Dirtwork term
Watershed
also called: catchment, drainage basin
The area of land that drains to a single low point, every drop of rain that falls inside it ends up at the same place.
A watershed is the ground that contributes runoff to a single outlet. For a residential yard, it might be just your property plus the uphill neighbor's. For a stock pond, it's the acreage uphill of the pond that feeds water into it. For a regional river system, it's hundreds of square miles.
Watershed acreage is the starting input for almost every drainage decision: how big a culvert needs to be, how much storage a detention basin requires, whether a stock pond will hold or run dry, what size French drain handles a yard. Get the watershed wrong and the system either undersizes (and floods) or oversizes (and costs more than it should).
Mapping a watershed on East Texas residential lots is usually a half-hour with a level and a tape, more for ranch or commercial sites. We do it as part of the site walk, not as a guess.
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Related terms
Other words that come up alongside this one
Culvert
Pipe or box buried under a road, driveway, or fill that lets water pass from one side to the other.
Detention Basin
Excavated basin sized to temporarily hold stormwater and release it slowly to a downstream system.
Retention Pond
Excavated pond that holds water permanently, with storage capacity above the normal pool for storm events.
Swale
A shallow, vegetated ditch shaped to carry surface water away from a structure or down a property line.
French Drain
A gravel-filled trench with perforated pipe at the bottom that collects sub-surface water and routes it to daylight.
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