Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: Wetlands! Wetlands! Wetlands!

Transcript

Selects: Wetlands! Wetlands! Wetlands! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here. Saturday of 2026, but in COVID time,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: it's September 10th, 2020. And this is our episode called Wetlands, Wetlands, Wetlands!
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: With exclamation points at the end of each of those words.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It had to be Josh that came up with that
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: title because it's as Josh Clark a title as you
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: can ever get. So this is about wetlands, wetlands, wetlands.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: And I think I picked this one because I just
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: recently took a hike through Doll's Head Trail here in Atlanta.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It is an urban trail that is decorated with the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: trash that was formerly in that part. It's sort of
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: an industrial, like the forest next to an industrial part
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: of Atlanta still is. And it was kind of a
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: dumping ground. So artists cleaned it up, forged a trail,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and took that trash, a lot of Doll's Heads and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: dolls and kids' toys, And they made it into art
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: in a public statement against littering. And it's pretty great.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And not only is Doll's Head Trail great, and I
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: highly recommend if you live in Atlanta and haven't heard
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: of it, it's just down Moreland Avenue past the Starlight Drive-In.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Just there off the road, like I said, in a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: weird industrial part of town. But it's got wetlands, wetlands, wetlands.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: It's got some swamps and some bogs and some small
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: ponds and boardwalks that go through it all. And it's
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: really great. You can always see some You know, egrets
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and herons and turtles and all sorts of animals. Just
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the other day, I saw a deer kind of peeking
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: through right there off of a main busy kind of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: gross road. So check out this episode from September 10th,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: all about wetlands. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Charles,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: and Jerry's over there, and this is Stuff You Should Know,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: the Dripping Wet Edition.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: In these wetlands. What? I knew that you would not
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: get that.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Is that a Seeger reference?
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, gosh. Why do you have to say Seeger when
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you always mean Springsteen?
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Was that Springsteen?
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Badlands.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. Okay. Baby, these wetlands were born to run. Sure.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Run water.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: I don't like myself anymore. Run water. That was a
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: great save, Chuck.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: So we're talking wetlands. I have to say, we have
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: to give a shout out to Tom Peterman, the foul-mouthed
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: wetland biologist who keeps asking us to do this episode.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that where this came from?
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: It was a Tom Peterman suggestion, although I had already
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: wanted to do it anyway, so.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we love our earth sciences, man. This
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: one was, I was just smiling from ear to ear
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: researching this.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine watching a blacksmith forge something in a
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: wetland in a flooded woodland? No.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: That's nirvana right there.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: It really is. So we're talking wetlands, everybody. And Dave
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Ruse helped us put this one together.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: It was a good one.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: And Dave likes to pop in jokes every once in
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: a while.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: He does.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: And he said... what makes a wetland wet?
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: Water.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: And then he says, in all seriousness, that's basically it,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: that the water has to be largely present at least
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: some parts of the year in the soil in such
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: amounts that you would call something wetland. I mean, think
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: of the name, wetland. It's about as earthy a term
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: as science gets.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he front-loaded this with a few stats, and
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I won't go through all of them, but I'll go
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: through a few that kind of are instructive as to
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: why I love wetlands so much. Here's one. Although wetlands
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: make up only 5% of the land surface in the
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: United States, they are home to 31% of our plant species.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Not bad. One-third of America's threatened or endangered species live
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: only in wetlands.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I would propose that that's slightly misleading. I think they're
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: endangered because they live in wetlands, and wetlands are endangered,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: as we'll see.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Hmm.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Think about it, Chuck.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I took it more as.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Like they're all hiding out in the wetlands because it's
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: a terrible place to hide out.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: No, it's not bad because it's got 31 percent of
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: the plant species. I mean, it's a pretty rich, biodiverse
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: area to live in if you're an endangered species.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: All right. You say tomato, I say tomato.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: We'll have to hear from Thomas Peterman, the foul-mouthed wildlife
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: or wetland biologist who can let us know.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: What does he say? Like, do effing wetlands already.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: That kind of thing? Yeah. I like this guy.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: I think that's an exact quote.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's my kind of dude.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: So another stat that I thought was pretty interesting that
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: just kind of needs to form the basis or the
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: undercurrent of this whole episode is is that so we
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: keep talking about the U.S. There's wetlands found all over
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: the world of different types and varieties and different climates
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: and different continents, every continent except Antarctica. But in the
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: United States in particular, we have a long history of
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: filling in and draining wetlands for other purposes.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: So much so that, let's see, I believe, I don't
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: know how much we've lost, but in the 1600s, the
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: lower 48 states were, We're covered with 220 million acres
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: of wetlands, which is 11% of the total surface area
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: of the lower 48 states. And I think starting in
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: the 50s, we were doing away with wetlands at a
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: rate of about 60,000 of those acres per year.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's gotten better since then. But yeah, boy,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: up until the Clean Water Act, it was just like, hey,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you know what would look great there? A resort with
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: like three golf courses and a bunch of tennis.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: That's been such a driving force. Like, it's like looking
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: at land or ecosystems and being like, are humans making
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: money off of it? No. Well, then drain it and
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: repurpose it. Set it on fire and repurpose it. Stop
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: it from burning and repurpose it. Like, if we can't
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: make money off of it, it can't possibly be useful.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: And luckily, since the environmental movement really started in the 70s,
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: we've realized that that's not necessarily true, that Even if
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: you are just a heartless dummy, there's still a lot
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: of benefits that humanity is given from things like wetlands
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: that seem problematic or nonproductive, you know?
