part of river systems (except for a few small lakes in far western KY). The second part on the
KY map is to sketch a watershed around the Kentucky River and then the Green River. More can be done later if wanted.
The last map is Fayette County (your county map can be substituted). Again, the purpose is to familiarize students with local streams and watersheds. Students can locate their school or home on the map to see what watershed they live in.
Expand
The internet has multiple resources for watershed research. One site is the Kentucky Watershed Viewer: http://eppcmaps.ky.gov/website/watershed/viewer.htm
This site uses maps to locate watersheds all over
Kentucky and contains tons of information. The easiest way to locate is by county from a pull-up screen at the bottom of the map. All size watersheds are presented on this site.
With a little effort a specific county map can be made from these maps by doing a ctrl-alt-print screen and then pasting the picture into a word document and modifying the picture to suit. ArcExplorer Online
( http://explorer.arcgis.com/ ) could also be used in much the same manner.
The Kentucky Geological Survey website also has much information on water in Kentucky including
PDF maps of the major river basins. Go to http://www.uky.edu/KGS/ and click on the water link for more.
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Watersheds
Notes from the PowerPoint presentation
1) What is a watershed?
2) Accept all responses. Then click to finish slide.
3) What is a watershed? Hill tops are called divides. Watershed is the land that drains water into one place. Two divides are shown. Two divides separate three watersheds.
4) Map of US showing major rivers. Where do the rivers drain? (Atlantic, Pacific, Gulf of Mexico)
Most of US drains to ???? (Gulf of Mexico) What River takes this water to the Gulf? (Mississippi)
Look for the Watershed divides – called continental divides – student can come to screen and try to point out the paths
Hypoxic Zone – low oxygen levels due to high runoff from fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, organic material – dead zone – growing. Stress the importance here.
Everything that is done in a very small watershed has an impact on the much larger picture.
5) Mississippi River Basin – blue Ohio River Basin – red
Keep track of Kentucky (smiley face)
6) Keep track of KY – most of the state is in the Ohio River Basin (weather reports talk of the Ohio River
Valley – same thing)
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Watersheds
7) All KY lakes are manmade (except for a few small ones in far western KY) – a dam was built on a river to impound the water – usually for flood control, hydroelectric (1 and 2), recreation
Have students try to name the river before clicking to reveal each name. Keep track of specific location too.
Note: Salt and Licking rivers get their names from the many salt licks used by animal herds and pioneers to get their salt. Largest salt manufacturing site east of the Appalachians in late 1700’s was in what is now Bullitt Co. on the Salt River.
Note: Cumberland source is in mountains of E. KY, flows south into TN and then west and north back into KY – forms Lake Barkley
Tennessee River forms Kentucky Lake in western KY
8) Separating the rivers gives the approximate watershed or basin for each river. Note the next slide for more formal results.
Can choose any river to do.
9) Major watersheds of Kentucky. Along the Ohio River there should be Ohio River watershed areas (see the green areas above the Licking River watershed for example).
10) Do the same with the Fayette county streams. Stress that watersheds are getting smaller and smaller.
Also remind the students that what is done to a local watershed has impacts downstream on other watersheds too (hypoxic zone in Gulf).
11) Basic watersheds of Fayette Co.
12) What is a watershed? The land that drains water into a stream, river or lake. It can be very small or extremely large.
Tracing the watersheds for central KY could be: Town Branch, S. Elkhorn Creek, Elkhorn Creek,
Kentucky River, Ohio River, Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.
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