Students construct three-dimensional models of water catchment basins using everyday objects to form hills, mountains, valleys and water sources. They experiment to see where rain travels and collects, and survey water pathways to see how they can be altered by natural and human activities. Students discuss how engineers design structures that impact water collection, as well as systems that clean and distribute water.

Watershed Awareness using Technology and Environmental Research for Sustainability (WATERS)

The WATERS project is developing and researching a student-centered, place-based, and accessible curriculum for teaching watershed concepts and water career awareness for students in the middle grades. This 10-lesson unit includes online, classroom, and field activities. Students use a professional-grade online GIS modeling resource, simulations, sensors, and other interactive resources to collect environmental data and analyze their local watershed issues. The WATERS project is paving a path to increased access to research-based, open access curricula that hold the potential to significantly increase awareness of and engagement with watershed concepts and career pathways in learners nationwide.

This material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. The software is licensed under Simplified BSD, MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses. Please provide attribution to the Concord Consortium and the URL https://concord.org.

Students learn how to use and graph real-world stream gage data to create event and annual hydrographs and calculate flood frequency statistics. Using an Excel spreadsheet of real-world event, annual and peak streamflow data, they manipulate the data (converting units, sorting, ranking, plotting), solve problems using equations, and calculate return periods and probabilities. Prompted by worksheet questions, they analyze the runoff data as engineers would. Students learn how hydrographs help engineers make decisions and recommendations to community stakeholders concerning water resources and flooding.

Students will learn about the water cycle, watersheds, and specifically, the watershed that feeds Springfield, Oregon. After analyzing drought maps, reading news reports, and seeing images and videos, students will realize that drought is a real life concern. Students, as concerned citizens, will create a water collection device, at first on a small scale, and then a true to life water collection system to help re- purpose rainwater in our garden area.

This unit was created by Sierra Nevada Journeys in partnership with the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (https://ndep.nv.gov/) and the Truckee River Fund (truckeeriverfund.org). During this unit students will learn about the importance of a watershed, which is tied directly to the water cycle. Using collaboration, critical thinking, and outdoor learning experiences, students will develop an understanding of the impact humans and environmental factors can have on the watershed system and what impact this has on humans. Students will gather evidence and research in order to answer/address questions with empirical evidence. This lesson will provide necessary background knowledge of the water cycle and the Truckee River Watershed. Students will use this background knowledge to understand the inter-connectivity of the two systems.

This unit was created by Sierra Nevada Journeys in partnership with the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (https://ndep.nv.gov/) and the Truckee River Fund (truckeeriverfund.org). During this unit students will learn about the importance of a watershed, which is tied directly to the water cycle. Using collaboration, critical thinking, and outdoor learning experiences, students will develop an understanding of the impact humans and environmental factors can have on the watershed system and what impact this has on humans. Students will gather evidence and research in order to answer/address questions with empirical evidence. In this lesson students will learn about invasive and native species. Students will learn about the impacts certain decisions can have on a watershed.

This unit was created by Sierra Nevada Journeys in partnership with the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (https://ndep.nv.gov/) and the Truckee River Fund (truckeeriverfund.org). During this unit students will learn about the importance of a watershed, which is tied directly to the water cycle. Using collaboration, critical thinking, and outdoor learning experiences, students will develop an understanding of the impact humans and environmental factors can have on the watershed system and what impact this has on humans. Students will gather evidence and research in order to answer/address questions with empirical evidence. In this lesson students will go to a field site to look for evidence of health of a river. Students will hunt for macro-invertebrates and use sensitivity levels as evidence to determine the health of the river.

This unit was created by Sierra Nevada Journeys in partnership with the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection (https://ndep.nv.gov/) and the Truckee River Fund (truckeeriverfund.org). During this unit students will learn about the importance of a watershed, which is tied directly to the water cycle. Using collaboration, critical thinking, and outdoor learning experiences, students will develop an understanding of the impact humans and environmental factors can have on the watershed system and what impact this has on humans. Students will gather evidence and research in order to answer/address questions with empirical evidence. In this capstone lesson students will use their experiences and knowledge from the first three lessons, along with additional research on an invasive species, to determine the health of the Truckee River.

Students label major rivers and outline watersheds on a world map. They compare the shapes of various watersheds and discuss how topography influences their shapes.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Studying the microbes present in meanders — the bendy, curvy paths of rivers — may prove to be a way of understanding much larger processes happening on the scale of entire watersheds. That’s the finding of a new study by researchers at the University of California Berkeley. Scientists tested the idea that floodplain soils share a core microbiome that can be used to predict biogeochemical processes in watersheds. The group analyzed soil samples from the upper, middle, and lower parts of Colorado’s East River. While the specific microbes from the various sections of the river differed, there was a core set of shared microbial activity across the three meanders. This included microbiomes enriched for aerobic respiration, aerobic CO oxidation, and thiosulfate oxidation with the formation of sulfur. The results suggest that meander-bound floodplains serve as functional zones that might be able to predict biogeochemical transformations in riparian zones..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This kit explores how sustainability within the Finger Lakes region of New York has been presented in the media with a particular focus on issues related to food, water and agriculture. Each of the seven lessons integrates media literacy and critical thinking with key knowledge and concepts related to sustainability. This kit is a companion to the nineteen-lesson collection, Media Constructions of Sustainability: Food, Water and Agriculture.

In a class demonstration, students observe a simple water cycle model to better understand its role in pollutant transport. This activity shows one way in which pollution is affected by the water cycle; it simulates a point source of pollution in a lake and the resulting environmental consequences.

Students will learn about the water cycle, watersheds, and point and non-point source pollution. Students will then apply this knowledge to take a position in the debate about the proposed development at Hawn's Bridge Peninsula at Raystown Lake and write a letter to the editor expressing their opinion.

Students will learn about the water cycle, watersheds, and point and non-point source pollution. Students will then apply this knowledge to take a position in the debate about the proposed development at Hawn's Bridge Peninsula at Raystown Lake and write a letter to the editor expressing their opinion.

Students learn about the water cycle and its key components. First, they learn about the concept of a watershed and why it is important in the context of engineering hydrology. Then they learn how we can use the theory of conservation of mass to estimate the amount of water that enters a watershed (precipitation, groundwater flowing in) and exits a watershed (evaporation, runoff, groundwater out). Finally, students learn about runoff and how we visualize runoff in the form of hydrographs.

Not all students live on an ocean coast, but no matter where they live, all students are connected to the ocean via their local watershed. The Watershed Quest Unit is an integrated-curriculum unit that culminates with the creation of a watershed quest, a treasure hunt centered on a watershed in your community. The quest involves sharing and learning information about watersheds in general and about the watershed in the region where the students live.

In this activity students will explore the Delaware Bay Watershed by completing tasks for various websites.

Every step we take is in a watershed. Let's learn more about them! Check out the Stream Restoration Coordinator video to learn how scientists help improve stream health. Then, in the Discovery Challenge video, observe, investigate, and record information about your watershed from a distance and then really close up . Then, after learning a little more about watersheds, we will create models of watersheds and use those models to investigate how soil and chemicals might move through our watersheds.

This lesson introduces NGSS standards, and those standards are listed in the lesson and is part of the Explore Science Club series, an online Career Connected Learning program developed by the Greater Oregon STEM Hub. To learn more find us at: www.go-stem.org.

In this video segment from Planet H20: Water World, experts and teens inside and outside the Great Lakes watershed provide different perspectives on sharing the water from one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.