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was one of Dangerfield's big lines in Caddyshack,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: as Al Cervic was, golf courses and cemeteries are the
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: two biggest wastes of prime real estate.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: That's a good one.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about wetlands. You said that they are only...
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Some of them are only wet for short periods, sometimes
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: when there's snow melt or just rain.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, those are called ephemeral wetlands, which is a cool term.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: It's a great term. Some are wet all the time.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And the key parts of being a wetland or the
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: key characteristic is that it's either permanently or periodically flooded
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: or wet. And that the soil is got– it's called
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: hydric soil and is dominated by anaerobic processes, meaning it loves–
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: water and the plants there love water.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Which is weird because you used another word that shouldn't
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: really jibe with plants and that's called anaerobic, which means
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: there's very little to no oxygen present. And we'll explain
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: why later. But the fact that there are plants means
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: that those plants have adapted to the wetlands. Yes. And
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: it makes them anaerobic conditions.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Hydrophytic. And we'll talk about those plants later. It's another
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: thing I love about wetlands is just that it really
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: underscores the remarkable evolution that something will go through to survive.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Very cool stuff.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Very, very awesome.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Yep. So, um, there's also, so, but you hit upon
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: something like they're not necessarily wet year round, right? So
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: there's a whole bunch of different types of wetlands or
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: wetland environments that fill those, that check those boxes. Um,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: one of the ones that most people think of when
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: they think of wetlands or coastal wetlands, like marshes and
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: a marsh is basically like this area between inland and
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: And the ocean, it's like a transition zone, a buffer zone.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: And because of its proximity to the ocean, it's usually
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: salty or at least brackish, which is a mixture of
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: saltwater and freshwater. And one of the ones that really
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: come to mind, if you're thinking coastal wetlands, you're thinking marshlands,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: and you're thinking tidal marshlands probably, especially if you're a
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Pat Conroy fan.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: What was the name of... Her character that he repeats
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: over and over in a whisper.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I think I remember, Chuck. It was Bobby Jim. Bobby Jim.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: This is one of those scream at the pod player moments.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Was it in the Prince of Tides? Yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Lowenstein. Was that it?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Lowenstein. You're sure it wasn't Bobby Jim?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I think it was Lowenstein.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Was it his, oh, his shrinks? His shrink girlfriend's name?
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Babs.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, I don't remember.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I think it was Lowenstein.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: So anyway, tidal marshes, yes, Prince of Tides, they obviously,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: it's because they're tidal, they're going to come in and
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: out with the high and low tide. And like you said,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: they're generally saltwater. And the salt marshes are very nutrient rich,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and they do have a lot of diversity, but obviously
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: only the kind of things that can tolerate the salt
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: as far as plants and animals go.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Which is a pretty short list, really, because salt is
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: not conducive to life. Instead... There are some plants that
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: have figured out how to deal with salt. But most
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: of the time when you're looking at salt marshes, you're looking,
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: the plant life is basically grasses of some sort. There's
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: also freshwater tidal marshes, which they are either connected to
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: the saltwater marsh, but they're far enough inland that the
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: saltwater doesn't make its way in there. So it's a
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: freshwater marsh, but it's still affected by the tides. And
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: then I had no idea about this. And I used
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: to vacation on Lake Erie, but apparently the Great Lakes
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: are so big that they have tides themselves.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: You didn't know that?
