A watershed is an area of land that drains into a common body of water. In the first picture, you can see a model of a watershed. It displays a small town with houses, a factory, a forest, roads, bridges, a farm, and freshwater bodies. Once it precipitates over this land, the water will eventually flow to the water bodies, just like in our real life watersheds. We all live in a watershed; the rain that flows onto the land outside of our houses all ends up in a certain stream, river, or lake. 

Our second pictures shows a polluted watershed. Watersheds can be polluted with oil and gasoline from cars, anima waste from pets and livestock, road salt, sediment/dirt, pesticides and herbicides, and litter. When there is pollution in our watershed and it starts to rain, this pollution will runoff with the rain into our waterbodies. This is called non-point source pollution because the pollution is coming from many different places, not just one. This runoff will leave our freshwater bodies polluted, harming all living things who live in the water body and depend on the water body.  

We need to alter our behaviors in order to prevent our water bodies from becoming polluted with non-point source pollution. Watch the Video below for the demonstration and try to think of ways we can reduce pollution in our watershed!

A special thank you to Elise Hoffman, Spring House Photography, for capturing and donating all the "Go Green with Hope" Images featured on this webpage