Studying the Little Tennessee River Watershed
Continuing on in my academic journey in the Natural Resources Graduate Certificate program at Virginia Tech, I'm now in a class called Watershed Stewardship that I'm very excited to dig into. To complete our projects throughout the semester, we are to pick a watershed to act as our area of study. Since I studied the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest last semester, I've chosen to look at the Little Tennessee River Basin. The Joyce Kilmer Forest is in the Little Santeelah Creek Watershed, which is part of the Little Tennessee River Basin.
According to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, the Little Tennessee River Basin encompasses an area of 1,797 square miles, flows through six counties in North Carolina, and has four subbasins. The entire Tennessee River Watershed includes parts of seven states—Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
This area of Western North Carolina that the Little Tennessee River flows through is one of my favorite places in the world. The Nantahala National Forest is wild, beautiful, and untamed in a way that coaxes me back often. Though the concept of a watershed is not new to me, I've never taken the time to thoroughly study one individually. I'm very excited to learn more about watersheds by digging through knowledge about the Little Tennessee River Basin this semester.
Let's get to it!
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