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I had no idea.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: I even knew that. I'm a dum-dum when it comes
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to the Great Lakes.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Well, Chuck, I think you got me beat big time.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Well, in this case.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Because I could know a million other things about the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Great Lakes, and if you knew that one thing and
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I didn't, you had me beat.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I knew that. And so that means that they
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: do have those tidal marches. The Florida Everglades are another
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: good example. And, boy, Florida just– there's a lot of
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: different types of wetlands in Florida.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot of coastline.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of coastline and a lot of interior wetness.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a lot of wetlands around our place
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: in Florida for sure. And there's mangroves and all sorts
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: of stuff that we'll talk about.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Well, we're at mangroves. I love those things.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: So mangroves– I think they at least deserve a short
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: stuff because they're one of the most amazing plants of
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: all time. But they're a type of coastal wetland themselves,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: a mangrove forest. Or if you've never seen a mangrove forest,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: they have a growth habit for the shrubbery on top.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: of like the hair that Oompa Loompa has in the
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: original Willy Wonka, the good one. And the trunks split
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: out into these cool like long roots and legs that
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: stick up out of the water. And they form this
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: huge tangle, this riot of like shrub, woody shrub. And
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: they do all sorts of amazing things to help the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: aquatic life and us humans as well up on land
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: just by being present.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're really cool looking. And this is another good one,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: sort of like the origami that if you're able and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you're sitting still to look up a lot of these
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: things as you go. Because these mangrove forests, it looks
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: like a shrub that's like, I really want to be
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: a shrub, but I don't want to get wet. So
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to dip my legs in a little bit.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really great.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: It's just very cool looking. And again, just the adaptability here.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that these mangroves really want to live where they live,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: even though it's not very suited for them. And they've
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: become suited for it.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Right. If you've been sleeping on mangroves, welcome to reality.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a T-shirt if I ever heard one.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I could use a little work, but there's the
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: beginnings of one in there.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: You also got your inland wetlands. These are not coastal.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: In this case, we're talking about swamps and marshes and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: bogs and fens, F-E-N. And marshes, a lot of these
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: you'll find near rivers, near streams, lowland depressions, and they
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: might periodically fill up depending on rain, what's going on,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: or different types of flooding that might happen. And they
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: can be a few inches deep. They can be several
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: feet deep.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most of the non-tidal inland marshes are ephemeral wetlands. Yeah.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: So they're dry a lot of the year. They might
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: fill up seasonally. They might fill up with the rains.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: They might fill up with the nearby river flooding.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: It's like my backyard.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: And they, oh, really? Is that right?
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't drain well. I've got a drainage problem.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Okay. To you, it's a problem. To nature, it's wonderful
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: because we like things that drain really quickly and dry
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: and then we can walk on them and the grass
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: is fine. But there's a lot of like benefits to
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: things that take their time. Like there's something called the
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Vernal Pool. which is a kind of non-tidal marsh, an
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: ephemeral wetland. And it's basically just like, say, a stretch
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: of woods that's a little bit depressed there so that
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: when it rains or a river floods, it fills with water.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: And because the underlying bedrock or clay is not very porous,
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: it takes a while for that water to go through.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: But that water is also not going further downstream, so
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it prevents flooding from being as bad as it could
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: because a lot of the water collects and stays there.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: And it also slowly recharges the groundwater. And because it
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: does get dry, it can't sustain fish, which makes it
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: a really great nursery for things like newts and salamanders
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: and frogs, things that fish eat their eggs. But since
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: there's no fish, this is like a really great place
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: for them to get a good foothold and a brand
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: new life.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: You've also got your prairie potholes. this is when you
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: should definitely look up. These are usually in the upper
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Midwest of the United States, the Dakotas, Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: And these are where glaciers, ancient glaciers left these big
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: depressions in the landscape. And they fill up sometimes during rain,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: during the spring, during snow melt. And they're not small,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: like our prairie pothole. And I got a vision in
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: my head. But if you look it up online, they're beautiful.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: And just they're very large, though. And they're kind of interconnected.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Just these big round holes scattered through like a big
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: open area full of water. And these are great for
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: migrating birds because that could be a stopover that they
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: might not have had had those potholes not been there.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: And when they're flying over the Dakotas, they say, look,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I see Van Nostrand's house. Our buddy. and nostril. And
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: then there's also, we said that wetlands occur in all
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: different kinds of climates. They also occur in the desert.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: There's something called playa lakes, which are these depressions that
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: apparently no one has any idea exactly how they formed.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: It could have been from erosion. It could have been
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: from an ancient sinkhole. But there are depressions that are
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: deep enough that when the seasonal rains come, the water
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: is held in there. And just like the prairie potholes,
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: it's very useful for migratory birds to stop over at
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: and really plays a huge role in this ecosystem where
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: there's almost no water, and now all of a sudden
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: there's water, and it's in this nice little lake, so
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: let's all go gather there and have a social hour.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: But responsibly, six feet apart.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: I think we should take a break, and we will
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about inland swamps right after this.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Music All right.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: So inland swamps, we promised to talk about that. These are,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: for my money, some of the coolest areas in the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: country because I think I talked about it at some point,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: but I took a very special fun trip many, many
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: years ago to the Okefenokee Swamp and did one of
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: those canoe trips where you have to rent, you know,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: there's no place to stop in the Okefenokee Swamp. If
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: you're like, I think I'll camp here. It's like in
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: the water. So they had these camping pads built up,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: essentially just decks that are like six feet above the water.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And you have to reserve those. They're not just wide
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: open for anyone because there's nothing else out there. So
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: you have to reserve them for specific nights on these
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: specific pathways or, you know, paddleways. And me and a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: couple of buddies did it one year, and we canoed
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: from deck to deck.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Very cool.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: It was amazing, like one of the coolest trips I've
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: ever taken.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: That is very cool. Was Ned Beatty with you?
