On Saturday, March 22nd 2025, Earth Team observed World Water Day as established by the United Nations with the goal of “focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources” (UNESCO). This day of observance is ultimately meant to support the UN targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030. With five years left to reach that goal, the UN dedicates World Water Day 2025 to glacier preservation.
World Water Day pushes people to consider how each and every one of us impacts the watersheds we live in and how those impacts contribute to the global water crisis. With water systems being a core part of many Earth Team projects, our interns consistently have the opportunity to improve their watershed literacy skills. More specifically, Earth Team’s interns at Pittsburg High School (PHS) have spent much of March reviewing watershed curriculum and learning how to strengthen their understanding of the vocabulary and concepts commonly used when discussing the relationship between water and humans.
For instance, during their meeting on March 20th, PHS interns refreshed their memories of watershed basics, including its definition and importance. They also worked together to list as many watershed ecosystem services as they could think of, such as flood control, soil formation, wildlife habitat and productive fisheries, climate regulation, clean drinking water filtration, and outdoor recreation. By first highlighting all the benefits humans and the environment receive from maintaining healthy watersheds, this team of interns can more deeply understand the impacts of infrastructure, industry, and overall land development on localized water systems.
As the theme of World Water Day draws attention to glaciers serving as frozen freshwater reservoirs which melt into downstream bodies of water, PHS interns replicated this process by creating a physical watershed model made of crumpled newspaper, a white trash bag, and blue-dyed water in a spray bottle. With the spray of water emulating snowmelt and precipitation, interns observed as the blue trickled through their made-up landscape, following the topographic boundaries defined by high points and pooling in valleys at low points before flowing out into the ocean. Interns then paired up to reproduce the large model, this time using paper and pens to show how human developments, marked in red, pollute and negatively impact watersheds through runoff.
While some meltwater from glaciers and snow is natural and necessary to support habitat on Earth, the efforts behind World Water Day also push us to consider why the melting rate of glaciers has increased so much in the past couple centuries. The UN summarizes this in three key messages for World Water Day 2025:
- Glaciers are melting faster than ever due to climate change and increasing global temperatures
- Glacial retreat threatens devastation from floods, droughts, landslides, and sea level rise
- Glacier preservation is a survival strategy based on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and managing meltwater more sustainably
Whether water is frozen in glaciers, flowing through our watersheds, or suspended in the atmosphere, it is our responsibility as water consumers and inhabitants of this shared planet to understand the water systems that we rely so heavily on in order to ensure we keep them healthy and productive. Interns from PHS will continue to engage in this process in the coming months. Following their most recent meeting on watershed pollution from microplastics and agricultural runoff, these interns had the chance to review all of the key terms from the lesson in a Kahoot game. Spotlighting relevant jargon, including hydrophobic chemicals, pathogen biofilms, eutrophication, and cyanobacteria, Earth Team hopes that this is just the beginning in our interns’ journey to advanced watershed literacy and environmental action.
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