Phocalstream

Imagine if you could follow a drop of water on a 900-mile journey downstream from mountains to plains. Imagine you could listen to its myriad stories as it makes its way from an alpine trout stream to a prairie river full of cranes, or from a staircase of massive dams and reservoirs to a six inch pipe that waters a farmer’s thirsty crop field.

Once considered part of the Great American Desert, the Platte River Basin is one of the most appropriated river systems in the world. Every drop of water is spoken for, and little is free.

The basin supports an industrial agricultural powerhouse laid over one of the most endangered and altered grassland ecosystems on earth. Beneath the ground it harbors more than half of the mighty Ogallala Aquifer; fossil water whose quantity and quality are now at stake. Today this basin is being asked to be both food producer and energy pump in an age of climate change and economic uncertainty.

What if we could use the tremendous power of photography and storytelling to see a watershed in motion? What if we could leverage those images to dig deeper and grow understanding about our water resources, and build community throughout a watershed? What if this could be used as a template to start a conversation and look at other stressed watersheds around the world?

Phocalstream allows you to participate in this adventure and share your story. Using the Phocalstream mobile application, you can capture images and upload them directly to our site. From there, the power to create time-lapse movies, share images, and analyze environmental data is just a click away at http://images.plattebasintimelapse.org.

Help use tell the story of our natural world in your words.