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: No, but you do wake up surrounded by alligators. It's
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: a little creepy.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, alligators are very creepy.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Like you wake up on that pad and pee off
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the dock, and they're growling at you.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you do not want to get too close
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: because they can move faster than you think.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they can. It was a lot of fun, though.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: But not for the faint of heart because, you know,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: you don't realize until you get out there, A, how
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: bad the sun is going to beat you up because
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: there's no shade. And B, how tough it is to
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: paddle all day long without like, you know, let me
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: get out and stretch my legs.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is no getting out. You just go
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: and go and go. And by the time you finally
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: reach that janky deck, it is like might as well
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: be the Plaza Hotel, you know.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, nice.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But what I'm talking about in the case of the Okefenokee,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a forested or a bottomland hardwood swamp.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: You'd think.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: From reading this, but apparently it's called a non-riverine swamp forest.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: And that is a forested swamp that fills up from
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: non-river sources, basically rain or groundwater.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Right, right. So what would make a forested swamp, like
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: a bottomland hardwood swamp, is a proximity to a river
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: that floods its banks or that is just so big
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: it kind of spills over into some of the surrounding land,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: and that surrounding land is swamp.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I want to look that up, though. I'm not quite sure.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Well, okay. So it's either river-fed or groundwater-fed or precipitation-fed.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: And if you're talking bottomland hardwood swamps or a river-fed swamp,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: there's usually also a shrub swamp, which is a transition
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: or buffer zone between the forested swamp and somebody's backyard,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: which is just dominated by shrubs. But it's all the
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: same thing. It's all a freshwater swamp.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, I bet you anything the Okefenokee has
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: several different types of these would be my guess.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Because there were full-on lakes that we paddled through.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: So that would be my guess. And I also think
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: if I had a country band, they would be the
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Bottomland Hardwood Swamp Rats.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Not bad, huh?
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: That sounds like an all-star band, you know?
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So another kind of wetland that you're going to
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: find all over the place, especially in Europe, which when
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I think of bogs and fens, I think of Europe,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: but apparently there's plenty of them in the United States too.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: But bogs and fens are kind of their own thing.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Bogs in particular are very unique as far as wetlands
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: go because not only are they anaerobic, which by definition,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: wetland is anaerobic soil. They're like wetlands. Very little nutrient
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: and very high acidity. I've heard like the kind of
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: acid that is put out by the peat that's created
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: in the bog has the same acidity roughly of vinegar. Oh, wow. Yeah,
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: it's really, really acidic stuff. And yet some plants prefer it.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Like you can grow cranberries and blueberries in a bog.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: You can preserve a body from the Iron Age forward
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: in a bog.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Did we ever cover that, the bog bodies? I feel
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: like we did. It might have been one of our
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: video things on YouTube.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Maybe mummies. Because I think, if I remember correctly, our
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: mummy episode covered more than just Egyptian mummies. I think
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: it covered like Inca mummies.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And the bog people.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we did. We saw some of them when
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: we went to our UK trip. We got to visit
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: some of those cats like firsthand, like right there in
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: that glass. You know, all you have to do is
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: smash it with a hammer and it's yours. And you
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: got a bog person.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Or at least whatever you can grab, like a bog ear.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Right. It just crumbles in your hand. But I was like, okay,
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: why are the bogs so great for preservation? Part of it,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: from what I understand, is that acidity, that the bodies
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: are actually pickled. But another part is the aerobic life
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: of is so devoid there. There's just anaerobic bacteria and
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: they don't decompose nearly as well as aerobic bacteria. So
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: the decomposition doesn't set in and the remains are pickled.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: So like you can preserve a body in a really
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: great state.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: For a very, like Tolland man, his whiskers are still
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: intact on his face.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Like that was the level of preservation and he was
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: sacrificed into a bog, which is a very specific kind
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: of wetland.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a fen, like I said, it's F-E-N. It's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: sort of like a bog in that it is a
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: peaty wetland, but they're a little bit different than bogs.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: The water supply doesn't come primarily from rain, and it
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: comes from the ground. So it's going to be less
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: acidic because I don't think we mentioned, I know it's
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: partially because of the peat, but the acidity also comes
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: from the fact that there's acid in rain that fills
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: up these bogs.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: But not the case in a fin.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: No. No, because that groundwater is able to kind of
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: dilute it a little bit. So they're much more nutrient
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: rich than a bog is. So they're going to have
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: a much wider, diverse range of plants and animal life.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I love that this next section from Dave
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: was called other fun types of wetlands. Yeah.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Mudflats.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You got your mudflat. It's another good country band.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: My favorite are seeps. These are just gorgeous little pieces
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: of nature, if you ask me. Um, it's, if you
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: have a spring that comes up out of the ground, uh,
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: it spills over into the ground. So the surrounding ground
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: is a wetland and it's called a seep. That's right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: It's where gnomes like go and shower.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's not, uh, like you said, it's a spring,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: so it's not like a Creek. No, it's actually coming
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: up from the ground. Uh, you ever drink from a
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: natural spring?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: I did when I was a kid, and I think
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: my mom fired the babysitter that took us to drink
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: from a spring. She was like, what are you doing?
