Watershed Cruzin'
"Whatever landscape a child is exposed to early on, that will be the sort of gauze through which he or she will see all the world afterwards."
-- Wallace Stegner
Teachers in Santa Cruz County can receive free of charge an exciting hands-on watershed activity guide for county classrooms and field trips. Watershed Cruzin': An Activity Guide to Santa Cruz County Watersheds makes it easier for fourth through twelfth grade teachers to help students explore their local watersheds using twenty-five classroom and field-based activities. Students discover where they live in their watershed, what else lives there, how healthy watersheds work, and ways to get out and 'cruz' local watersheds.
A watershed includes all the land that drains into a distinct stream, creek, or river system. Santa Cruz County watersheds provide an ideal location for learning about natural systems. Students in the classroom can be isolated from the great outdoors while focusing their attention on state mandated reading, writing, and mathematics content standards. These standards are included in activities in Watershed Cruzin' while students explore nature, find out cool facts about regional history, and learn how to respect and protect their watershed.
There are seven main watersheds in Santa Cruz County, the largest being the San Lorenzo River. All Santa Cruz watersheds drain to the Monterey Bay and Pacific Ocean and affect the health of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world.
With engaging classroom activities such as "Whose Water Is It?" and in-depth outdoor investigations like "Exploring a Stream," Watershed Cruzin' encourages students to nurture a personal relationship with their neighborhood watershed. Included in the 300-page activity guide binder is a CD-ROM with information-rich data files and historical photographs. Teachers access a downloadable GIS mapping program to print county-wide relief maps.
In addition to hands-on science activities, Watershed Cruzin' includes activities about how we have relied on our watersheds over time. From first growth redwood forests to clear-cut slash, and from cow pastures to apple orchards, our county's watersheds have provided us with opportunities for employment and enjoyment. We share our watershed with the plants and animals that have lived here much longer, including the endangered steelhead salmon and red-legged frog, that rely on watersheds for food, water, shelter, and as a nursery for their young.
Watershed Cruzin': An Activity Guide to Santa Cruz County Watersheds was made possible by a grant from the Coastal Conservancy to the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District's Integrated Watershed Restoration Program. Local watershed agencies and teachers collaborated with science writer Julia Davenport and illustrator Mary Sievert, the team responsible for the Coastal Commission's popular statewide guide, Waves, Wetlands, and Watersheds published in 2003.
To request a guide, or for more information contact the Santa Cruz County Resource Conservation District at 831.464.2950.
For your convenience, we have a Steelhead and Coho Salmon Distribution map available in either low quality (258KB) or high quality (2MB). This map, created in may 2004, shows the distribution of steelhead and resident rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss ) and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in Santa Cruz County streams. Steelhead and coho migrate from the ocean to spawn and rear in freshwater streams. Resident rainbow trout spend their entire life cycle in freshwater streams. This map shows the location and type (a natural or human-constructed feature) of two types of migration barriers: complete barriers and significant partial barriers (barriers under most flow conditions). If you have comments or questions regarding this map, contact the County of Santa Cruz Planning Department at 831.454.2580.
View historical photographs in Santa Cruz County
View aerial photographs in Santa Cruz County
Download IWRP GIS data (16MB self-extracting archive)*
*this download may take an hour or more for some dialup users.
Instructions on viewing the IWRP GIS data (2MB PDF)
Cheat-sheet for using ArcReader (100KB PDF)
Spanish materials:
Activity 4
Activity 6
Activity 8