January 12, 2017 • 28 mins
Unless you happen to be standing on a hilltop or swimming in the ocean right now, you are on a watershed. These unsung wonders of topography and hydrology are an important contributor to the rain cycle and yet we humans tend to abuse them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W Chuck Bryan, and there's guest producer Noel who, frankly,
I think he's done enough times. I we should just
(00:21):
be like our other producer Noel, and then if we're
in France, I would say our other producer. So just
removing the interim tag the guests fag. I think he's
I think he's earned it, don't you? What is with
you in these snacks? All right? Everyone, you should know
(00:43):
Josh has a largish cup. This is not large. It's
a small tumbler at best, tumbler full of jelly beans
and animal crackers as if you are a four year old.
Four year old should not be eating the stuff. Weird.
I don't like jelly beans, so well, whatever do you
(01:05):
put them in your mouth at the same time? Is
that the idea? Because they're all this mixed in there together? Yeah,
I guess. I mean, really, you're eating an animal cracker
at the same time as a jelly bean. Ohh no, no, okay, no,
I suit you me. I thought about the different flavors
of jelly beans are those of the weird jelly beans
are like, hey, this is fart snake oil. Yeah, they're
(01:26):
not supposed to be, though, I think they turned. It
was supposed to be just lime and great snake. That's
a good, good one. Uh. So, I've been singing the
Indigo Girls song in my head all day because of
water Sheds. I just want to throw that out there.
Is that one of the songs? I knew it was
one of their restaurants? Yeah, I didn't know it was
named after a song. Yeah. Up on the Watershed is
(01:49):
how it goes. Yeah, it's a good restaurant. It's Emily
from the Anigo Girls. It was. I'm not sure if
it still is, but yeah, I think it still is. Well,
so she named water shed after her song. She named
her song after the actual hydrological unit of watersheds. Yeah,
I think she thought that naming a song um kid
(02:11):
fears would be weird. Oh is that the song? No
watershed is the song? But I was just making a
joke about another one of their songs, Okay, I thought maybe. Yeah.
This is the most confusing Indigo Girls conversation I've ever had,
including the famous uh Indigo Girls conversation of ODT three.
(02:35):
This is more confusing. This is the worst, the worst
intro we've ever had in our lives. Alright, Well let's
continue then, Alright, so chuck watershed. Well, I already kind
of gave it away a little bit by saying it's
a hydrological unit. So watershed is basically Actually, it's even
(02:57):
easier to say, what's not a watershed? Not a watershed
is a ridgeline or a hilltop, or a large body
of water like a lake or an ocean or a bay.
Everything else is basically a watershed, yeah, which is to say,
a place where water sheds rain water, water comes down
(03:23):
upon the earth and then eventually finds its way to
a larger body of water via watersheds. That's right. I
just saw that there was this cool thing. I can't
remember the exact name of it, but a thing that
you can do here in Georgia where you can follow
the water from Atlanta all the way to Sapelo Island. Uh.
(03:43):
And it's a tour. I think you like, canoe part
of it and you just sort of, you know, follow
its path. It's like a little echoed So I see,
I thought you meant like online. No, no, no, you
actually do it. Forget it? No, it does sound pretty cool. Yeah,
I saw them where that um, one drop of water,
This is on a kid's website, but one drop of
(04:05):
water stays in a lake for about a hundred years
for it moves along. Is that why you're eating the
jelly beans and animal crackers because I was on a
kid's website. Nice? All right, so we know what watersheds
are and are not. Uh, if you want the strict
definition from the e p A, they said as anybody
(04:25):
of land that flows downhill into a waterway. Yeah. So
they can be very big, they can be very small.
I saw somewhere that made reference to uh, something the
size of a footprint could conceivably constitute a watershed. Right.
So basically, anything that's defined by some sort of higher elevation, um,
(04:46):
that moves water, that moves water put on a downward
slope towards some sort of flowing water that goes into
a larger body of water. Again, that's a watershed. And
you put these things together, and one little watershed that
feeds water to a tiny, little trickling stream that uh
leads to a larger stream that leads to a river.
(05:09):
That's one little watershed, but it's a part of the
larger watershed for that one big river that that little
stream feeding it is just one of many streams feeding it,
and each of those streams has its own little watershed.
So it's a weird little patchwork quilt or jigsaw puzzle
that overlays any bit of land. Um. Those are all watersheds,
(05:31):
and when you put them all together, they all form
one cohesive hole. And the boundaries are defined by elevation.
Because if you, as this article puts it, if you
live on a ridge, uh and your neighbor lives on
the other side of ridge, you live in two different
watersheds and your mortal enemies, right exactly, if you're a
half field and you're a McCoy uh. The the our
(05:52):
own article UM had a nice little analogy with the umbrellas.
Like if you turn over let's say five or six
umbrellas at varying heights on top of one another, and
they all had holes at the bottom. Any water, let's
say it started raining, it would just collect at various
different parts of the umbrella, and it would all flow
down and eventually exit that bottom and maybe go into
(06:15):
another umbrella, but that would eventually eventually get down to
that main umbrella, which would be whatever main body of
water it flows into, right, so ocean or a lake
or whatever. And then each each watershed is defined by
the um the headwater of the water it goes into correct, right,
(06:35):
so um the well you have three things as far
as flowing water goes. Right, you got the headwater where say,
like the river begins and snow melting rain all flows
down hill to this thing to form the beginning of
the river. And there it goes there it's off headwaters
(06:56):
release and then um, with that flow water hits another
stream of some sort, you've got a confluence. And then
um where they end, say like they go into a
bay or something like that. Big river empties out, like
the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Where it
(07:19):
empties into the Gulf of Mexico. That's the mouth that's right.
