Know Your Watersheds. Page: 2
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From Sky to Land
For most of us, obtaining water is a simple thing. One twist
of the faucet and-presto-pure, clean water. Backing up
the faucet, however, are the pipe and conduit, the lake or
reservoir, the stream, the land itself. In a very real sense,
the land is the source of the water we use. It is the vast
natural reservoir that collects and stores the water as it falls
from the sky in the form of rain or snow. The choice is our
own, whether the land produces good, clear water or poor,
muddy water.
Nature's Water Factory-the Watershed
Simply stated, a watershed, or drainage basin, is an area of
land from which a stream gets its supply of water. The watershed
may be as small as a farm or as large as several States.
It is more than a combination of hills and valleys and streams,
forest, grass, farm crops, and the soil beneath. A large watershed
also includes the cities, roads, people, and animals. For
there is an interrelation among all things, animate and inanimate,
on a watershed which bears heavily on the yield of water
from the land.
How the Watershed Operates
Suppose we start off with a watershed in effective working
condition, yielding the best possible supply of clear water.
Plant growth is present here in good measure. The leaves and
branches of trees, shrubs, grass, or other plants help break the
force of the falling rain. Together with the plant litter on
the ground, they keep the rain from loosening the soil particles
and splashing them about, thus causing them to seal up the
myriad pores in the soil surface. All the while the various
plant and other organic materials are rotting and working into
the ground, ever improving the spongy, porous nature of the
soil.
Along the channels in the soil that are made by the roots
of the plants and the burrowing animals and insects, the water
seeps to lower and lower levels. In effect, the trees, brush, and
other plant growth and their litter combine to stop the water
from running off the surface rapidly and washing soil away.
They help it instead to sink into the ground.
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United States. Forest Service. Know Your Watersheds., book, September 1957; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1804/m1/4/: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.