“Geography is linked to the environment,” says Connie Wyatt Anderson, of Canadian Geographic Education. “In the Lake Winnipeg watershed, what you throw into the Bow River in Calgary eventually ends up in Hudson Bay.”

Source: www.ijc.org

More than anything I love the idea of using watersheds to connect students to their location environment and to think about places that are beyond the backyard, but are connected to them.  If they see themselves as more intimately connected to these places, it can only increase their spatial awareness, geo-literacy and hopefully their commitment to protect their expanded backyard.   This is an effective way to help students ‘jump scale’ in a way that will still keep things relevant to their lives. 


Questions to Ponder: What watershed do you live in?  Where does your drinking water come from?  When you flush the toilet, where does it go? How are places in your watershed linked?  


Tags: Canada, environment, resources, water, environment depend, spatial, scale.