a portion of the 2011 Illinois State Water Survey's "Major Watersheds of Illinois"
Image from NASA Earth Observatory
The Embarras River originates in Champaign County south of Urbana, flows south and east through Douglas, Coles, Cumberland, Jasper, and Crawford Counties, and flows into the Wabash in Lawrence County. It flows ~194 stream miles, 112 miles of which have Illinois' "Biologically Significant Stream" designation, and the watershed covers 2,440 square miles (Wiggers 1998). More than 10 miles of the lower river is channelized, and there is a large impoundment, Lake Charleston, in Coles County (Page et al, 1992).