First Group Meeting: The Lake Champlain Basin Atlas

For our first group meeting, we decided to look at the surrounding area of Lake Champlain to kind of get a general idea of what surrounds the lake. Lake Champlain is surrounded by numerous watersheds, which are areas of land where all of the water under it or drains off it eventually reaches the same location. The Lake Champlain Basin is what the area of watersheds are called that surround Lake Champlain. All of the watersheds act as a drainage area for Lake Champlain, which means any rain, snow, sleet or any kind of precipitation that falls on one of these watershed regions will eventually enter Lake Champlain. The image shows the watersheds as hydrological units. The solid color images are known as 8-digit watersheds, which is used in modeling the influence of major river systems, particularly in terms of land use and phosphorus loads. Eleven digit watersheds are used for research which benefits from a more detailed examination of the landscape.