Valley Creek Watersheds

Figure 1: 5 year fly-by

Introduction

A watershed is the area of land from which rainfall drains into a stream or other water body. Watersheds are also sometimes referred to as drainage basins. Ridges of higher ground generally form the boundaries between watersheds. At these boundaries, rain falling on one side flows toward the low point of one watershed, while rain falling on the other side of the boundary flows toward the low point of a different watershed. (EPA, 1997).

In order to locate of watersheds and assess its change over time, aerial photographs are taken every 5 years. However, the photographs are in black and white and the resolution is extremely poor because they are taken from heights of 1 km. This makes the photographs virtually useless to environmental research teams. Instead, we believe our developed kite and teleoperated vision system will provide research teams with the detail needed to make accurate assessments.