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: It was either a spring or a river in Ohio.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Two very different things. If it was the Cuyahoga River,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: then you're in bad shape.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: It was on fire while we were drinking.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, we have creeks. If you're listening, you've
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: never been to Atlanta. Atlanta has creeks all over the place.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Like all of the in-town neighborhoods just are riddled with creeks.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: They're just sort of out of view. But we have
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: a creek, you know, 120 feet from our house.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Which might have something to do with our drainage. Who knows?
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: And it's spring fed?
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: No, it's just, you know, just a part of the Atlanta.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Probably all comes from the Chattahoochee at some point.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Sure. So, Chuck, if that creek behind your house started
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: meandering in a different direction and left a body of
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: water where it originally flowed, it would be an oxbow lake.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: But if you were in Australia... And you were calling
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: it its proper aboriginal name. You'd call it a billabong.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: A billabong.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Which I had no idea. What does that have to
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: do with surfing?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think they just probably co-opted the name and
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: it became more associated with surf and surf gear than
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: its true meaning.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: That doesn't seem right.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: No. Let's take it back.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: But that's what an Oxbow Lake is in Australia among
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: the aborigines. It is a billabong, which is great.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: A billabong. That was some, like, along with OP was
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: one of the prime t-shirts to have when you were
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a kid in the 80s.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: If you were cool.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: I had this amazing OP long-sleeve blue shirt that I
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: wore with my parachute pants.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those were the best.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: My British Knights.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I remember those long-sleeve OP shirts.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were good.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Gorgeous.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: So, Chuck, one of the things we've been talking about
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: is the characteristics that make a wetland a wetland. And
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: it's not just the fact that the soil table or
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: the ground is either flooded or almost completely flooded up
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: to the surface level with water. That's not the entirety
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: of it. Like different wetlands are characterized by how that
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: water gets to it. Like we said, you know, some
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: kinds of swamps are fed by groundwater. Others are fed
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: by precipitation. Some are tidal. So there's a whole group
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: of scientists out there that are called wetland hydrologists. And
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: what they study is how that water gets into a
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: wetland to create a wetland, what happens to it while
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: it's there, and then where it goes, and how all
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: these things kind of interact to form this very unique ecosystem.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we talked early on about the kind of soil,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: hydric soil, is saturated with water. And so if it's
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: saturated with water, it's not going to have nearly as
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: much oxygen. And usually oxygen and soil are in these
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: little tiny air pockets.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: That Remember we talked about it in our soil episode.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And in the case of a wetland, then
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: those air pockets are going to be filled with water
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: or just collapsed altogether. And then you've got your anaerobic condition.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: But if you're a plant, you need CO2 and oxygen.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And you'll get a little bit of that from photosynthesis
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: in the leaves, but the roots are like, what about
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: me down here? I need oxygen too. And if it
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: was an aerobic soil, like we talked about in the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: soil podcast, The roots can get it from those air pockets.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: But in wetlands, they have to really, really adapt to
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: become hydrophytic or water loving plants in some pretty amazing ways.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: So I just have to say that this is like
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: a lifelong mystery solved and solved in like the simplest
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: way possible. Like it's anaerobic because there's water there instead
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: of air. The air can't be in there because of
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: the waters there. Ipso facto anaerobic. I just think that's
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: brilliantly simple.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: Did you get that intuitively? Because I never did. I
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: always thought it was something mysterious. Like, we're talking about
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: a whole different type of soil or something else.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: No, I think I got it.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I've been around for 44 years and wondered
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: it until just now.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm 49, so I might have learned that in
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: the last five years.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: So... The plants that we're talking about, like you said,
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: the roots still need oxygen. So they've said, okay, well,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: I really like it here. I like this wetland area.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: This is a pretty amazing place to live. I'm going
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: to change so that I can stay here. And some
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: of the ways that plants have adapted, well, one good
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: example is a cattail, right? Cattails are pretty much synonymous
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: with marshlands. Yeah, they're beautiful. They're that long, thin stem
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: with like a big fat, thing on top like a
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: hot dog that's ready to be roasted on the fire
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: yeah i grew.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Up with those i don't know if it was a
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: southern thing but they can be decorative items in the
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: home and i grew up i feel like with a
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: lot of cattails and vases.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: And stuff okay so um that and wasps nests yeah
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: hornets nests yeah so cattails have this thing called um
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: erinicum no i've got erinicum uh Aren-aren-a-chima. Aren-a-chima. I think
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: I got it. Anyway, they're like these channels that basically
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: direct air from the leaves and the stem and every
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: other part of the cattail down to the roots. It says,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: here you go, roots. Here's some oxygen fresh from the leaf.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: So that cattail can have as much roots as it
