What is a Watershed Webquest?

Name:

Access the following link and answer the questions:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watershed.html

1. What is a watershed? A watershed is an area of land that drains all the steams and rainfall to a
common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream
channel.

2. Watersheds can vary in size. True/False True

3. What type of watershed is shown in the map? National 8-digit units

4. The word watershed is sometimes used interchangeably with drainage basin or catchment.

5. Ridges and hills that separate two watersheds are called the drainage divide.

6. What does watershed consist of? Surface water lakes, streams, reservoirs, and wetlands

7. Larger watersheds contain many smaller watersheds. It all depends on the outflow point.

8. What is the outflow point? All of the land that drains water to the outflow point is the watershed
for that outflow location.

9. Why are watersheds important? The streamflow and the water quality of a river are affected by
things, human induced or not, happening in the land area above the river-outflow point.

A Watershed is a precipitation collector:

1. Name 6 factors that determine how much of the streamflow will flow by the monitoring site?
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Precipitation

Infiltration

Evaporation

Transpiration

Storage

Human Use

2. What is the greatest factor controlling streamflow?

Precipitation
3. The amount of water that will infiltrate (soak in over time) depends on which four characteristics?
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Characteristics of Soil

Saturation of Soil

Slope

Vegetation

4. Water from rainfall returns to the atmosphere largely through evaporation.

5. The root systems of plants absorb water from the surrounding soil in various amounts through the
process of transpiration.

6. Reservoirs store water and increase the amount of water that evaporates and infiltrates.

River Basins of N.C.:

http://wwweenorthcarolina.org/riverbasins-interactive.html
2

Choose one of the NC. River Basins and list out 10 facts about the one you
investigate. Also include one picture that best represents a main feature of
the River Basin.
Yadkin Pee Dee
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Total Miles of Streams and Rivers 5,862

This basin was the scene of the nations first documented gold discovery

Since its origin, the Yadkin Pee Dee River Basin contains a wide variety of
habitat types, as well as many rare plants and animas

Forest land covers half of the basin, including federal lands of the Pee Dee
National Wildlife Refuge, the Blue Ridge Parkway and the 50,000 acre
Uwharrie National Forest

22,988 acres of lake

Rapid growth in urban areas has promoted a need for wiser, more efficient
land-use planning in counties and cities.

Every person, business, industry, landowner, town and county share

responsibility for the health of the waters in the basin.

High Rock is the first and largest of the Yadkin chain lakes

The Pee Dee courses 230 miles to the Atlantic, leaving North Carolina neat
the community of McFarlan and ending its journey at South Carolinas Winyah
Bay.

The upper portion of the Yadkin River watershed contains habitat for several
rare mussel species, in addition to the lower Pee Dee River watershed,
particularly below Blewett Falls Lake and in the Uwharries