Unit Warm-Up
To get you thinking about the topic of this unit, watch the movie and think about the fate of water that hits Earth’s surface as precipitation. You can download a video guide to take notes as you watch the tutorial. After the watching the tutorial, see if you can answer the questions.
Tutorial: Natural Focus: Welcome to the Watershed!
The movie showed how water runs over the land, including the water in rivers and streams? Where does this water come from?
The water comes from precipitation and is known as runoff.
At the end of the clip you saw how water poured on two adjacent areas flowed in two different directions. What could explain this difference?
The two areas were opposite sides of a high point in elevation. Water poured on one side of the hill will flow down one direction and water poured on the other side of the hill will flow down the other direction. The hill was not that large, but any difference in elevation causes water to flow in different directions.