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: wants down in this anaerobic soil. It doesn't matter because
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: it's getting its oxygen from the air through the leaves. Yes.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of my favorites is the speckled alder. You
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: just look up a picture of that, and they have
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: these enlarged pores called lenticels, and they allow for the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: passage of oxygen directly into that wood. And if you
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: look up a picture and you see those, you go, oh,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: that's what those are. That's what those are for. They
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: look like someone took a knife, and they're just tiny
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: little horizontal slits all up and down the alder.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: I got you.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: And they're breathing, basically.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's creepy as heck, but it's really neat.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Little mouths, little slitty mouths.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: So the grasses that we talked about growing in salt marshes,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: just like an iguana sneezes out excess salts as part
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: of digestion, things like cord grass that grow in these
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: salt marshes They actually excrete salts through their leaves. So
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: they can sit there and intake all the nutrients they
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: need from this salinic environment and still not get overloaded
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: with salt. It's just pretty amazing that they can do that.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then to me, maybe the most amazing, and
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: this is where the mangroves kind of come back in,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: although the mangroves apparently utilize all these to stick around.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: But the bald cypress, they grow in those forested swamps.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: where there's always water, and they are deciduous conifers, and
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: they grow this root structure that they call a knee.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It's a pneumatophore, but like a knee on your leg
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: is how it's spelled. And they just sit above the
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: waterline and take in oxygen, and that's what those, I guess, mangroves, mangroves.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: There's a Soul Train joke in there somewhere.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: It struck me as like a terrible jam band's name.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: The mangroves?
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: God, you're right.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: That play somewhere in Florida probably.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Probably.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: But the mangrove uses, like I said, a lot of
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: these tricks. And I think certainly when you see those roots,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: they're using those knees.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is basically it's a way to get oxygen
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: from the surrounding air down to the roots. The mangroves
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: do it. The bald cypresses do it. Mangroves have all
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: those adaptations, different species. They can do things like excrete salt.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: They can draw oxygen in from the environment. They have
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: channels where they can pump oxygen from one part of
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: the plant to the other. The one that gets me, though,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: I'm just fascinated by bogs. So we said that it's
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: an acidic, anaerobic plant. nutrient depleted environment. And yet there's
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: still plants that live there. And one of those plants
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: or one kind of plant is carnivorous plants. They get
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: their nutrients, not from like the soil, but from eating bugs.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Those are cool.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: So they can just live there like a pitcher plant
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: or a Venus flytrap or something like that.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: Those are nature.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Wasn't Venus flytrap one of the DJs on WKRP?
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: That's a great DJ name. Yeah.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: He was a great DJ.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: All right. So let's take our final break and we'll
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: talk about why wetlands are important and what you can
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: do to help them do their thing right after this.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, so just the fact that wetlands are as
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: amazing as they are means that they should be saved.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: But there's also like a lot of benefits that we
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: figured out. Like you said, the 50s to the 70s
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: were a really rough time for wetlands in the United
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: States because we were filling them in for cropland, for
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: real estate. And even previous to that, we filled in
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of marshland in the U.S. and built cities
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: over them. Like D.C. was built largely on marshland. Yeah.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: The fact that mosquitoes tend to live in wetland areas
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: kind of justified filling in a lot of the wetlands
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: because we were dealing with malaria at the time. So
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: it made a lot of sense. Get rid of the
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: mosquitoes habitat, you get rid of the mosquitoes. And it worked,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: but we've paid a heavy price for it because over
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: time we've realized these wetlands provide some really important benefits
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: to the local ecosystems and in turn humans who live
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: around them.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, helping flood conditions is a big one.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: They are big, big natural sponges when it comes down
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: to it. And flooding would be way, way worse. And
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: we still have floods, obviously, but it'd be way worse
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: if we didn't have wetlands. They'd be far more destructive
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: if they weren't around to soak in that excess water
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: and then kind of slowly trickle it to the water
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: table below. And the same is obviously true of hurricanes
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and big storm surges. The wetlands basically operate as big
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: storage tanks for water.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw somewhere, I can't find it now, but like, oh,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: there it is. An acre of wetlands can hold up
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: to about a million and a half gallons of water.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: Just one acre. So you got to think like that
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: water staying put there and it's not flooding some human
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: habitation instead, which is a good reason to keep wetlands
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: around just for that buffer area or to slow down
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: the surge like you were saying. I also saw that
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: we found out the same thing goes for beaver dams
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: that they build. They're like a temporary artificial wetland and
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: they provide a lot of the same functions that natural
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: or other, I guess, naturally occurring or growing wetlands provide too.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: And I think we should do a whole episode on beavers, okay?
