September 10, 2020 • 45 mins
It’s time to get jazzed up for some Earth science of the waterlogged variety. Join Chuck and Josh as they tour some of the most interesting ecosystems on the planet and learn why we need to stop destroying them post haste.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do Do Do. We'll have a book coming out and
we would love it if you bought it, That's right,
that'd be great. It's called Stuff you Should Know colon
and that's it, just colon, Okay. Uh, well, I think
there's a little bit more to it, and I'll be
the one to say it. Then. It's called an Incomplete
Compendium of mostly interesting Things and the title is just
(00:22):
a flat outlie because it's all interesting, Chuck, it is,
and it's a really fun book. We're really proud of it.
It's got great illustrations from our new friend Carlie Minardo. Uh.
It was co written with us with a great guy
named Nils Parker, and the team all came together to
produce something that we're just super super proud of. That's right.
So you can order it everywhere you buy books. Pre
(00:43):
order now and we appreciate you. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works, Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Charles
and Jerry's over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know,
(01:05):
The Dripping Wet edition in these wet Lands. What I
knew that you would not get that is that a
Seeger reference. Oh gosh, why do you have to say
seeker when you always mean Springsteen? Was that Springsteen? It's
bad lands? Okay, baby, These wetlands are born to run. Sure,
(01:30):
run water. I don't. I don't like myself anymore. Run water.
That was a great save, Chuck. So we're talking wetlands.
I have to say, um, we have to give a
shout out to Tom Peterman, the foul Mouth wetland biologist
who keeps asking us to do this episode. How was
that where this came from? It was Tom peterman suggestion,
(01:52):
although I had already wanted to do it anyway. So yeah,
I mean, we love our scienist man. This one was
I was just smiling from ear to ear. Can you
imagine watching a Blacksmith Ford something in a wetland, in
a flooded woodland? Just Nirvana right there? Really, So we're
(02:15):
talking wetlands everybody, And um Dave Russ helped us put
this one together. And Dave likes to pop in jokes
every once in a while, and he said does He said, um,
what makes a wetland wet water? And then he says,
in all seriousness, that's basically that the water has to
be um largely present at least some parts of the
(02:37):
year in the soil in such amounts that you would
call something wet land. I mean, think of the name
wet land. It's about his earthy a term as science gets. Yeah,
and he um front loaded this with a few stats,
and I won't go through all of them, but I'll
go through a few that, uh kind of are instructive
as to why I love wetland so much. Uh. Years. One,
(03:00):
Although wetlands make up only five percent of the land
surface of the the United States, they are home to thirty
of our plant species. Yeah, not bad. One third of
America's threatened or endangered species species live only in wetlands.
I would propose that that's slightly misleading. I think they're
endangered because they live in wetlands, and wetlands are endangered,
(03:22):
as we'll see. Hmmmm, think about it, Chuck, I don't know.
I took it more as like they're all hiding out
in the wetlands because it's a terrible place to hide out. No,
it's not bad because it's got thirty one of the
plant species. I mean, it's a pretty rich, bio diverse
area to live in. If you're an endangered species for sure.
(03:42):
All right, well, we'll have to um hear from Thomas
Peterman the foul Mouth Wildlife for wetland biologists who can
let us not What does he say, like do f
and wet lands already? Yes, that kind of thing. Yeah,
I like this guy. I think that's an exact quote. Yeah,
he's my kind of dude. Uh So another stat that
(04:05):
I thought was pretty interesting that well, well just kind
of needs to form the basis or the undercurrent of
this whole episode, is that, so we keep talking about
the U S. There's wetlands found all over the world,
of different types of varieties and different climates and different
um different continents, every continent except the Antarctica. But in
the United States in particular, we have a long history
(04:25):
of filling in and draining wetlands for other purposes, so
much so that, um, let's see, I believe I don't
know how much we've lost, but in the sixteen hundreds,
the Lower forty eight States were covered with two hundred
and twenty million acres of wetlands, which is eleven percent
of the total surface area of the Lower forty eight States.
