What is a watershed?

  
 

Easy, if you are standing on ground right now, just look down. You're standing, and everyone is standing, in a watershed.

A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place.  John Wesley Powell, scientist, geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is:

"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."
 

  
  Long Island Creek watershed is our local watershed.  To view the Long Island Creek Watershed:  
 

 

    
  For more information click the button below to visit the EPA site:  
       
     
 

 Why is a watershed important?

  
 

We all live in a watershed. Watersheds are the places we call home, where we work and where we play. Everyone relies on water and other natural resources to exist. What you and others do on the land impacts the quality and quantity of water and our other natural resources.
 

  
  For more information and to take a Watershed I.Q. Quiz, click the button below to visit the Purdue University "Know Your Watershed" site:  
       
  To locate your watershed: