THE SPRING CREEK WATERSHED ATLAS

Map of land use in the Spring Creek Watershed in 2014. By clicking on the map above, you will open it as a pdf image that you can enlarge. Rain falls everywhere on the Spring Creek watershed. Where it falls, whether on the forested ridges, the agricultural valleys, or the built up and paved over neighborhoods, it has a profound impact on the water quality of its streams. The Centre Regional Planning Agency's estimate of land use in the watershed in 2014 was 38% forest, 29% ag

Forested watersheds provide many benefits to humans. One of the most important is to provide clean, clear drinking water but forested watersheds also support fish and wildlife and provide endless recreational opportunities. An often overlooked benefit of forested watersheds is pollution dilution. Many of our towns and cities rely on clean water coming from upstream, forested areas to allow us to dispose of wastewater and other pollutants into the stream while still maintainin

The Spring Creek Watershed has two types of watershed boundaries as shown on this cross-section diagram. The surface-water boundary is on the left and the groundwater boundary on the right. The headwater area of the Big Spring in Bellefonte has its western boundary in the Spruce Creek Surface-Water Watershed. When rainfall and snowmelt water infiltrate into the ground in the Spruce Creek Surface-Water Watershed as shown by the blue drop of water above, this water percolates

The Pennsylvania State Water Plan defined a Critical Water Planning Area (CWPA) as: “Any significant hydrologic unit where existing or future demands exceed or threaten to exceed the safe yield of available water resources.” The term "hydrologic unit" is a synonym for the term "watershed". The process to designate a watershed a Critical Water Planning Area (CWPA) had five steps. Stage 1 Nomination: The Spring Creek Watershed was nominated due to its designation by the SRBC

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC), in its 2005 Groundwater Management Plan, showed Potentially Stressed Areas on this map on page 18. Potentially Stressed Area 1, labelled the State College Area, is the Spring Creek Watershed. The following text is an excerpt from page 20 that explains the reasons behind this Potentially Stressed Area (PSA) Designation by the SRBC. "State College Area. This PSA includes most of the Spring Creek Watershed and some of the headwate

Whether a headwaters trout stream or a larger river, all waterways have something in common; they are dynamic systems, which means they are ever-changing and reacting to other processes, both natural and man-made. This is a natural process as the waterway tends to seek equilibrium with a stable pattern, profile and dimension. If a stream is channelized and made wider, shallower and straighter, it will inevitably begin to narrow and deepen itself again and re-establish its nat

This article is in preparation. This map shows the location of the Ridge Overlay Zone that protects source-water on Tussey Mountain in Ferguson Township. This source water is ultimately pumped from the Thomas and Harter Well Fields of the State College Borough Water Authority.

The Spring Creek watershed lies along the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountains, which extend from Maine to Georgia. Geologically,the Appalachian Mountains are divided into physiographic provinces (Figure 1). Figure 1: Physiographic Province Map of Pennsylvania. Click to open a larger PDF version. The Spring Creek watershed is situated in the Ridge and Valley Province that has a southwest-northeast orientation, extending from northern Maryland to northeast Pennsylvania. T