Watersheds

Catalog description

Prerequisite: a prior physics course or equivalent or permission of the instructor A watershed is an area of land (and the ground that underlies it) that drains to a common outlet. This simple concept provides a critically important framework for understanding our most important water-management issues, along with many processes in environmental science and ecology. Watersheds can be defined across a range of spatial scales—from a suburban parking lot to the drainage basin of the Amazon River—and their diverse forms and characteristics represent a variety of climates, land-use practices, and topographies. In this course, we will learn how watersheds are delineated. The course will explore the flow of surface water through watersheds, covering topics such as precipitation, evapotranspiration, infiltration, and stream and river networks. In spring, students will build on this foundation to study groundwater flow and estuaries, along with topics in watershed management such as water infrastructure, urbanization, interbasin transfers, flooding, water quality, and the impacts of global climate change on hydrologic processes. Along with indoor seminars and data analysis activities, the course will include field visits to local waterways and water infrastructure sites. As the course will include problem sets, prior experience in algebra and geometry is required. This course is part of the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collaborative on the Environment (SLICE) and will participate in interdisciplinary events and/or collaborative projects with other SLICE students. Pollution