The following appeared in The Northeast Georgian August 1, 2003.  Reprinted with permission by The Northeast Georgian. 

Rivers, streams, branches, brooks, creeks, and tributaries. There are literally hundreds of words that describe water, and most of them role easily off the tongue and conjure up images of your favorite childhood stomping ground. There is one, however, that causes folks to pause, scratch their head, and wonder what exactly it means. That word is “watershed.”

Common sense would lead one to think a “watershed” is a newfangled way to describe the old outhouse, and perhaps a hundred years ago that was all a “watershed” could have been.  Today, we use the word “watershed” to describe the land area that drains waters to a common river. This short definition, while useful, usually fails to capture the fascinating and complex relationship between water and the land around it.

A simple way to create a mental picture of how a watershed works is to hold your hands in front of you in a cup shape as if you were going to drink from them. As you look at your hands you’ll notice that where your middle fingers rest is the highest point in the bowl and where your hands meet near your wrist is the lowest point. Now if there were a miniature rainstorm parked right above your cupped hands, the tiny raindrops, no matter where they fell, would eventually flow towards the center, and right out of your hands at your wrist. The center of your hands represents the winding course of a river and all the little rivulets of raindrops are creeks and tributaries that feed this river. This straightforward image describes how every river in the world works.

There is a simple expression used by carpenters, farmers, and others that goes, “Water always finds the lowest point.” I’ve always liked this saying because it describes perfectly how watersheds work. Each little raindrop, whether it lands on the tips of your fingers, or right smack into the river itself, will eventually flow right out of your hands at what is called the mouth of the river. The term “mouth of the river” seems like an odd word to signify the end of a river, but remember that each river “feeds” something else, whether it is another river or eventually the ocean.

At the opposite end of the river’s mouth rests the “headwaters” of a watershed. Notice how the fingers of your hands form steep slopes. This is the highest point of a watershed, and water flows quickly down these steep slopes, gathering both in speed and volume.  The headwaters are where a river first begins. Each small brook and branch quickly come together and form the river’s “mainstem.”

There is one notion of a watershed that is the hardest to grasp. A watershed is not just a river, or even the culmination of all of its creeks, branches and brooks. The watershed is your hands themselves. In other words, when you think of a watershed, more than anything else, picture a watershed as the land.

Watersheds are the sum total of the lands from which they flow. If your watershed drains from a healthy forest, then your water will be clean and clear. If your watershed drains from a dense urbanized area, then your water may be something less than clean and clear.

What is interesting about watersheds is that even if you don’t live right next to a creek or river, everyone lives in a watershed. So ask yourself, “What watershed do I live in?”

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Justin Ellis was the Executive Director of the SRWA from 2002-2004.  As of 2009, he was enrolled in a PhD program in Ecology at the University of Georgia.

• Visit the Geography/Hydrology pages for more information on the Soque River watershed.

• The Sections & Tributaries pages provide detailed information and images of each sub-basin.

• The links listed on the Watersheds resource page and the Citizen Action page provide additional online access to information about watersheds and how to protect them.