Where Did the Water Go?: Watershed Study

In this task, students will demonstrate their understanding of the water cycle by considering the inputs and outputs of water as it moves through a watershed in New York state.  The students start with a simple model dominated by one input and one output. Students begin by calculating the volume of water entering a small watershed as precipitation over the course of one year and the amount of water that exited from that watershed via the outflow stream over the same amount of time.  Through their calculations, students find that that some of the water has gone “missing”, and reconsider their model throughout the task to account for the missing water by including outputs not initially included in the starting model, such as loss of water to evapotranspiration.