ABSTRACT
The contemporary view is that watershed management must be viewed as a process rather than a discrete product. Professionals now have a better understanding of the need to improve coordination and implementation of various efforts on a watershed basis to protect and restore the nation’s waters. Watersheds are stressed as the appropriate spatial unit for resource management agencies to assess the relative contribution of human activities to the quality and quantity of water at specific points on particular waterbodies. Typically, watershed management efforts follow a process that limits its scope and has been prescribed by either agency guidance or program regulation. While watershed management usually depends on agencies for support, no one agency can control it. No one process can solve all water resource problems; most approaches prescribed by either guidance or regulation have common elements. The common elements are combined with the necessary supporting activities to provide the basis for the recommended process that supports stakeholder involvement to solve local problems.
