1 / 32

New Mexico Watershed Watch

New Mexico Watershed Watch. School Name. What is a watershed?. What is a watershed?. What is a watershed?. What is your watershed address?. What types of connections exist within watersheds?. Community settlement often near water sources Surface water and groundwater

baird
Download Presentation

New Mexico Watershed Watch

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. New Mexico Watershed Watch School Name

  2. What is a watershed?

  3. What is a watershed?

  4. What is a watershed?

  5. What is your watershed address?

  6. What types of connections exist within watersheds? • Community settlement often near water sources • Surface water and groundwater • Upstream and downstream

  7. Surface Water and Groundwater Connections

  8. Hydraulic Conductivity

  9. Surface Water and Groundwater Connections • Septic tanks can pollute groundwater • Over-pumping from wells can diminish water in streams

  10. How might upstream users impact downstream users?

  11. How might upstream users impact downstream users?

  12. Watershed Management • How do we assess and learn what is happening in our watershed? • How do we test if the watershed is healthy?

  13. Chemistry • Turbidity • Temperature • pH • Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) • Nutrients (Nitrogen and Phosphorus)

  14. Turbidity • Measurement of how clear or cloudy water is depending on suspended solids. • How much light is able to pass through?

  15. Temperature • Why is water temperature important to fish or other aquatic life?

  16. pH • Acidic vs basic • Pure water = pH of 7.0 • Rainwater = pH of 5.6 • pH of 6.6 to 8.8 is optimal for most species

  17. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) • Inorganic salts (calcium, magnesium, bicarbonates, etc) • Organic matter • Hard vs Soft water • We measure TDS by looking at how water conducts electricity

  18. Nutrients • Nitrogen • Phosphorus • Too much nutrients cause algae blooms • When the algae die, oxygen gets too low for fish

  19. Biology • Benthic macro-invertebrates • Vegetation diversity • Vegetation buffer width

  20. Benthic Macro-invertebrates (water insects) • Benthic = “bottom dwelling” • Invertebrate = “without a spine” • Some water insects are very sensitive, they can’t handle pollution they tell us if the water has been clean

  21. Vegetation Diversity and Buffer Width • Shading • Filtration of erosion and other pollutants • Bank stabilization • Improved habitat

  22. Physical • Stream-flow/Discharge • Distance of river to nearest disturbance • Rock embeddedness

  23. Stream-flow • How much water (volume) is passing a point in time. • Cubic feet/sec; Cubic meters/sec

  24. Stream-flow

  25. Monitoring at Frijoles Canyon • What is the condition of surface water in Frijoles Canyon at Bandelier National Park?

  26. Monitoring at Frijoles Canyon • Temperature • Turbidity • pH • Total Dissolved Solids • Nutrients • Riparian habitat assessment • Benthic macro-invertebrates • Streamflow

  27. Monitoring at Frijoles Canyon • Warm clothing • Good shoes • Water bottle Have fun & be safe!

More Related