And all of this water it moves downhill or uphill,
It moves towards the equator. The bulge in the earth
attracts the water like crazy, Yeah, I can't move uphill though,
can it? Uh? To us? We would think it was
uphill because we're looking down onto the southern hemisphere. For
(07:42):
the Southern hemisphere be downhill with them. It's just wacky.
I will say that one time I was in a
rainstorm in the desert that was so bad that there
was water running uphill briefly and it was freaky looking.
I'll bet like it's just something your brain doesn't know
how to process and you see a definite grade in
(08:04):
the land and water going the way that it shouldn't
be going. I don't know what caused it, or maybe
it was the drugs. Just kidding. Um, it was an
intense storm and the desert storms. Actually this leads right
into this part nicely. Desert storms are amazing because of
how the water runs off compared to what I was
used to growing up in the southeast. But um, there
(08:28):
are uh a lot of different things that can happen
to the water once it rains or once it snow melts.
It's not gonna all end up in the Mighty Mississippi
or that ocean and here they are. Yeah, there's a
lot of stuff they can happen to it along the way,
that's right. Uh. Infiltration is one of the big ones. Uh.
(08:49):
The rain falls on the dry ground. Obviously, water's gonna
soak in, get in that soil or infiltrate it. Uh
some of it will remain there and that shallow layer
uh um. And then that's going to move downhill through
that soil still UM into let's say an aquifer or something. Okay, Yeah,
(09:10):
that's that's um infiltration, right. Yeah. And sometimes it goes
a long way or remains stored for a long period
of time before it comes back to the surface. Sometimes
it doesn't, but it's just how much is infiltrating the ground. Yeah,
And those um underwater rivers are pretty interesting. You've got
ones that are like in a car system, like a
limestone system, where it actually is like a river underground
(09:34):
like a cave. But you also have underground rivers UM
that aren't part of car systems and that are actually
rivers underneath rivers. Right. So you have a river bed.
All of the sediment and soil and dirt and um,
sand and gravel that make up a river bed is porous,
(09:54):
but it's also saturated, which is why there's a river
on top of it. But because that riverbed is porous,
water actually flows through it as well. So that's one
of the other ways that water can kind of flow
invisibly to us underneath the river through the ground. Yeah,
and and that infiltration and how that water flows, it
(10:15):
depends a lot on the soil characteristics, whether or not
it's clay or sandy like you're saying. And then also,
like you mentioned, it's just like a sponge that soil saturation.
You know, it can only get so saturated, and then
you get that lovely river. Uh And then of course
the land cover has a big impact too. Um, if
(10:35):
you've got you know, what humans have done has created
a lot of They pay paradise and put up a
parking lot. You do not like that song really, all right? Um,
you seem shy about admitting that I don't only to
put things down, you know, Okay, you don't want to
yuck a yum Um. I do like that song though,
(10:59):
that's great. Uh So, Anyway, what we've done is paved
a lot of things, and then that creates what's called
a fast lane for rainfall. And that is it's not
the only reason why, but that's one of the big
reasons why we have floods. Is that this water that
normally would take a more lazy route and a more
natural route. Yeah, water super lazy. Um, if it hits
that pavement, now, then you you get water running much
(11:22):
faster and in ways you maybe didn't predict. Yeah. The
Geological Service calls impermeable surfaces a fast lane for rain, water, stormwater, right,
and it is true. And the built environment definitely alters
the way water moves through it. Um. So human not
just human uh intervention or obstruction, but also human use
(11:45):
to Like when we draw water out of an aquifer,
that prevents it from ultimately going to its destination or
delays it, I should say, depending on what we do
with that water. Yeah, Like if we drink it, tinkle
it out into a stream, we actually make it go.
They're faster. Are you encouraging that? Nothing wrong with that? Man?
(12:05):
All right, Well let's take a quick break and we'll
talk a little bit more about some of the other
things that can happen to water once it's the ground.
(12:32):
All right. So, um we teased everyone that other things
can happen to water. We can turn into wine, all right,
if you believe the Bible, it can evaporate and then
turn into rain part of the rain cycle. Yeah, well
that's a big one. Um did we do one an
evaporation or just clouds. That's probably where we covered that
(12:52):
cloud fluffy clouds or something a little fluffy clouds. But
when rainfall does come down on the ground, a lot
of it does go back up into the atmosphere through evaporation,
and that depends on how hot it is, a temperature, wind,
atmospheric pressure, a lot of other things. Then there's also transporation.
This is my favorite, is it. Yeah, we'll take it away.
(13:14):
Oh well, basically when you have plants, they're also taking
in water themselves, putting it to good use, breaking it down,
creating chlorophyll, not borophyll, chlorophyll uh and um, just generally
making things pretty unhappy. That's transporation. Yeah, and that will
(13:36):
slow the runoff obviously because taking a more circuitous route
well locks it up, and then eventually it should evaporate
from the water or from the plants and enter the
rain cycle again. Yeah. And then of course other man
made things like water storage, like you know, if you
build a dam or something, you're literally in control of
the release of that water. Yeah, that's a huge threat
(13:57):
to the health and vitality of wet lends. Is damn
building like it helps us. You know, we have um
basically a huge store of drinking water that we can
create electricity from. But for the downstream ecosystems, it's damns
are not good. Plus they can cause earthquakes, if you'll
(14:18):
remember correctly, Yes, that's right, I remember, they remember. Uh
so hold on. I have to say I was thinking
the other day about those shorts for the uninitiated. We
used to do one minute shorts that appeared on the
Science Channel. They were like the precursor to our actual show.
Do you remember those shorts? So the I thought of
(14:39):
one the other day to remember the when we were
playing racquetball. That was I think the pinnacle of all
of them. Just the setup. Yeah, just the whole thing,
everything went. It was just perfect. I thought it was great.
It just popped in my head the other day. I
was like, I totally forgot we even did those things,
and then I was thinking about it. Thought it was hilarter. Yeah.
The gag and that one was that I was airing
(15:00):
like a full like basketball uniform and sweatband. Holson, you
were wearing like an Oxford and jeans and we're playing
racquetball like that? Was that funny as that? Yeah? I
just thought it was great. Surprised that never took off.
Well it did. It got us a TV show. Yeah,
that's true, we did. Like it was the TV show
(15:20):
that didn't take off. We had a couple of dozen
of those shorts. Right, those are all fun. Let's start
posting some of those again. Well this is my passive
aggressive way of asking YouTube. Okay, Uh, so watersheds are
keeping them clean as a big deal. It really matters
because there's a domino effect that can happen um when
(15:43):
they're polluted. Oh yeah, so water is great for transporting things, right,
we put barges on them, jet skis on them, sailboats.
It's also really good for transporting other stuff, like anything
that's a pollutant is really easily moved along through water. Right,
And the whole point of a water shed is moving
(16:06):
water across land into larger bodies of water. Well, the
stuff that's in the way of that water gets picked
up and carried in along with it too. Right, So
the pollutants that we just leave lying around, everything from
dog poop to um anti freeze, ends up in the
water because it's in the water shed. So it ends
(16:26):
up in the body of water. And since we use
these these bodies of water for all sorts of different things,
it's a big problem. And and it's a it's a
it's something that I think more people need to be
aware of because you think I'll just leave my dog
poop there on the ground. You don't think about how
it's going to rain and flush that dog poop in
(16:46):
there and create a coliform bacteria bloom that's going to
kill a bunch of fish or give them salmonella. Yeah.
I've seen certain cities on their storm drains have little
signs that say things like, you know, just reminders like
you know, what goes in this thing will end up
in you know, some larger body of water and have
(17:08):
a big impact. Stuff. I found the thing that said
the leading cause of pollution or sediments and a lot
of times bacteria like E. Coli from dog poop. Yeah,
and even excess nutrients can be bad. Yeah, because those
form algae blooms. Right. Yeah. So algae blooms are um
where a a type of algae is already present in
(17:30):
a body of water, but then all of a sudden
there's a bunch of agricultural runoffs. Say, so there's a
huge introduction of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are fertilizers. Well,
algae is a plant, and algae blooms as a result,
and they can block sunlight for other plants in the
in the body of water. Um, when they die off,
the bacteria that eats them and your decomposes them uses
(17:53):
up tons of oxygen, so it chokes to life all
out of the fish that are in the body of water. Um.
It can make things quite smelly. It's it's just not
good for anybody. And and the reason why these algae
blooms happen is because of the fertilizer runoff that's being
introduced into the bodies of water. All right, well let's
take another break in. Uh more more depressing news right
(18:14):
after this. All right, Charles, where's the where's the silver
(18:38):
lining here? Well, let's here's some more bad news. I
was hoping to change that in the United States of
our waters are impaired or threatened, and impaired means that
it doesn't support one or more of its intended uses.
Impaired means it's drunk. It is it's a drunk like
drunk with pollution. So one or more of a stended
(19:00):
uses could mean, you can't swim in it, you can't
drink it, um, don't you know. It's always scary. It's like, yeah,
he's good fishing over there, just don't eat them, right,
that's always like oh wow, yeah and bad. But it
could be it could be anything. It could be from
there's high levels of mercury in there too. You know,
there's um toxins or um I'm sorry, bacteria. Yeah, that
(19:23):
could kill you. Flush eating bacteria lives in bodies of water. Yeah,
there's a lot of reasons and a lot of a
lot of stuff you just take well, oh well that's
the that's the natural state of that body of water.
That's absolutely not true. Yeah, And like you know, you're
pointing out here that it's all it's all interconnected. The
e p A has a paper called Sustaining Healthy Freshwater
(19:44):
Ecosystems and they really try to drive home the point
that these are not isolated bodies of water like it's
it's all very much tightly linked to one another. And uh,
the human impact has this domino effect that you know,
you throw that cigarette out of your car and you
don't think it's a big deal that's gonna end up
either in a bird's nest or a body of water,
(20:08):
just two places, right, can't you see a little baby
bird being like what is that? Why did you bring
that home? Just nuzzling up against it, rubbing its little
baby bird head. Uh? Where else around the world, this
is obviously a big problem. It's not just the United States, uh,
and the Amazon basin, the Amazon River doten is threatened
(20:29):
with extinction because of the domino effect of watershed runoff pollution. Well,
you said it earlier. You said human human activity basically,
and it's not just us polluting. Like say, you pour
out your anti freeze and just go in yuck into
(20:50):
yourself about how great that was. I just dumped it
down the storm drain. You're not supposed to do that.
That's not good, right, not good. It goes beyond that,
like our activity. Like say, um, if you tear up
some trees along a stream bed, Well, tree roots have
a really great effect of holding soil in place. And
(21:13):
without the roots to hold the soil in places, the
stream passes by and maybe floods a little bit after
a big rainfall. It takes a lot of sediment with it. Well,
you say, so long, river bank, Who cares that sediment
can go clogg the gills of fish downstream and kill
them all. Because you just couldn't live with a tree
(21:33):
in your backyard, or because you just had to build
your river house that you visit three times here. But
even still, even if you did build that, you would
want to keep a buffer of trees along the river bank. Like,
there's just some steps you want to take, right And
it's it's easy to overlook a lot of the activity
that we do UM that has these these negative effects
(21:56):
on UM water bodies because we're doing them elsewhere but
in the watershed that's still connected to the body of water.
I don't know if we've driven that home enough yet
that the activities we do on the watershed affect the
bodies of water in the end, that's right, but people
are taking action UM. The first Watershed Protection and Flood
(22:16):
Prevention Act came about in nineteen fifty four. That was
a little bit more about coordinating UH flood efforts or
flood prevention efforts rather UH. And then in nineteen seventy
two they added some more conservation efforts to that, and
then in they I think they made it friendlier to
get loans for groups carrying out measures that would help
(22:40):
promote watershed management financial loans. Yeah, and there's like a
lot of ways that you can get involved. Um. The
e p A is big time into putting you in
touch with people who are already trying to protect your
local watershed. Yeah. Um, there's stuff you can do if
you're a loaner. Um, if you have a leaky faucet,
fix it. It wastes water. It also increases the potential
(23:01):
for pollution. That's one thing. What else can you do?
You can fix that septic tank? Yeah, that too, that
can increase pollution. The things you can poop out all
over your yard, right, take care of it, yeah, because
it spreads disease your fecal material. Uh what else? Add
plants and trees instead of removing them, Right, that's a
good one. If you have a asphalt driveway, carry it
(23:24):
up and put down pavers. Now what does that mean? Well, um,
you know pavers have um joints between the pavers so
the water can trickle through them. It's a permeable surface
rather than impermeable. You know what. I kind of like
or the and this has got to be slightly better,
is the instead of the solid driveway just the two
(23:46):
strips where your tires go, oh yeah, that's Grandma's house
right there. Yeah, and then having either the grass strip
or pebbles or something in between. It's kind of nice, yeah.
Or or what about the ever popular neglected stre up
of rocks with the grass growing up through them, which
is what mine would end up looking like invariably. Or
have you ever seen the ones where it's like a
(24:07):
steep driveway but they basically put tiny steps in the
center of them that you walk up. I always thought
that was love those, totally love those I went by.
You know that while you may not know, but there's
a street what's the name of the street leading up
to our office where there's a row of houses where
the drive the yard. It's like it's one of the
(24:28):
steepest things I've ever seen. And it going back up
towards Glen Iris, there's a cut through street off of
North and uh, I mean, it might as well be
a cliff, but it's all covered in grass and I'm
just every time I passed it, I think, how in
the world did they cut that? Oh yeah, the machete.
(24:49):
I don't know. I'm just gonna hang out and wait
next summer until someone goes to cut the grass. In
the meantime, you should clean up the watershed at that
little grass cliff feeds man. That runoff must be amazing. Yeah,
just flows like a waterfall. Do you anything else? I don't? Okay,
(25:11):
Well let's end this one. Huh. If you want to
know more about watersheds, well go figure out where your
watershed is and help clean it up. There's websites where
you can do that. Type in your like find your watershed. Yeah,
that's one surf, your watershed surf. Your watershed is the
E p A S one where they're more than happy
to put you in touch with anybody who can help
you figure out how to keep your watershed. You want
(25:32):
to help your watershed? Great? Great, did you mention the
the Watershed Challenge? So? Uh, every March twenty two there's
a World Water Monitoring Challenge where you can get like
a monitor water monitoring thing and monitor the water quality
of the water in your watershed sending the results. There's
(25:53):
the last stuff you can do anyway, go search all
of that stuff. Uh. And in the meantime, it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this kitty Genevese follow up. Hey, guys,
recently listened to that episode and had a few observations.
I've read much about the case before and have read
Abe Rosenthal's thirty eight witnesses account, but it never occurred
(26:14):
to me that I knew basically nothing about Miss Geneviez
other than how she died. Like you guys were saying,
you made that point and then made an effort to
add some color in her life, uh to her life.
I appreciated. That inspired me to watch the documentary The
witness which you recommend. Um. The documentary was heartrending knowing
more about Miss genevie Seeing the footage of her dancing
(26:36):
in the park with her friends made me really, really sad.
But like Josh, I struggled to see any common understanding
between Miss Geneviez's brother and Winston Moseley's son. That was
certainly a fascinating interaction to watch. Honestly, though, the final
scene with the screaming actress, remember we were talking about that, Yeah,
that was I was gonna be corny and ended up
moving me. She was not moved. Now are this is us?
(27:00):
Don't know if it's a lady or dude could. But honestly, though,
the final scene with the screaming actress, such a very
bitter taste in my mouth left me feeling that a
good documentary had been finished with a tasteless hackey stunt
that achieved nothing. Um yeah, I could see I could
be taken that way, I guess. So that is from
Chris Downing in Sydney, Australia p S. I will balance
(27:21):
my commendation of that episode always love that PS. I'll
balance my commendation above with the observation that evil Kinevil
was not a man worthy of a double episode. But
I forgave you immediately for that. Yeah, that was crazy.
I remember like the look on our face faces when
(27:41):
we decided to make it too. Yeah. I just couldn't
believe it, but we plowed ahead. Yeah. I'll always say
Isaac Newton got one evil says a lot about us. Yeah. Uh,
that's the way it worked out. We still did one
on Isaac Newton. They'll get off our bats. Yeah, maybe
we'll do a part two one day on that even score. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us like
(28:03):
Chris did. Thanks, by the way, Chris, you can tweet
to us. I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter, and
you can also reach us at s Y s K
podcast on Twitter. You can reach Chuck at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant on Facebook or Stuff you Should Know on Facebook.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff Works dot com. There's always joined us at
(28:23):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W Chuck Bryan, and there's guest producer Noel who, frankly,
I think he's done enough times. I we should just
(00:21):
be like our other producer Noel, and then if we're
in France, I would say our other producer. So just
removing the interim tag the guests fag. I think he's
I think he's earned it, don't you? What is with
you in these snacks? All right? Everyone, you should know
(00:43):
Josh has a largish cup. This is not large. It's
a small tumbler at best, tumbler full of jelly beans
and animal crackers as if you are a four year old.
Four year old should not be eating the stuff. Weird.
I don't like jelly beans, so well, whatever do you
(01:05):
put them in your mouth at the same time? Is
that the idea? Because they're all this mixed in there together? Yeah,
I guess. I mean, really, you're eating an animal cracker
at the same time as a jelly bean. Ohh no, no, okay, no,
I suit you me. I thought about the different flavors
of jelly beans are those of the weird jelly beans
are like, hey, this is fart snake oil. Yeah, they're
(01:26):
not supposed to be, though, I think they turned. It
was supposed to be just lime and great snake. That's
a good, good one. Uh. So, I've been singing the
Indigo Girls song in my head all day because of
water Sheds. I just want to throw that out there.
Is that one of the songs? I knew it was
one of their restaurants? Yeah, I didn't know it was
named after a song. Yeah. Up on the Watershed is
(01:49):
how it goes. Yeah, it's a good restaurant. It's Emily
from the Anigo Girls. It was. I'm not sure if
it still is, but yeah, I think it still is. Well,
so she named water shed after her song. She named
her song after the actual hydrological unit of watersheds. Yeah,
I think she thought that naming a song um kid
(02:11):
fears would be weird. Oh is that the song? No
watershed is the song? But I was just making a
joke about another one of their songs, Okay, I thought maybe. Yeah.
This is the most confusing Indigo Girls conversation I've ever had,
including the famous uh Indigo Girls conversation of ODT three.
(02:35):
This is more confusing. This is the worst, the worst
intro we've ever had in our lives. Alright, Well let's
continue then, Alright, so chuck watershed. Well, I already kind
of gave it away a little bit by saying it's
a hydrological unit. So watershed is basically Actually, it's even
(02:57):
easier to say, what's not a watershed? Not a watershed
is a ridgeline or a hilltop, or a large body
of water like a lake or an ocean or a bay.
Everything else is basically a watershed, yeah, which is to say,
a place where water sheds rain water, water comes down
(03:23):
upon the earth and then eventually finds its way to
a larger body of water via watersheds. That's right. I
just saw that there was this cool thing. I can't
remember the exact name of it, but a thing that
you can do here in Georgia where you can follow
the water from Atlanta all the way to Sapelo Island. Uh.
(03:43):
And it's a tour. I think you like, canoe part
of it and you just sort of, you know, follow
its path. It's like a little echoed So I see,
I thought you meant like online. No, no, no, you
actually do it. Forget it? No, it does sound pretty cool. Yeah,
I saw them where that um, one drop of water,
This is on a kid's website, but one drop of
(04:05):
water stays in a lake for about a hundred years
for it moves along. Is that why you're eating the
jelly beans and animal crackers because I was on a
kid's website. Nice? All right, so we know what watersheds
are and are not. Uh, if you want the strict
definition from the e p A, they said as anybody
(04:25):
of land that flows downhill into a waterway. Yeah. So
they can be very big, they can be very small.
I saw somewhere that made reference to uh, something the
size of a footprint could conceivably constitute a watershed. Right.
So basically, anything that's defined by some sort of higher elevation, um,
(04:46):
that moves water, that moves water put on a downward
slope towards some sort of flowing water that goes into
a larger body of water. Again, that's a watershed. And
you put these things together, and one little watershed that
feeds water to a tiny, little trickling stream that uh
leads to a larger stream that leads to a river.
(05:09):
That's one little watershed, but it's a part of the
larger watershed for that one big river that that little
stream feeding it is just one of many streams feeding it,
and each of those streams has its own little watershed.
So it's a weird little patchwork quilt or jigsaw puzzle
that overlays any bit of land. Um. Those are all watersheds,
(05:31):
and when you put them all together, they all form
one cohesive hole. And the boundaries are defined by elevation.
Because if you, as this article puts it, if you
live on a ridge, uh and your neighbor lives on
the other side of ridge, you live in two different
watersheds and your mortal enemies, right exactly, if you're a
half field and you're a McCoy uh. The the our
(05:52):
own article UM had a nice little analogy with the umbrellas.
Like if you turn over let's say five or six
umbrellas at varying heights on top of one another, and
they all had holes at the bottom. Any water, let's
say it started raining, it would just collect at various
different parts of the umbrella, and it would all flow
down and eventually exit that bottom and maybe go into
(06:15):
another umbrella, but that would eventually eventually get down to
that main umbrella, which would be whatever main body of
water it flows into, right, so ocean or a lake
or whatever. And then each each watershed is defined by
the um the headwater of the water it goes into correct, right,
(06:35):
so um the well you have three things as far
as flowing water goes. Right, you got the headwater where say,
like the river begins and snow melting rain all flows
down hill to this thing to form the beginning of
the river. And there it goes there it's off headwaters
(06:56):
release and then um, with that flow water hits another
stream of some sort, you've got a confluence. And then
um where they end, say like they go into a
bay or something like that. Big river empties out, like
the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Where it
(07:19):
empties into the Gulf of Mexico. That's the mouth that's right.
And all of this water it moves downhill or uphill,
It moves towards the equator. The bulge in the earth
attracts the water like crazy, Yeah, I can't move uphill though,
can it? Uh? To us? We would think it was
uphill because we're looking down onto the southern hemisphere. For
(07:42):
the Southern hemisphere be downhill with them. It's just wacky.
I will say that one time I was in a
rainstorm in the desert that was so bad that there
was water running uphill briefly and it was freaky looking.
I'll bet like it's just something your brain doesn't know
how to process and you see a definite grade in
(08:04):
the land and water going the way that it shouldn't
be going. I don't know what caused it, or maybe
it was the drugs. Just kidding. Um, it was an
intense storm and the desert storms. Actually this leads right
into this part nicely. Desert storms are amazing because of
how the water runs off compared to what I was
used to growing up in the southeast. But um, there
(08:28):
are uh a lot of different things that can happen
to the water once it rains or once it snow melts.
It's not gonna all end up in the Mighty Mississippi
or that ocean and here they are. Yeah, there's a
lot of stuff they can happen to it along the way,
that's right. Uh. Infiltration is one of the big ones. Uh.
(08:49):
The rain falls on the dry ground. Obviously, water's gonna
soak in, get in that soil or infiltrate it. Uh
some of it will remain there and that shallow layer
uh um. And then that's going to move downhill through
that soil still UM into let's say an aquifer or something. Okay, Yeah,
(09:10):
that's that's um infiltration, right. Yeah. And sometimes it goes
a long way or remains stored for a long period
of time before it comes back to the surface. Sometimes
it doesn't, but it's just how much is infiltrating the ground. Yeah,
And those um underwater rivers are pretty interesting. You've got
ones that are like in a car system, like a
limestone system, where it actually is like a river underground
(09:34):
like a cave. But you also have underground rivers UM
that aren't part of car systems and that are actually
rivers underneath rivers. Right. So you have a river bed.
All of the sediment and soil and dirt and um,
sand and gravel that make up a river bed is porous,
(09:54):
but it's also saturated, which is why there's a river
on top of it. But because that riverbed is porous,
water actually flows through it as well. So that's one
of the other ways that water can kind of flow
invisibly to us underneath the river through the ground. Yeah,
and and that infiltration and how that water flows, it
(10:15):
depends a lot on the soil characteristics, whether or not
it's clay or sandy like you're saying. And then also,
like you mentioned, it's just like a sponge that soil saturation.
You know, it can only get so saturated, and then
you get that lovely river. Uh And then of course
the land cover has a big impact too. Um, if
(10:35):
you've got you know, what humans have done has created
a lot of They pay paradise and put up a
parking lot. You do not like that song really, all right? Um,
you seem shy about admitting that I don't only to
put things down, you know, Okay, you don't want to
yuck a yum Um. I do like that song though,
(10:59):
that's great. Uh So, Anyway, what we've done is paved
a lot of things, and then that creates what's called
a fast lane for rainfall. And that is it's not
the only reason why, but that's one of the big
reasons why we have floods. Is that this water that
normally would take a more lazy route and a more
natural route. Yeah, water super lazy. Um, if it hits
that pavement, now, then you you get water running much
(11:22):
faster and in ways you maybe didn't predict. Yeah. The
Geological Service calls impermeable surfaces a fast lane for rain, water, stormwater, right,
and it is true. And the built environment definitely alters
the way water moves through it. Um. So human not
just human uh intervention or obstruction, but also human use
(11:45):
to Like when we draw water out of an aquifer,
that prevents it from ultimately going to its destination or
delays it, I should say, depending on what we do
with that water. Yeah, Like if we drink it, tinkle
it out into a stream, we actually make it go.
They're faster. Are you encouraging that? Nothing wrong with that? Man?
(12:05):
All right, Well let's take a quick break and we'll
talk a little bit more about some of the other
things that can happen to water once it's the ground.
(12:32):
All right. So, um we teased everyone that other things
can happen to water. We can turn into wine, all right,
if you believe the Bible, it can evaporate and then
turn into rain part of the rain cycle. Yeah, well
that's a big one. Um did we do one an
evaporation or just clouds. That's probably where we covered that
(12:52):
cloud fluffy clouds or something a little fluffy clouds. But
when rainfall does come down on the ground, a lot
of it does go back up into the atmosphere through evaporation,
and that depends on how hot it is, a temperature, wind,
atmospheric pressure, a lot of other things. Then there's also transporation.
This is my favorite, is it. Yeah, we'll take it away.
(13:14):
Oh well, basically when you have plants, they're also taking
in water themselves, putting it to good use, breaking it down,
creating chlorophyll, not borophyll, chlorophyll uh and um, just generally
making things pretty unhappy. That's transporation. Yeah, and that will
(13:36):
slow the runoff obviously because taking a more circuitous route
well locks it up, and then eventually it should evaporate
from the water or from the plants and enter the
rain cycle again. Yeah. And then of course other man
made things like water storage, like you know, if you
build a dam or something, you're literally in control of
the release of that water. Yeah, that's a huge threat
(13:57):
to the health and vitality of wet lends. Is damn
building like it helps us. You know, we have um
basically a huge store of drinking water that we can
create electricity from. But for the downstream ecosystems, it's damns
are not good. Plus they can cause earthquakes, if you'll
(14:18):
remember correctly, Yes, that's right, I remember, they remember. Uh
so hold on. I have to say I was thinking
the other day about those shorts for the uninitiated. We
used to do one minute shorts that appeared on the
Science Channel. They were like the precursor to our actual show.
Do you remember those shorts? So the I thought of
(14:39):
one the other day to remember the when we were
playing racquetball. That was I think the pinnacle of all
of them. Just the setup. Yeah, just the whole thing,
everything went. It was just perfect. I thought it was great.
