This process provides a chance for stakeholders to balance diverse goals and uses for environmental resources, and to consider how their cumulative actions may affect long-term sustainability of these resources. Human modifications of lands and waters directly alter delivery of water, sediments, and nutrients, and thus fundamentally alter aquatic systems. People have varying goals and values relative to uses of local land and water resources. As a form of ecosystem management, watershed management encompasses the entire watershed system, from uplands and headwaters, to floodplain wetlands and river channels. Of principle concern is management of the basin's water budget, that is the routing of precipitation through the pathways of evaporation, infiltration, and overland flow.
Watershed management requires use of the social, ecological, and economic sciences.
Common goals for land and water resources must be developed among people of diverse social backgrounds and values. The decision process also must weigh the economic benefits and costs of alternative actions, and blend current market dynamics with considerations of long-term sustainability of the ecosystem.