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally. I'm way into beavers.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: So water filtration is another... Is it water? I'm getting
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: you back for the origami thing. All right. So water
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: filtration is another big service that wetlands provide. I don't
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: remember where we talked about this, but we talked about
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: it recently where the water. Oh, I think it was
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: water treatment plants.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: The water is brought in and it's got all the
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: sediment and gunk and muck and it's cloudy and turbid.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: And then it slows down. They slow it down like
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: running it through some grates or whatever. And as it
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: slows down, the sediment that is making the water turbid
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: and polluted and everything has a chance to settle to
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: the bottom. Well, wetlands provide that same function naturally. So
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: when you have a bunch of like polluted water basically
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: come through there, it slows down when it hits all
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: those mangrove roots or tree trunks or whatever it is.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: And it gives it a chance for that sediment to
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: fall to the bottom. It gets sucked up by the
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: tree roots and stored in the trees. Or the microbial
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: life can break a lot of that stuff down too.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: And there's definitely a limit to where you can very
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: easily overload the wetlands ability to filter the water. But
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: if you gave it like a manageable supply, that is
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: a major service that it does is it cleans our water.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: They call wetlands the kidneys of the earth.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've even done studies where they try to,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I guess, sort of monetize what an area of wetland
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: might do if it were a treatment plant. And there's
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: one in South Carolina called the Congaree Bottomland Hardwood Swamp.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: These are just all country bands.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: They said that that is basically equivalent to about a
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: $ 5 million water treatment plant. Just sitting there being a wetland,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: doing its thing.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Thank you, nature.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Pretty amazing.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: I saw that beavers provide the dams that they build
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: that end up being temporary wetlands. Somebody estimated it's worth
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: about 100 grand if a human tried to build an
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: artificial one, which we do. If you just let beavers
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: do their thing, they will do the same thing for free.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: That's right. You don't have to pay them 100 grand.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: There's also, because there's so much going on in a wetland,
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: there's so much life, they kind of form like these
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: metropolises for all sorts of different types of animals all
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: the way up the food chain, including plants, animals, microbial life, worms, fish,
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: larger predators like dolphins and alligators. And all of them
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: are sitting there providing food Food for us. If you
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: like gator tail, buddy, you better preserve those wetlands.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Dave points out here that the commercial fishing industry
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: in the U.S., 75% of the fish and shellfish harvested
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: here had fish that at least had a temporary home
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: in the wetlands. And that recreationally, if you're a recreational
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: fish person, fisher person, then 90% of the U.S. fish
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: catch is commercial. at least the breeding ground lies in
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the wetlands for those fish.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: And the same thing goes for birds, too. They're enormously
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: important habitats for birds, some permanent but also migratory, too,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: because if you're flying along and you're a bird and
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: you are a water bird and you need a place
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: to land, not only are you looking for water, but
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: you might really enjoy a swamp because it offers protection
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: from predators. It offers a port in the storm. It's
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: just an all-around valuable thing for birds, too.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, imagine flying from Canada to Texas, and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: you're going over Oklahoma, and you're a little tired. You
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: look down and you see one of those, which ones
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: were those, the prairie playas?
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: No, the prairie potholes.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Prairie potholes?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, man. What a sight.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Aren't you describing a scene in Jonathan Livingston Siegel?
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Probably so. So the point is we need to take
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: care of our wetlands because they are a threatened, diverse,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: very useful place all over the world, especially here in
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the United States. And if they are threatened and if
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: things happen, there are going to be all kinds of
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: bad things, you know, vegetative damage, the plant life just
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: being maybe whitened out, wiped out altogether.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Storm surges being way worse, flooding being way worse. It
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: especially helps to see the value in them if you
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: consider them a buffer zone between us and the hardest
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: ravages of nature.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you mentioned, pollution, there is a limit,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: but they do absorb and mitigate levels of water pollution,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and they just can't take too much of us, you know?
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly, which, man, if there's anything that characterizes humans
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: in the 20th and 21st centuries, it's too much of us. Yeah.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: What can we do, though? Well, apparently— Besides donating to
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: wetland projects, we can definitely do that.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: You can definitely do that. There's some good ones out there.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: I believe Ducks Unlimited is one of them, the Wetlands Initiative,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Natural Resources Defense Council, Wetlands International— But apparently in the
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: United States, something like 75% of wetlands are on privately
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: owned property. And in the United States, we have, I mean,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: private property is one of like the fundamental tenants of
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: American society. So if you say, I want to fill
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: in this wetland and kill off these beavers, you're allowed
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: to do that. Whether that's a good idea and whether
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: that's going to affect other people, that's a different story.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: So if you own private property with a wetland on
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: it and you're doing just fine with that wetland, leave
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: the wetland alone. It's very important. Yeah, I guess this
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: is where.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: It gets a little tricky in definitions because in plenty
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: of places there are restrictions on building near water like this.
