The Academy's family-friendly watershed exhibition, Living Downstream, opened for Earth Day, 2001. The family-friendly, multi-sensory exhibit demonstrates how people's actions impact water quality and what everyone can do in their everyday lives to help the aquatic environment. Living Downstream is a permanent installation created by Academy staff and is inspired by the institution's world-renowned watershed research, restoration, and conservation efforts. The interactive components are geared to impart a three-fold message:

• We all live in a watershed.
  
• We all have an effect on water quality.
  
• We can all change our behavior to benefit the watershed, rather than harm it.

Living Downstream
is first encountered at the 19th Street entrance to the Museum. A Media Sculpture offers the attentive visitor an everchanging view of how human actions affect water quality. Whether the issue is the price of fish or the swimmability of ocean waters, a series of videos, text, and imagery brings home the message that we can all make a difference when it comes to a waterway's health. A flow of water from above draws one's attention to the second floor in search of the source.

Upstairs lies the centerpiece of the exhibition, an animated Watershed Mural that illustrates the many water-affecting activities that take place on the land. Visitors interact with the mural through touch screen menus, activating a series of "pathways" that show how chemicals and nutrients impact water quality and how life in the lower watershed is dependant upon what happens upstream.

Computer kiosks on either side of the mural invite visitors to decide whether or not to build a skateboard park in a forested area that protects the water quality of a local stream (Tough Choices) and offer a variety of opportunities to explore the fascinating world of field research with the Academy's aquatic experts (Cool Science).

Each Living Downstream experience offers insight into the challenges faced by watersheds--and by those who dedicate their time trying to understand, preserve, and protect them every day.

Stop in and see Living Downstream today!