Principle of Watershed Management
Watershed management approaches are evolving throughout the country and are being
used to address watersheds that have multiple problems. Based on successful watershed
management efforts like these across the country, this tutorial presents four core principles
of watershed management:
1. Watersheds are natural systems that we can work with.
2. Watershed management is continuous and needs a multi-disciplinary approach.
3. A watershed management framework supports partnering, using sound science, taking
well-planned actions and achieving results.
4. A flexible approach is always needed.
Principle 1
a. Delineating the Watershed
A watershed is simply the land that water flows across or through on its way to a common
stream, river, or lake. A watershed can be very large (e.g. draining thousands of square
miles to a major river or lake or the ocean), or very small, such as a 20-acre watershed that
drains to a pond. A small watershed that nests inside of a larger watershed is sometimes
referred to as a sub watershed.
You can delineate a watershed (or many watersheds) on topographic (topo) maps using
symbols for important entities: lines symbolizing water and elevation contour lines
indicating areas of equal height above sea level. Since water flows downhill from higher
elevations to a common body of water, to delineate the watershed boundary for a particular
place on a stream or lake, you will need to draw a line along the ridgetops connecting the
highest elevation points surrounding the lake or stream. Fortunately, there are maps and
computer databases you can turn to that have watershed boundaries already
delineated–particularly for larger basins and watersheds. What pops up is the watershed
boundary with major streams, lakes and cities in the watershed highlighted. Some experts
like to categorize the hydrography or water bodies within a watershed by a classification
system referred to as stream order. For example, when a stream first begins, it is called a
first order stream. When two first-order streams join, the water below the junction is called
a second order stream, etc. In this classification system, the next higher order stream is
formed when two of the immediately lower order streams have joined. We often talk about
three management zones when discussing watershed management–the waterbody,
riparian, and upland zones. Waterbody is a term that includes any stream, river, pond, lake,
estuary or ocean. The riparian zone is defined as the non-cultivated, vegetated area
between the waterbody edge and the upland area. Riparian means “of the river” and the
