“The challenge in watershed planning and management is how best to address the complexity of a continually changing state of confusion, conflict, and, on occasion, even chaos, with respect to the use of water and related land resources”. Although watershed management has a history measured in decades — where river basins and watersheds have been used as the geographic unit for purposes of scientific and engineering analysis and management — the results have too often been ineffectual, undesirable, and unsustainable. The past decade has seen the emergence of a reinvented or “new” watershed approach, one which has been rapidly and enthusiastically embraced and extolled in governmental and professional circles. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, along with sister federal agencies and many state and tribal governments, has given priority attention and funding to watershedbased approaches for solving water quality and related problems. There is now widespread recognition of the need to move from “top-down,” limitedpurpose, reactive planning and management of land and water resources to an approach which addresses the complexity and interdependence of environmental systems and resource uses and which involves those affected in the decision-making processes. The watershed approach represents the leading strategy for change, as suggested by a burgeoning watershed movement in the United States and elsewhere.