It just popped in my head the other day. I
was like, I totally forgot we even did those things,
and then I was thinking about it. Thought it was hilarter. Yeah.
The gag and that one was that I was airing
(15:00):
like a full like basketball uniform and sweatband. Holson, you
were wearing like an Oxford and jeans and we're playing
racquetball like that? Was that funny as that? Yeah? I
just thought it was great. Surprised that never took off.
Well it did. It got us a TV show. Yeah,
that's true, we did. Like it was the TV show
(15:20):
that didn't take off. We had a couple of dozen
of those shorts. Right, those are all fun. Let's start
posting some of those again. Well this is my passive
aggressive way of asking YouTube. Okay, Uh, so watersheds are
keeping them clean as a big deal. It really matters
because there's a domino effect that can happen um when
(15:43):
they're polluted. Oh yeah, so water is great for transporting things, right,
we put barges on them, jet skis on them, sailboats.
It's also really good for transporting other stuff, like anything
that's a pollutant is really easily moved along through water. Right,
And the whole point of a water shed is moving
(16:06):
water across land into larger bodies of water. Well, the
stuff that's in the way of that water gets picked
up and carried in along with it too. Right, So
the pollutants that we just leave lying around, everything from
dog poop to um anti freeze, ends up in the
water because it's in the water shed. So it ends
(16:26):
up in the body of water. And since we use
these these bodies of water for all sorts of different things,
it's a big problem. And and it's a it's a
it's something that I think more people need to be
aware of because you think I'll just leave my dog
poop there on the ground. You don't think about how
it's going to rain and flush that dog poop in
(16:46):
there and create a coliform bacteria bloom that's going to
kill a bunch of fish or give them salmonella. Yeah.
I've seen certain cities on their storm drains have little
signs that say things like, you know, just reminders like
you know, what goes in this thing will end up
in you know, some larger body of water and have
(17:08):
a big impact. Stuff. I found the thing that said
the leading cause of pollution or sediments and a lot
of times bacteria like E. Coli from dog poop. Yeah,
and even excess nutrients can be bad. Yeah, because those
form algae blooms. Right. Yeah. So algae blooms are um
where a a type of algae is already present in
(17:30):
a body of water, but then all of a sudden
there's a bunch of agricultural runoffs. Say, so there's a
huge introduction of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are fertilizers. Well,
algae is a plant, and algae blooms as a result,
and they can block sunlight for other plants in the
in the body of water. Um, when they die off,
the bacteria that eats them and your decomposes them uses
(17:53):
up tons of oxygen, so it chokes to life all
out of the fish that are in the body of water. Um.
It can make things quite smelly. It's it's just not
good for anybody. And and the reason why these algae
blooms happen is because of the fertilizer runoff that's being
introduced into the bodies of water. All right, well let's
take another break in. Uh more more depressing news right
(18:14):
after this. All right, Charles, where's the where's the silver
(18:38):
lining here? Well, let's here's some more bad news. I
was hoping to change that in the United States of
our waters are impaired or threatened, and impaired means that
it doesn't support one or more of its intended uses.
Impaired means it's drunk. It is it's a drunk like
drunk with pollution. So one or more of a stended
(19:00):
uses could mean, you can't swim in it, you can't
drink it, um, don't you know. It's always scary. It's like, yeah,
he's good fishing over there, just don't eat them, right,
that's always like oh wow, yeah and bad. But it
could be it could be anything. It could be from
there's high levels of mercury in there too. You know,
there's um toxins or um I'm sorry, bacteria. Yeah, that
(19:23):
could kill you. Flush eating bacteria lives in bodies of water. Yeah,
there's a lot of reasons and a lot of a
lot of stuff you just take well, oh well that's
the that's the natural state of that body of water.
That's absolutely not true. Yeah, And like you know, you're
pointing out here that it's all it's all interconnected. The
e p A has a paper called Sustaining Healthy Freshwater
(19:44):
Ecosystems and they really try to drive home the point
that these are not isolated bodies of water like it's
it's all very much tightly linked to one another. And uh,
the human impact has this domino effect that you know,
you throw that cigarette out of your car and you
don't think it's a big deal that's gonna end up
either in a bird's nest or a body of water,
(20:08):
just two places, right, can't you see a little baby
bird being like what is that? Why did you bring
that home? Just nuzzling up against it, rubbing its little
baby bird head. Uh? Where else around the world, this
is obviously a big problem. It's not just the United States, uh,
and the Amazon basin, the Amazon River doten is threatened
(20:29):
with extinction because of the domino effect of watershed runoff pollution. Well,
you said it earlier. You said human human activity basically,
and it's not just us polluting. Like say, you pour
out your anti freeze and just go in yuck into
(20:50):
yourself about how great that was. I just dumped it
down the storm drain. You're not supposed to do that.
That's not good, right, not good. It goes beyond that,
like our activity. Like say, um, if you tear up
some trees along a stream bed, Well, tree roots have
a really great effect of holding soil in place. And
(21:13):
without the roots to hold the soil in places, the
stream passes by and maybe floods a little bit after
a big rainfall. It takes a lot of sediment with it. Well,
you say, so long, river bank, Who cares that sediment
can go clogg the gills of fish downstream and kill
them all. Because you just couldn't live with a tree
(21:33):
in your backyard, or because you just had to build
your river house that you visit three times here. But
even still, even if you did build that, you would
want to keep a buffer of trees along the river bank. Like,
there's just some steps you want to take, right And
it's it's easy to overlook a lot of the activity
that we do UM that has these these negative effects
(21:56):
on UM water bodies because we're doing them elsewhere but
in the watershed that's still connected to the body of water.
