1. Water Cycle & Watersheds

4. Evaporation
Heat energy from the sun causes water in puddles, streams, rivers, seas or lakes to change from a liquid to a water vapor.
The vapor rises into the air and collects in clouds.  

5. Condensation
Water vapor collects in clouds. As the clouds cool the water vapor condenses into water drops.

6. Precipitation
Water falls to the earth from clouds- mainly as rain, but sometimes as snow, sleet, or hail.

7. Transpiration
Transpiration is the process by which plants lose water out of their leaves. 
Transpiration gives evaporation a bit of a hand in getting the water vapor back up into the air.

8. Condensation Transpiration Precipitation Evaporation The Clouds form
The movement through plants
Precipitation
The rain falls
Evaporation
The vapor rises

9. What is a watershed?
A watershed is an area of land from which all runoff drains, or 'sheds' to the same river, lake, or other body of water.
Runoff-Water travels downhill and enters into rivers and lakes.
When it rains or snows, where does the water go? Into a “watershed.” Some of the water that falls is stored in the land, some of it evaporates away, and the rest follows the slope of the land to a common river, lake, or other body of water.

11. Everyone lives in a watershed!
You don’t need to visit the Grand Canyon to see a watershed.
Your own backyard is part of a watershed.
Everyone lives in a watershed – Your own backyard is part of a watershed. Down the street, there may be a small creek or drainage ditch, which will eventually lead to a larger stream, river, pond, or lake. This means that what happens in your backyard, and your neighbor’s backyard, affects your whole environmental neighborhood!
You’re already in one!

12. The System of Watersheds
Watersheds are like pieces of a puzzle:
Each is part of a larger picture or mosaic.
“Watershed” is a relative term – a watershed can drain an area as small as a few city blocks, or as large as an entire geographical region, such as the Ohio River Basin. Smaller watersheds come together to form larger watersheds, much like puzzle pieces fit together to create a larger picture.

13. A Nested System
Larger watersheds contain smaller watersheds, which contain even smaller ones.
Another way of looking at watersheds is that they are a nested system – larger watersheds encompass many smaller watersheds. For example, the “Lena Gulch” watershed in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain Foothills drains only 14 square miles of land, but the water from Lena Gulch eventually combines with water from numerous other small watersheds in the central U.S. to form the very large Missouri River Basin.

14. The largest watershed in the United States is known as the: The Mississippi River Watershed

15. Watershed “Addresses”
Just as our homes have street addresses, our neighborhood watersheds have environmental addresses.
(Click the map to open a web browser to the USGS Locate your Watershed website, where you can drill down to specific watersheds in your broadcast area.)
(Note that an Internet connection is required.)

16. Where does our water come from?
All of our freshwater starts as precipitation, which moves continually through the hydrologic cycle.
Condensation
Precipitation
Snowmelt
Springs
Infiltration into the ground
Streams and rivers
Lakes
(Click this picture to link out to a local web page containing an animated version of the hydrologic cycle.)
All of our freshwater starts out as rain or snow, which moves through the “hydrologic cycle.” When rain or snow falls, some of it soaks into the ground, replenishing groundwater supplies in natural, underground storage areas called “aquifers.” Some of the water also runs over the land into streams, rivers, and lakes. Both groundwater and surface waters eventually drain to the ocean. When water evaporates and condenses, the cycle begins again with rain or snowfall.
Evaporation
Aquifers
Ocean Storage
Groundwater flow to oceans

17. Surface water & ground water
Ground Water- flows underground as springs or underground rivers. Water underground is stored in an aquifer.
Surface Water- water on the surface of the earth
A closer look at surface waters (streams, rivers, and lakes) and groundwater reveals an interconnected system. Streams, rivers, and lakes help to replenish groundwater supplies in aquifers, while groundwater flows up into surface water bodies. During dry times, surface waters can be derived almost completely from groundwater supplies.

18. Aquifers
Aquifer: an underground body of saturated rock or sediment through which water can move easily
Surface water and ground water form an interconnected system- surface water recharges aquifers, while ground water also flows up into surface water bodies (lakes, rivers, etc).

19. What is a Water Table?
Water Table-The water table is the underground depth at which point the ground is totally saturated with water.
Much of the Earth's water is actually locked up underground!
When underground water deposits are large enough to be considered usable, they are known as aquifers.

20. Water Table
The water table could also be thought of as the top “line” of the aquifer.