Living Watershed Sand Table
A watershed is a connected system in which slope routes conserved water, flow transports and stores sediment, bank processes reshape channels, and interventions trade water timing, location, and exposure rather than stopping water.
Earth scienceAges 9-14~14 min🎙️ Voice tutor
Play freeNo account needed
What your child will figure out
- Trace conserved water from rain across a drainage divide into channels, storage, floodplain, and outlet.
- Use tagged clay, sand, and gravel to explain transport and deposition under the same flow.
- Sequence outer-bank erosion, inner-bank deposition, neck narrowing, cutoff, and oxbow formation.
- Compare qualitative town and downstream flood waves and defend more than one constraint-satisfying watershed plan.
The levels
- Shape the watershed
Sculpt a catchment and route a fixed inventory of rain across a visible divide.
- Ride with sediment
Track clay, sand, and gravel under the same flow without losing any tagged grain.
- Build an oxbow
Advance linked meander processes through neck narrowing and cutoff.
- Read the trade-off
Apply one intervention and compare both town and downstream flood-wave bands.
- Plan a living watershed
Combine two interventions and city placement on a transfer watershed.
Ready when they are.
Play Living Watershed Sand Table free — no account, no card.
Play Living Watershed Sand Table free