Watershed

The Watershed gives life to its surroundings. It provides a drink, food, household needs, and even the power industry. However, due to the imbalance usage of it, raging floods, flush pollutants, and soil into rivers and streams are now more inevitable. Listed below are some activities we do that inflicts harm on the watershed.

1) Improper usage and application of fertilizers and manure for lawns or crops.

Disproportionate application of fertilizers leads to eutrophication. Fertilizers contain substances involving nitrates and phosphorus that are flooded into lakes and oceans through rains and sewage, which in turn creates alga blooms. The eutrophication process turns the water green, clouds the water, causes odor problems, and depletes the oxygen for fish and other species, effectively suffocating them

2) Transportation

Transportation can affect water quality directly or indirectly by either road construction maintenance that can adversely affect water quality due to faster rates of runoff, lower groundwater recharge rates, and increased erosion. Pollutants from cars deposited to roadways and other impervious surfaces. Storage tanks that release petroleum to groundwater and oil spill that affect the water quality of inland waterways and coastal areas.

3) Sewage spills, household and animal waste, yard waste disposed of in streams

Waste that is thrown into roadside dumps for decades may have nutrients that can affect our watershed once runoff occurs. Roadside dumps are a form of illegal dumping wherein wastes are disposed of in a dump that might be adversely affecting a local watershed or drinking water supply.

4) Power plants and industrial discharges.

Polluted water had an impact on the quality of life and incomes of nearby residents, posing a threat to public health. Excessive nutrient runoff in waterways can impact drinking water supplies and, in some cases, cause severe health problems. This is due to industrial pollution where it is one of the leading causes of water pollution that destroys the watershed.

5) Dams and levees

While dams and levees can benefit society, they cause considerable harm to rivers. Dams have depleted fisheries, degraded river ecosystems, and changed recreational occasions on all of the rivers. Some common ways dams and levees inflict threat to the rivers are (1) they prevent fish mitigation, (2) they slow the river, (3) dams also change the way rivers function, and (4) dams had an impact on the water quality.

6) Illegal logging and deforestation

If illegal logging practices occur at a large destructive scale, it can lead to the conversion of forests to grassland and to the depletion of plant and animal species. If illegal logging occurs in protected areas, rare plants and animals may become threatened

7) Riparian Loss

These activities include clearing or mowing of vegetation up to stream banks that result in the increased water temperature, greater pollution input, less groundwater recharge, greater erosion potential from stream banks and it alters community composition.

8) Stream Channel Alteration

Dramatic alteration of biological communities can cause thermal loading and sediment problems.

9) Sediment

During the rainy season, sediments from poorly managed construction sites may be washed and brought to rivers when runoff occurs.

10) Thermal Loading

These activities involve water impoundments (lakes or ponds), runoff from hot paved surfaces in which sensitive species may lose.

References:

Human Impacts Upon Watersheds. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://loudounwildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SM_Human_Impacts.pdf

The Effects of Human Activity on Surface and Ground Water in a Watershed.

(n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.allenisd.org/cms/lib/TX01001197/Centricity

/Domain/1400/WatershedKiser2015.pdf?fbclid=IwAR39JyFHqnk3KzW0hpHkRDwqretTSzHKme0lOSFAh3Sj55Yk7s26CXbIGQM

good day fam, I'll posting another article about on how can we protect our watershed. emjoy reading!