Objectives Students will predict what happens when fresh and salt water meet. Students will create an experimental model of fresh water flowing into salt water. Students will apply the results from their model to make inferences about data presented photographically. Non Kit Materials tap water paper towels VCR and monitor Vocabulary run-off rainfall that is not absorbed by the soil and eventually reaches surface water bodies. Surface water pollution can occur when this rain runs off the land, carrying pollutants on the ground into local rivers and lakes.
Tides circulate water in the Sound, while rivers add fresh water and the material it carries.
The fresh water flows reaching each of the four major sub-basins of Puget Sound differ because of the size and nature of the watershed. Sixty percent of the total freah water entering the Sound flows into the Whidbey Sub-basin from the drainages of the largest rivers in the area, the Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish. These rivers collectivly drain about 50 percent of the Sound. Estuarine Processes Flow Patterns Estuaries have a distinctive pattern of wter movement created by the action of the tides and the presence of fresh water. Since estuaries like Puget Sound are extensions of the ocean, they are affected by the tides which pump large volumes of water back and forth, in and out of the Puget Sound basin.