Celebrate Geography Awareness Week With WAC Maps

We love maps here at the Watershed Agricultural Council. In fact, we share quite a few on our website. In honor of Geography Awareness Week, we're highlighting three maps and their significance. 

Last updated in January 2011, this map of Catskill/Delaware Watershed properties shows land held in some sort of conservation context. These could be conservation easements with the Council or DEP (orange or light green, respectively), DEP fee holdings (dark green), or State-owned lands (muted green). The map's significance is the swaths of farmland protected for future generations (areas in light orange) and the contiguous woodland areas that benefit water quality.

Two things you don't see on the map are: 1) the creation of mini-agricultural economies in communities. In areas where farmland is protected, we're seeing a higher incidence of active farms, and in turn, the support services related to agriculture. These businesses are shoring up local economies, literally from the ground up.

2) Similarly, areas with a high concentration of forests protecting water quality, are also supporting species diversity, wildlife habitat and migration corridors. When public access is available, these areas attract visitors; in essence, water-quality protecting forests establish regional tourism, recreation and "green space." Hence, we like to refer to the NYC Watershed as a foodshed and viewshed, too.

Not sure where the NYC Watershed is? Check out this watershed locator map from NYC DEP. Hard to believe that Catskills water located 3 hours from NYC flows naturally by gravity, delivery 1.1 billion gallons of clean drinking water to 9-million people every day. Those 20th-century engineers had a vision for supplying a growing metropolitan center, even 100+ years ago. The Delaware Aqueduct is one of the longest underground tunnels in the world, transporting water from the furthest Cannonsville Reservoir. The Catskill Aqueduct is a feat as well, incorporating the Esopus River as a conveyor along the water's transportation route. What you don't see are the individual private landowners who voluntarily participate in best mamagenemt practice program that benefit water and land for the Greater Public Good.

This last map shows the small and large farm participation in our Agricultural Program in the Catskill, Delaware and Croton Watersheds. Note the high farm concentration in the western most part of the Delaware Watershed. This area contains more farm-friendly land, better soils and prolific grasslands. The area in the eastern Catskill Watershed has steeper slopes and rockier soils which are not as conducive to farming. Also, the State-owned Forever-Wild Catskill Forest Preserve covers the majority of this region. In the Croton Watershed, small farms checker a more suburbanized region must closer to the City.

Look at all three maps together and you can better understand how farm and forest lands can double up, protecting clean water and bolstering viable communities and economies.

Thanks to Teaching the Hudson Valley for encouraging us to break out our maps for Geography Awareness Week -- this one didn't slip by us this year!