To find your watershed, rollover where you live on the map above or click on name of your town listed on the right and you'll be able to see the shape of your watershed.


What is a watershed?

No matter where you live in the world, you live in a "watershed." You're sitting in a watershed right now.

A watershed is bordered by higher ground, and since water runs downhill a watershed can be defined by the area of land that catches rain and snow and drains or seeps into a common point. Watersheds can drain into a marsh, stream, river, lake, ocean, or even into the groundwater. Homes, farms, ranches, forests, small towns, big cities and open land can all be part of watersheds.

Some watersheds cut across county, state, and even international borders, and may be millions of acres in size like the Mississippi River watershed. Smaller watersheds can be nested into larger watersheds, just as creeks drain into rivers, and rivers run to the ocean. The United States has been divided into a series of smaller and smaller watersheds, and each has been given a Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC). The HUC for the major watersheds of the Kansas River are given under the name of the watershed.