Watersheds at Work
In a changing climate, watershed disturbances such as drought, large-scale wildfires, and extreme rainfall patterns are on the rise, particularly in the southwestern U.S. Yet, at high-school grade levels, hydrology and watershed science get minimal coverage in classrooms. To address this situation, we developed a set of student investigations that use spatial visualization technology to study the affect of natural and human-induced disturbances on watershed hydrology.

Unit 1 - Discovering Watersheds: Variability and vulnerability across landscapes

Students explore the environment and vulnerabilities of three watersheds situated in different environments and geographical locations in the U.S. One such watershed is the small, snowmelt-dominated Loch Vale watershed, situated within the Big Thompson watershed in the Mississippi Basin. Students can discover the snow-covered terrain, vegetation, glaciers and tarns, alpine lakes, and creeks using Google Earth, imported GIS layers, and photographs linked to the images. In this way, Google Earth acts as a "telescope", allowing students to examine the watersheds from a national perspective, then narrowing the scale to the small-watershed and pictorial perspectives. Students also explore a semi-arid watershed in the Colorado River basin and a humid, agricultural watershed in the Great Lakes region. In this unit, students will:

Unit 2- An Evolving Watershed: A case-history of Sabino Canyon

Students focus on the 2003 Aspen Fire in southern Arizona. After learning about the physical characteristics and devastation from the Aspen Fire, students are introduced to the geological events that occurred in the canyon in the summer of 2006. After 5 consecutive days and nights of heavy rainfall in the front range of the Catalina Mountains, over 250 slope failures (and 18 subsequently large debris flows) wreaked havoc along the canyon walls and in the drainage, causing watershed instability in Sabino Canyon and destroying much of the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. We structured these investigations around recent hydrologic, geologic, and fire data collected by USGS, USFS, and University of Arizona scientists. In this unit, students will: