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What is a watershed?
A watershed is the area of land where all of the water
that is under it or drains off it goes into the same place. John
Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed
is:
"that area of land, a bounded hydrologic
system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their
common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded
that they become part of a community"
Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They cross
county, state, and national boundaries. No matter where you are, you're in
a watershed!
Scientists use watershed identification
numbers called Hydrologic Unit Codes (HUCs), to describe the
different scales of watersheds. Within the HUC system, the U.S. is divided
and sub-divided into successively smaller watersheds or basins. As the
Watersheds get smaller, the descriptive and unique HUC number gets larger.
Dallas County can be divided into 4 8-digit HUCs or 14 14-digit HUCs. Click
here to view: Dallas County's Hydrologic Unit Code Map |