Furthermore, these ruptures underlie the violent logics of colonization and ecological exploitation. I argue that these conceptions of temporality and spatiality are mutually reinforcing-temporal ruptures are maintained through spatial disjunctures and vice versa. 2 Similarly, modernist spatiality is organized around bounded domains that mark a distinction between different social and ecological relationships. Modernist temporality is structured around periods and “epistemological breaks” that define the continual march of progress. Such ruptures are characteristic of modernist notions of both space and time. 1 In this sense, a watershed is a rupture that marks a beginning and an end. From this definition, now largely unused, we derive the concept of “watershed moments”-events or periods wherein history seems to flow in a new direction. The flush of a toilet in Maryland, the erosion of a stream bank in West Virginia, the dumping of pollutants in New York, the application of fertilizer in Pennsylvania-all of these actions flow downstream and have an effect on the quality of water in the Chesapeake Bay, where the streams, rivers, and creeks ultimately converge.Įtymologically, however, the term is derived from the German wasserscheide, which means “parting of the waters” and refers to the geographic boundary that separates one drainage basin from another.
We all live within a watershed, and the concept has been used in recent years by environmental management and policy makers as a reminder that our actions have far-reaching consequences.
In its contemporary usage, the term watershed refers to the spatial expanse wherein water tends to converge toward a single confluence-a drainage basin.
Watersheds, computational modeling, recuperative work, space-time, modernity, Chesapeake Bay Introduction However, through the praxis of watershed encounters described in this article, I argue that we can penetrate the spatial and temporal logics of modernity and begin the recuperative work of finding what Deborah Bird Rose refers to as “alternatives to our embeddedness in violence.” I argue that the “restoration” effort currently at work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed fails to grapple with the spatial and temporal ruptures that created these problems, and therefore it simply perpetuates the trauma and violence of modernity.
#Watershed moment definition series
In this article, I examine a series of watershed encounters in the Chesapeake Bay region and how they transform our understanding of the environmental problems that face the estuary and its landscape. I suggest that the intersection of temporal and spatial relationships embedded within the watershed concept reveals the interaction between modernist conceptions of space and time, enabling the persistence of trauma and violence that characterizes modernity. It is from this definition that we derive the concept of “watershed moments”-events that seem to change the course of history. The term watershed is derived from the German wasserscheide, which means “parting of the waters” and refers to the geographic boundary that separates one drainage basin from another.
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