A watershed is the area of land that drains to a particular lake, wetland or stream.
The City of Duluth is made up of many watersheds, all connected together like the pieces of a puzzle.
These watersheds don't end at the city limits, they are a part of the
surrounding communities as well.
Watersheds
Watersheds, also called drainage basins, are made up of all of the land and water areas that drain toward a particular
river or lake. Thus, a watershed is defined in terms of the selected lake (or river).
There can be subwatersheds within watersheds. For example, a tributary to a lake has its own watershed, which is part
of the larger total drainage area to the lake.
Want to learn about watersheds? Visit
Find out about watershed protection and restoration projects in our region:
View watershed data for the Lake Superior streams:
Landuse charts.
Stream and Road Density Data
Watershed Area, and Road & Stream Length Data
Individual Streams -- Open the overview page for North Shore or
Duluth streams, scroll down to the data table,
and click a stream's entry in the "Landuse Data" column.
The watersheds cited on this website are a combination of the MN DNR Minor watersheds and computer-generated
watersheds from the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT).
The MN DNR Minor watersheds (MN DNR 1999) were used as a base layer. The Miller Creek watershed was digitized from the SWCD map and
added to the DNR watersheds. Oregon Creek was added to the DNR watersheds from a map developed by the consulting firm Camp Dresser and
McKee for the City of Duluth in 2001. The watershed delineation tool within the SWAT (Soil & Water Assessment Tool) ArcView
Extension was then used to generate new watershed boundaries to define the smaller nearshore watersheds - this discriminated among
watersheds aggregated together in the DNR database. Boundaries of the MN DNR watersheds, the Miller Creek and Oregon Creek watersheds were
not altered by the SWAT watershed results. The watersheds delineated from SWAT created new watershed in areas where no information was
previously available. When generating these watersheds, stream lines and elevation data from 30 m DEMs were used to define the drainage patterns;
the watersheds are thus limited in accuracy by the accuracy of the stream and elevation data.
Reference
MN Dept of Natural Resources – Division of Waters. 1999. Minnesota watersheds, metadata product ID 26000022.
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