Using GIS For Middle School Lessons About Streams and Watersheds

Goals

Develop a dataset and products to help middle school teachers and students in Fairfax County, Virginia, learn about stream systems and watersheds.

Help students identify with the streams in their backyards (or the stream behind their middle school).

Develop an understanding of how these streams fit into larger systems.

Objectives

Create a stream and watershed dataset emphasizing stream systems in Fairfax County.

Illustrate the nesting nature of watersheds– connect the streams in Fairfax County to the much larger

Chesapeake Bay watershed. Illustrate the relationship between hydrologic features and

political boundaries. Provide additional information that students can use to study

stream systems, hydrology, and water quality.– stream gaging stations – weather stations – Locations of the middle schools

Principal Data Sources

Hydrography: U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. National Hydrography

Dataset. Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation Fairfax County Government

Schools and Weather Stations Fairfax County Public Schools (Virginia). WeatherBug and WJLA Channel 7 (Weatherbug weather cameras and

weather stations). StreetMapsUSA

Gaging Stations U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. National Water Information

Service. http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis

Techniques Used

Extraction of subsets of data and dissolving shapefiles to identify specific watersheds and basins

Reprojection of data to NAD Virginia State Plane North FIPS 4501

Geocoding Hyperlinks Color coding (browns for political jurisdictions, blues and

greens for hydrographic data, and using transparent layers Setting variable display and label scales for different layers Liberal use of the description field in layer properties Personal Geodatabase Generation of four map products to depict lessons of scale

Watershed Hierarchy

Watersheds selected that connect directly with the streamsheds in Fairfax County:– The Chesapeake Bay – The Potomac River Basin– The Two Middle Potomac basins on which the

county sits– Fairfax County streams and streamsheds

Hyperlinks for USGS Gaging Stations

Hyperlinks to WeatherBug Stations

Geodatabase

Ideas for Building on to this Project

Basic Work: Add topology to the stream network Add soils information Add more information on the larger waterbodies and

mainstem of the BayAnalytical Projects: Model stream flow and sediment transport during

storm eventsFor students: Conduct stream sampling experiments and add data

to database.

Other Educational Resources

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center http://www.serc.si.edu/

USGS. http://water.usgs.gov/. Chesapeake Academic

Resources for Teachers, Chesapeake Bay Program. http://chart.chesapeakebay.net/.

Surf Your Watershed Program. U.S. EPA http://cfpub.epa.gov/surf/locate/index.cfm.

Source: cooperative conservation america