Talk:Watershed

The Atlantic drains into the Mediterinian because there is more evapuration in comparisson to what is comming into it throug rivers and rainfall. Therefor is also running water from the Atlantic into the Mediterinian. Ther was once an utopic projekt for hydropower between the Atlantic and the Mediterinian.

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Is the double definition of "watershed" currently appearing here -- basin / catchment area AND dividing-line between basins / catchment areas -- really tenable? (The latter definition is the one I was taught at school.) To use both in one article is, surely, asking for trouble. Would be much obliged if any professional geographers/hydrographers cared to comment. -- Picapica 21:29, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Not a professional hydrographer etc., but I'm more familiar with the latter definition too. I'm tempted to move this article over to water basin. —Ashley Y 01:13, 2004 Jun 25 (UTC)

My Canadian Oxford gives both definitions, and in fact it is the "dividing line" definition that is new to me. I've always heard the word used as in "we're in the Saint Lawrence watershed" or "Rupert's Land occupied the watershed of Hudson Bay." - Montréalais 04:12, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Current usage is watershed for the drainage area feeding a water body. With watershed divide referring to the topographically high region separating watersheds. As you drive through the Rockies you see a sign that announces Continental Divide - not Continental Watershed. --Vsmith 15:37, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Language changes over time. If you have ever heard the usage "it was a watershed moment," you can infer the original meaning of the word watershed. I will quote a passage from Collier's New Encyclopedia published in 1921:

"The series of convergent slopes down which a river system flows—the land which it drains—forming its basin or catchment area, and the name watershed is also sometimes erroneously applied to it. The names watershed, waterparting, and divide are used to designate the boundary line separating adjacent basins."

—Mike 05:34, Nov 13, 2004 (UTC)

"water basin" is unambiguous, isn't it? Perhaps we should move it for that. —Ashley Y 06:24, 2004 Nov 13 (UTC)

I repeat: current usage - by earth science professionals - is watershed for the drainage area feeding a water body. A simple Google search will verify this. The following is a quote from EPA website:

A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is:

"that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."

Do your own searching, you might learn something about current usage. I am a geologist and an educator. If you move it to water basin, I will move it right back. -Vsmith 14:24, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Basin is an unambiguous term. Your usage of watershed only applies to US English (all the quotes in the OED for that meaning are from American publications) and looks confusing to other English speakers. Furthermore, the order of definitions in the OED may indicate which one is principal: the first definition given is "The line separating the waters flowing into different rivers or river basins; a narrow elevated tract of ground between two drainage areas", for which it offers "water-parting" as an alternative (although this sounds like a too literal translation of the French "ligne de partage des eaux" to me), whilst "The whole gathering ground of a river system." is the fourth definition, qualified with "loosely". For sake of completeness, a disambiguation page should be set up and a new article started for the sixth meaning, "A shed used as a wash-house" ;-). In all seriousness, this article needs splitting into two - one entitled "Basin (geography)", noting the US usage of "watershed" for this feature; the other entitled "Water-parting", noting both the British "watershed" and the US "Continental divide" (small "d" version of the article).

Perhaps you don't realise quite how little your version of the term "watershed" is understood outside your own boundaries - if you look at the figurative sense in <A href="http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/WoPEc/data/Papers/nbrnberwo5963.html">this paper</A>, you will see that academics in Britain likewise cannot conceive of anyone meaning anything other than a dividing line by "watershed". Likewise, if you look at the tables/pictures part of <a href="http://www.bopcris.ac.uk/bopall/ref17336.html">this summary</A>, you will see that the water authorities also hold the definition of a watershed being a dividing line. 82.36.26.229 19:33, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Usage of "watershed" seems to vary between English dialects. I'm a native speaker of New Zealand English, and watershed sounds foreign/American to me (except in the watershed moment sense). In my NZ Oxford dictionary, "watershed" is given just two meanings: one being watershed divide, and the other being a turning point in events. I suspect that professional usage, as in many disciplines, has followed typical American usage here. (Is anyone here familiar with general British or Australian usage?) Catchment area (or catchment for short) is the term I find most natural. I could also use catchment basin or drainage basin (but not water basin, which sounds more like something in a bathroom or laundry to me). Searching for "catchment" on Wikipedia reveals that many of our articles use this word, so I have added redirects to this article from Catchment and Catchment area. I would also be very tempted to change the introductory text "or water basin" to "or catchment area"; any thoughts on this? Avenue 04:23, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PS - searching Wikipedia for "water basin" finds seven other articles using this phrase. Only three use the term to mean "watershed". (All of these refer to European lakes/lagoons/rivers, which makes me wonder if it's a literal translation from German/Dutch.) Avenue 04:59, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, it's definitely standard British English. 82.36.26.229 19:33, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Given the ambiguity, should this be renamed water basin, which is unambiguous? —Ashley Y 00:42, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

No. Check Google - there is no ambiguity, 95%+ watershed = drainage basin. Language changes. I see no hits on first ten google result pages that would indicate use as drainage divide. -Vsmith 02:26, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There certainly is ambiguity. The websites in Google are all American, while in British English, a watershed is a divide between water basins. —Ashley Y 03:05, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

Then perhaps the British should get busy and make some web sites :-) As I said the language is changing and the British do not have a monopoly on the language. I submit that the current dominant usage both popular and scientific is watershed = water basin. I just a bit ago created a water basin article stub to help with clarification (I hoped) only to have it almost immediately changed into a redirect here by some Australian chap ... hmm. -Vsmith 03:50, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Americans do not have a monopoly on language either. "Water shed" is ambiguous, having different meanings in American and British English. "Water basin" is unambiguous. —Ashley Y 04:41, 2005 Jun 14 (UTC)

"Water basin" is very much ambiguous. See [1] (http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/stone-water-basins.html) for photos illustrating another meaning, which is the dominant meaning for some native speakers of English. In my dialect (New Zealand English), I believe catchment area is the dominant noun phrase for the subject of our article, and using either watershed or "water basin" in this sense would gather puzzled looks. - Avenue 22:34, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Watersheds in the curriculum

Does this section really belong in an encyclopedia article? Which curriculum? Which country? And surely the vast majority of articles in Wikipedia cover topics that are present in the curriculum of some educational establishment, somewhere in the world? --Lancevortex 23:01, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I do not think it does belong here, and so I've been bold and removed it. Worldtraveller 11:34, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)