I don't know if we've driven that home enough yet
that the activities we do on the watershed affect the
bodies of water in the end, that's right, but people
are taking action UM. The first Watershed Protection and Flood
(22:16):
Prevention Act came about in nineteen fifty four. That was
a little bit more about coordinating UH flood efforts or
flood prevention efforts rather UH. And then in nineteen seventy
two they added some more conservation efforts to that, and
then in they I think they made it friendlier to
get loans for groups carrying out measures that would help
(22:40):
promote watershed management financial loans. Yeah, and there's like a
lot of ways that you can get involved. Um. The
e p A is big time into putting you in
touch with people who are already trying to protect your
local watershed. Yeah. Um, there's stuff you can do if
you're a loaner. Um, if you have a leaky faucet,
fix it. It wastes water. It also increases the potential
(23:01):
for pollution. That's one thing. What else can you do?
You can fix that septic tank? Yeah, that too, that
can increase pollution. The things you can poop out all
over your yard, right, take care of it, yeah, because
it spreads disease your fecal material. Uh what else? Add
plants and trees instead of removing them, Right, that's a
good one. If you have a asphalt driveway, carry it
(23:24):
up and put down pavers. Now what does that mean? Well, um,
you know pavers have um joints between the pavers so
the water can trickle through them. It's a permeable surface
rather than impermeable. You know what. I kind of like
or the and this has got to be slightly better,
is the instead of the solid driveway just the two
(23:46):
strips where your tires go, oh yeah, that's Grandma's house
right there. Yeah, and then having either the grass strip
or pebbles or something in between. It's kind of nice, yeah.
Or or what about the ever popular neglected stre up
of rocks with the grass growing up through them, which
is what mine would end up looking like invariably. Or
have you ever seen the ones where it's like a
(24:07):
steep driveway but they basically put tiny steps in the
center of them that you walk up. I always thought
that was love those, totally love those I went by.
You know that while you may not know, but there's
a street what's the name of the street leading up
to our office where there's a row of houses where
the drive the yard. It's like it's one of the
(24:28):
steepest things I've ever seen. And it going back up
towards Glen Iris, there's a cut through street off of
North and uh, I mean, it might as well be
a cliff, but it's all covered in grass and I'm
just every time I passed it, I think, how in
the world did they cut that? Oh yeah, the machete.
(24:49):
I don't know. I'm just gonna hang out and wait
next summer until someone goes to cut the grass. In
the meantime, you should clean up the watershed at that
little grass cliff feeds man. That runoff must be amazing. Yeah,
just flows like a waterfall. Do you anything else? I don't? Okay,
(25:11):
Well let's end this one. Huh. If you want to
know more about watersheds, well go figure out where your
watershed is and help clean it up. There's websites where
you can do that. Type in your like find your watershed. Yeah,
that's one surf, your watershed surf. Your watershed is the
E p A S one where they're more than happy
to put you in touch with anybody who can help
you figure out how to keep your watershed. You want
(25:32):
to help your watershed? Great? Great, did you mention the
the Watershed Challenge? So? Uh, every March twenty two there's
a World Water Monitoring Challenge where you can get like
a monitor water monitoring thing and monitor the water quality
of the water in your watershed sending the results. There's
(25:53):
the last stuff you can do anyway, go search all
of that stuff. Uh. And in the meantime, it's time
for listener mail. I'm gonna call this kitty Genevese follow up. Hey, guys,
recently listened to that episode and had a few observations.
I've read much about the case before and have read
Abe Rosenthal's thirty eight witnesses account, but it never occurred
(26:14):
to me that I knew basically nothing about Miss Geneviez
other than how she died. Like you guys were saying,
you made that point and then made an effort to
add some color in her life, uh to her life.
I appreciated. That inspired me to watch the documentary The
witness which you recommend. Um. The documentary was heartrending knowing
more about Miss genevie Seeing the footage of her dancing
(26:36):
in the park with her friends made me really, really sad.
But like Josh, I struggled to see any common understanding
between Miss Geneviez's brother and Winston Moseley's son. That was
certainly a fascinating interaction to watch. Honestly, though, the final
scene with the screaming actress, remember we were talking about that, Yeah,
that was I was gonna be corny and ended up
moving me. She was not moved. Now are this is us?
(27:00):
Don't know if it's a lady or dude could. But honestly, though,
the final scene with the screaming actress, such a very
bitter taste in my mouth left me feeling that a
good documentary had been finished with a tasteless hackey stunt
that achieved nothing. Um yeah, I could see I could
be taken that way, I guess. So that is from
Chris Downing in Sydney, Australia p S. I will balance
(27:21):
my commendation of that episode always love that PS. I'll
balance my commendation above with the observation that evil Kinevil
was not a man worthy of a double episode. But
I forgave you immediately for that. Yeah, that was crazy.
I remember like the look on our face faces when
(27:41):
we decided to make it too. Yeah. I just couldn't
believe it, but we plowed ahead. Yeah. I'll always say
Isaac Newton got one evil says a lot about us. Yeah. Uh,
that's the way it worked out. We still did one
on Isaac Newton. They'll get off our bats. Yeah, maybe
we'll do a part two one day on that even score. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us like
(28:03):
Chris did. Thanks, by the way, Chris, you can tweet
to us. I'm at josh um Clark on Twitter, and
you can also reach us at s Y s K
podcast on Twitter. You can reach Chuck at Charles W.
Chuck Bryant on Facebook or Stuff you Should Know on Facebook.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff Works dot com. There's always joined us at
(28:23):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot
com For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff Works dot com
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