New website offers watershed professionals and farmers access to peer learning and resources for achieving clean water goals
Conservation professionals, extension educators, and farmers who are involved in or support on-the-ground watershed-based projects to improve water quality and landscape resilience have a new portal to peer learning and resources designed to support their work: watershedleaders.org, the recently launched website of The Confluence for Watershed Leaders.
Watershed professionals and farmers who are engaged in watershed projects are among the audiences The Confluence for Watershed Leaders aims to serve through its new website. Photo courtesy Amanda Gumbert/University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension.
The Confluence is a community and collaborative of people working for healthy watersheds in the Great Lakes, Mississippi River, and Red River Basins. Its goals are to build human capital for water management – i.e., the skills and knowledge watershed professionals and farmers need for success – and to advocate for increased investment in people to achieve clean water goals.
In service of these goals, the website provides access to the following features:
- A free online community of practice for conservation professionals and farmers who are working at a watershed scale to help them connect with and learn from each other
- A resource library containing reports, curricula, media, and other resources intended to help increase the impact of watershed-based conservation work
- The Human Capital blog, which covers stories and insights that can help conservation professionals and farmers learn from experts and each other
- Access to peer learning opportunities, such as Life Hacks over Lunch: A Virtual Meet-up Series for Watershed Professionals
- Information about watershed academies based primarily at land grant universities
The vision for The Confluence includes the future creation of regional professional development opportunities that will build capacity for successful watershed efforts. These opportunities would also be accessible through the website.
We encourage you to bookmark the website and, if you are engaged in watershed-based work, join the online community.