Full-color friendly poster, provides an overview of a watershed and the roles that we can play to protect as well as enjoy the environment around us.
Phases of Watershed Management
Phase 1: ASSESSMENT
- Gather your neighbors to share their values and discuss concerns about community resources.
- Work with professionals and volunteers to inventory all natural resources in the watershed.
- Focus on areas that have been threatened or degraded. Soil erosion, increased water flow and poor habitat are indicators of changing conditions.
- Include high quality areas in your inventory. An evaluation of their productivity can help you establish your overall goals.
- Use your assessment information to establish a baseline for the condition of the resources. Continued discussions help reveal public opinion and integrate different values, concerns and interests.
Phase 2: PLANNING
- Ask local businesses to help in the process. Industry is too often an untapped source of expert opinion and innovative solutions.
- Welcome enthusiastic younger citizens to your watershed team. Their ideas can help determine the quality of life for them and their children.
- Set goals and objectives for the watershed management plan - that's the community's most important task. Involve everyone.
- Establish clear measures of success so you will know when you've met your management goals and objectives.
- Once you are near consensus, it's time to put everything down on paper - to develop a comprehensive management plan for the entire watershed.
Phase 3: IMPLEMENTATION and EVALUATION
- Develop local ordinances to protect the resources in your watershed. Public awareness programs help ensure their enforcement.
- Encourage developers to construct new buildings in phases. Preventing the degradation of natural resources is the most environmentally sound and cost-effective approach to watershed management.
- Use conservation easements on agricultural lands to minimize pollution and create open spaces.
- Adopt one of the many new alternatives to waste disposal. Recycling provides new products, and composting yard waste increases soil productivity. Other materials may require proper disposal.
- Undertake extensive restoration efforts as needed. In-lake restoration efforts should always be complemented with watershed management.
- Stabilize streambanks and replace pools and riffles to provide habitat for fish, waterfowl and other wildlife.
- Wetlands enhancement helps protect water quality and has other environmental, economic and social benefits.
- Lands that were previously cleared can be reforested to protect natural resources and provide habitat.
- Finding out how people feel about the watershed is one way to measure success. Do they like it better? How do they contribute? Will their support continue?
- Successful watershed management protects many beneficial uses: water consumption, recreation, fishing, swimming and ecological integrity.
LEGEND / ROLES
• Mayor/Legislator – Blue
• Field Environmentalist – Green
• Citizen – Yellow
• Planner – Red
• Construction Worker – Orange
• Ag/Farmer – Brown
• Teacher – Purple
• Business Professional – Black
POSTER Descriptions: to help you decide on what poster — here's a PDF that has a description for all 7 posters.
Below are a couple questions asked by customers that you might find useful:
Where do I get my posters printed? Here are a few economical places we found:
• Fedex/Kinkos: https://www.fedex.com/en-us/office.html
• Costco: https://www.costcophotocenter.com/
• Walmart: https://www.photoprints.app/
• Sams Club: https://photo.samsclub.com/home.aspx
How do I convert my downloadable poster PDF file to a JPG file?
Open your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat. Go to FILE, click on Export To, choose Image, choose JPEG and save your JPEG file. Some photo centers will not accept PDF files, so you may need to convert to JPEG.
