A watershed is a geographic area of land bounded by topographic features that drain waters to a shared body of water, such as a lake, stream, river, or bay. Not only does a watershed drain the water, it also captures precipitation, filters and stores water, and determines its release. A watershed, therefore, is a drainage basin that divides the landscape into hydrological defined areas. Within the watershed, like the Ausable River Watershed, there are many distinctive living and non-living features whose functioning is inter-related.
What is a Watershed? (PDF)
A person's actions within a watershed can both positively and negatively affect the river
and everything living in or around the river system. Water moves downstream in a watershed flowing in a path of least resistance. Any activity that affects water quality, quantity, or rate of movement at one location, therefore, can change the characteristics of the watershed at locations downstream. These negative impacts also influence all plants and wildlife living downstream. At the same time, good practices, such as fencing cows out of the river or maintaining a vegetative buffer along a river or stream can benefit the people, plants, and animals that depend on the river. Thus, everyone living or working within a watershed needs to cooperate to assure good watershed conditions.
What do we know about the Ausable River Watershed? Fact Sheet (PDF)
- The watershed also contains the following nationally ranked scientific investigation stations:
- One of two mountain cloud monitoring stations (Clingman’s Dome, in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, is the only other station in the US!)
- Three of the fifty-two lakes monitored by the Adirondack Lakes Survey for acid rain affects lie within the Ausable Watershed
- One of three federally funded atmospheric deposition stations,
- One of five NYS DEC rainfall monitoring stations located in the Adirondack Park,
- One, real time, USGS stream gauging station is located on the river below Au Sable Forks. Check out the flow at: Flow rates
