Watershed area and discharge relationships
Steven Petsch, University of Massachusetts Amherst
This activity was selected for the On the Cutting Edge Exemplary Teaching Collection
Resources in this top level collection a) must have scored Exemplary or Very Good in all five review categories, and must also rate as "Exemplary" in at least three of the five categories. The five categories included in the peer review process are
- Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teachearth/activity_review.html.
Initial Publication Date: June 6, 2013
Summary
Students use USGS WaterData website to find data on area, average annual discharge and response to high-precip events in small watersheds in southern New England. Data for the class are compiled to generate graphs showing the regional relationships between (1) area and discharge, and (2) area and time-lag between precip and maximum discharge.
terms: discharge, watershed, flood
Context
Audience
undergraduate elective course in environmental geology
Skills and concepts that students must have mastered
retrieving data from a website
retrieving data from a graph
basic map skills (finding a location)
unit conversion/dimensional analysis
How the activity is situated in the course
This exercise is a stand-alone exercise that provides part of our discussion of the water cycle and local river systems.
Goals
Content/concepts goals for this activity
The main goal of this exercise is to understand the regional relationship between watershed area and river discharge. The secondary goal is to understand that the time/duration of high discharge events also scales with watershed size.
Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity
As the class's data are compiled, student can see first hand how well the data support their hypotheses. Outliers are examined in greater detail, to see if those watersheds differ (in land use, water management) from the main population.
Other skills goals for this activity
Description and Teaching Materials
In this activity, students are supplied a worksheet that walks through accessing and retrieving streamflow data from the USGS WaterData website. Students record their data on the worksheet. Students are asked to convert discharge from cfs to metric units, and to scale up average discharge in volume/second to annual discharge. Students bring their worksheets to class to supply specific data: watershed area, annual discharge, maximum discharge following a precip event, and time lag between min and maximum discharge in response to a precip event. In class, we compile these data, and generate three graphs that show watershed area (x-axis) against (a) annual discharge, (b) max discharge following a storm, and (c) time in hours for a storm to be expressed in high discharge.
Student Worksheet for Watershed Area/Discharge Assignment (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 127kB Apr15 13)
Teaching Notes and Tips
This exercise can be ended following question #12. This limits the hypotheses to the first one: correlation between watershed area and discharge. If there has been a large precipitation event in the days/weeks before this exercise is assigned, students should continue with the entire worksheet to explore the 2nd and 3rd hypotheses.
Assessment
If the students come to class prepared to share the required data, and the data are in appropriate units and on reasonable scale, then they have successfully completed the exercise. This exercise could be completed as a lab section or in a computer lab, if instructor supervision is needed.
References and Resources
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