1. Using GIS For Middle School Lessons About Streams and Watersheds

2. Goals Develop a dataset and products to help middle school teachers and students in Fairfax County, Virginia, learn about stream systems and watersheds. Help students identify with the streams in their backyards (or the stream behind their middle school). Develop an understanding of how these streams fit into larger systems.

3. Objectives Create a stream and watershed dataset emphasizing stream systems in Fairfax County. Illustrate the nesting nature of watersheds – connect the streams in Fairfax County to the much larger Chesapeake Bay watershed. Illustrate the relationship between hydrologic features and political boundaries. Provide additional information that students can use to study stream systems, hydrology, and water quality. – stream gaging stations – weather stations – Locations of the middle schools

4. Principal Data Sources Hydrography: U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. National Hydrography Dataset. Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation Fairfax County Government Schools and Weather Stations Fairfax County Public Schools (Virginia). WeatherBug and WJLA Channel 7 (Weatherbug weather cameras and weather stations). StreetMapsUSA Gaging Stations U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. National Water Information Service. http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwishttp://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis

5. Techniques Used Extraction of subsets of data and dissolving shapefiles to identify specific watersheds and basins Reprojection of data to NAD Virginia State Plane North FIPS 4501 Geocoding Hyperlinks Color coding (browns for political jurisdictions, blues and greens for hydrographic data, and using transparent layers Setting variable display and label scales for different layers Liberal use of the description field in layer properties Personal Geodatabase Generation of four map products to depict lessons of scale

6. Watershed Hierarchy Watersheds selected that connect directly with the streamsheds in Fairfax County: – The Chesapeake Bay – The Potomac River Basin – The Two Middle Potomac basins on which the county sits – Fairfax County streams and streamsheds

11. Hyperlinks for USGS Gaging Stations

12. Hyperlinks to WeatherBug Stations

13. Geodatabase

14. Ideas for Building on to this Project Basic Work: Add topology to the stream network Add soils information Add more information on the larger waterbodies and mainstem of the Bay Analytical Projects: Model stream flow and sediment transport during storm events For students: Conduct stream sampling experiments and add data to database.

15. Other Educational Resources Smithsonian Environmental Research Center http://www.serc.si.edu/ USGS. http://water.usgs.gov/. Chesapeake Academic Resources for Teachers, Chesapeake Bay Program. http://chart.chesapeakebay.net/. http://chart.chesapeakebay.net/ Surf Your Watershed Program. U.S. EPA http://cfpub.epa.gov/surf/locate/in dex.cfm. http://cfpub.epa.gov/surf/locate/in dex.cfm Source: cooperative conservation america