Wastewater surveillance for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an emerging approach to help identify the risk of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. This tool can contribute to public health surveillance at both community (wastewater treatment system) and institutional (e.g., colleges, prisons, and nursing homes) scales. This paper explores the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from initial wastewater surveillance efforts at colleges and university systems to inform future research, development and implementation. We present the experiences of 25 college and university systems in the United States that monitored campus wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 during the fall 2020 academic period. We describe the broad range of approaches, findings, resources, and impacts from these initial efforts. These institutions range in size, social and political geographies, and include both public and private institutions. Our analysis suggests that wastewater monitoring at colleges requires consideration of local information needs, sewage infrastructure, resources for sampling and analysis, college and community dynamics, approaches to interpretation and communication of results, and follow-up actions. Most colleges reported that a learning process of experimentation, evaluation, and adaptation was key to progress. This process requires ongoing collaboration among diverse stakeholders including decision-makers, researchers, faculty, facilities staff, students, and community members.

Despite the many programs focused on watershed education, the watershed concept is poorly understood, which can lead to a number of wide-ranging consequences from poor watershed planning and policy to inaccurate scientific studies. We argue that the definition of the term watershed, and the images that accompany the definition, contribute to these misunderstandings. The definition has remained very much the same since it was first documented in Europe in the mid-18th century. However, watershed uses and functions have evolved considerably in the past three centuries, notably in the many ways water moves within and across traditionally-defined watershed boundaries. In this study, content analyses of the definitions of the term watershed from textbooks and online sources, and the accompanying images, highlight that watersheds are nearly universally defined as an area of land that drains to a point on a river. More than half the images that accompany these definitions depict forested landscapes or high mountain relief. While over one half of online images depict human activities or developed landscapes, few textbook images do. These incomplete definitions and idealized images do not reflect the diversity of landscapes and watershed functions. The narrow description can contribute to an individual’s disconnection to their own watershed. Furthermore, the description of watersheds as lumped areas, rather than inter- and intra-connected socio-hydrologic systems, misses a fundamental element of the watershed concept: that activities at every point in a watershed impact all points downstream and are impacted by activities at all points upstream. Thus, we propose a revised definition of a watershed that better captures this connectivity: a watershed defines the boundaries of a system of hydrologically connected people, places, and things.

Background Wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 is an emerging approach to help identify the risk of a COVID-19 outbreak. This tool can contribute to public health surveillance at both community (wastewater treatment system) and institutional (e.g., colleges, prisons, nursing homes) scales. Objectives This research aims to understand the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from initial wastewater surveillance efforts at colleges and university systems to inform future research, development and implementation. Methods This paper presents the experiences of 25 college and university systems in the United States that monitored campus wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 during the fall 2020 academic period. We describe the broad range of approaches, findings, resource needs, and lessons learned from these initial efforts. These institutions range in size, social and political geographies, and include both public and private institutions. Discussion Our analysis suggests that wastewater monitoring at colleges requires consideration of information needs, local sewage infrastructure, resources for sampling and analysis, college and community dynamics, approaches to interpretation and communication of results, and follow-up actions. Most colleges reported that a learning process of experimentation, evaluation, and adaptation was key to progress. This process requires ongoing collaboration among diverse stakeholders including decision-makers, researchers, faculty, facilities staff, students, and community members.