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: I guess I just don't know. You can't build in
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: a flood zone. You can't– I mean, it depends on
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: where you are, but in Atlanta, you can't. And then
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: with all these creeks and streams in Atlanta, they have
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: what's called stream buffers. Sure. 50 foot, 75 foot, 100 foot,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: and I think 25 is the lowest. And for these,
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: you have to get variances to do anything, which your
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: neighborhood has to approve. And I talked to a guy
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that apparently anything over– anything under 75 feet is pretty
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: tricky to get approved. So– I don't know if they're
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: wetlands or not, but there are restrictions on stuff like that.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: OK, so that brings up the next point of what
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: you and I and everybody else can do, which is
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: vote for people to local elected office who part of
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: their platform is protecting wetlands. Yeah. Like all of those
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: buffer zones, all those variances and all those prohibitions. Those
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: are those came from Atlanta city councils over the years
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: that decided that wetlands needed protecting. You don't find those everywhere.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: But once they get put in place, they usually don't
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: get repealed very easily. So if you make preserving wetlands
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: part of, like, what you're voting for, that would have
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: an impact for sure.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: And whatever you're voting for, just vote, okay? Vote.
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: Especially locally.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Let's take a second to say that.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I know everyone, the presidential elections are always the big
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: sexy votes, but local politics matters even more almost sometimes.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, vote for all of it. Take an interest in
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: your society.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay?
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you got anything else about wetlands?
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Nope.
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: I don't either. This is a good one. I'm pretty
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: happy with it. And since I said that, everybody, it's
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: time for listener mail.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to call this the first SY5K. Oh, yeah.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: Did you see these? Yes, man. Congratulations to everybody who
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: took part. Yeah.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: So what happened was some Stuff You Should Know listeners
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: got together and put together a 5K, Stuff You Should
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Know 5K. And we got periodic updates from Aaron Huey
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Mizell or Mizell. I'm not sure how you pronounce it.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going with Mizell.
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Mizell.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: But this is.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: The final email about how it went. Hey, guys, I
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: want to let you know that the SY5K is over.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: It was so nice to look at everyone's pictures and
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: hear what episodes of Stuff You Should Know they listened to,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: because that was the idea. I imagine some people might
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: have fudged that and listened to Marc Maron or whatever.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: They're disqualified.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of us have suffered from a
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: lack of human connection at this time, and this silly
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: little virtual event gave us something to bond over. I
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: don't think I would have tried this with any other
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: group of people. The Stuff You Should Know Army is wonderful,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and it speaks volumes in regard to you guys. The
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: tone that you set in your podcast, interesting and funny,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: carries over into your fan base and has created a
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: little lovely corner of the Internet. I totally agree, Aaron.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: And the same can be said of the Movie Crush page. Very,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: very good people. Not snipey or rude and going after
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: each other on Facebook, which is kind of what Facebook
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: seems to be all about.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. It's like a garden paradise over there on
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: the SYSK Army page.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great. Now, I'm not suggesting that you made
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: these people wonderful, but the average stuff you should know
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: Army Bimmer is like that. Interesting, funny, and willing to
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: participate in a virtual 5K with a complete stranger.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: And they love Stroopwafels.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: I even bought 13 Stuff You Should Know stickers to
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: send out to some people as prizes. It's just a
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: little thing, but everyone that I've been in touch with
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: has been exceedingly kind. This is what we need right now,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: these small human connections. A podcast to listen to and
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: laugh with. A walk, run, bear chase to do virtually
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: with a bunch of near strangers. And a Stuff You
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: Should Know sticker to put on your fridge or on
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: your laptop. If you get a chance, go to the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: event page and scroll through some of the posts. They're delightful.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Like the woman who did our 5K at three months
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: postpartum and crushed it.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Or the dad who pushed his adorable daughter in her
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: stroller on the 5K while listening to his favorite episode,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: which was Spam. We had first-timers.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: That was a good one.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a good one. We had first-timers, people
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: recovering from injury, runners and walkers, so many smiles and stuff.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: You should know t-shirts. Sign off for now. I'll be
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: just writing to tell you it was a success. We
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: might even do it again with love. And that is, again,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: from Aaron Huey Mizzell. And that is great, Aaron. Thank
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: you for doing this. And that really does speak to
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: the quality of our listeners in every single way.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Indubitably. Yeah, thanks a lot, Aaron. It's good to hear
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: from you. And to everybody who participated in the SY5K,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: you are the champions, our friends.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Even if you listen to Marc Maron.
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: But maybe not what Chuck just said.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: That's it.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, if you want to get in touch with
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: us like Aaron did and do something interesting, we want
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: to hear about it. You can write to us in
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.