(04:46):
And I think starting in the fifties, we were doing
away with wetlands at a rate of about sixty thousand
of those acres per year. Yeah, and it's gotten better
since then. But yeah, in the boy up until the
Clean Water Act, it was just like, hey, you know,
it looks great. They're a resort with like three golf
courses and a bunch of tennis. That's been such a
(05:09):
driving force, Like it's it's like looking at land or
ecosystems are being like our humans making money off of it. No, well,
then drain it and repurpose it. Set it on fire
and repurpose it. Stop it from burning, and repurpose it. Like,
if we can't make money off of it, it can't
possibly be useful. And luckily, since the environmental movement really
started in the seventies, we've realized that that's not necessarily true.
(05:30):
That even if you are just a heartless dummy, there's
still a lot of benefits that humanity has given from
things like wetlands that seem problematic or nonproductive. You know. Yeah,
that was one of danger fields big lines in Caddyshack,
as al servit was golf courses and cemeteries the two
(05:51):
biggest waste of prime real estate. That's a good one.
So let's talk about wetlands. He said that they are
only some of them are only wet for short periods,
sometimes when there's snow, melts or just rain. Yeah, those
are called ephemeral wetlands, which is a cool term. It's
a great term. Some are wet all the time. And
the key parts of being a wet land or the
(06:12):
key characteristic is that it's either permanently or periodically flooded
or wet, and that the soil is got it's called
hydric soil and is dominated by anaerobic processes, meaning it
loves water and the plants there love water. But which
is weird because you used another word that shouldn't really
(06:33):
jibe with plants, and that's called anaerobic, which means there's
very little to no oxygen present um. And we'll explain
why later. But the fact that there are plants means
that those plants have adapted to the wetlands. Yes, and
its hydrophytic, and we'll talk about those plants later. It's
it's another Another thing I love about wetlands is just
that it really underscores the remarkable evolution that something will
(06:56):
go through to survive, very cool, very very awesome. Yep
so Um, there's also so but you hit upon something
like they're not necessarily wet year round, right, So there's
a whole bunch of different types of wetlands or wetland
environments that fill those that check those boxes. UM. One
(07:18):
of the ones that most people think of when they
think of wetlands or coastal wetlands, like marshes and a
marsh is basically like this area between inland and the ocean.
It's like a transition zone, a buffer zone. And because
it's because of its proximity to the ocean, UM, it's
usually salty or at least brackets, which is a mixture
(07:38):
of salt water and fresh water. And one of the
one of the ones that really come to mind if
you're thinking coastal wetlands, you're thinking marsh lands, and you're
thinking tidal marsh lands, probably especially if you're a Pat
Conroy fan. What was the name of her character that
he repeats over and over in a whisper. I think
(07:59):
I remember Umber Chuck. It was Bobby Jim, Bobby Jim.
This is one of those scream at the uh at
the pod player moments. Was it in. Was it in
the Prince of Tides? Yeah, Lowenstein? Was that it? You're
sure it wasn't Bobby Jim. I think it was Lowenstein.
Was it his oh his shrinks his shrink girlfriend's name, yeah,
(08:20):
Babs Okay, yeah, I don't remember. I think it was Lownstein. Alright,
So anyway, title Marsha's yes, Prince of Tides. They obviously
you're it's because they're title. They're gonna come in and
out with the high and low tide. And like you said,
they're generally saltwater, and the salt marshals are are very
nutrient rich, and they do have a lot of diversity,
(08:42):
but obviously only the kind of things that can tolerate
the salt um as far as plants and animals go,
which is a pretty short list really, because salt is
not conducive to life. Instead, there are some plants that
have figured out how to deal with salt um. But
most of the time when you're king at salt marshes,
you're looking you're the plant life is is basically grasses
(09:04):
of some sort. Um. There's also freshwater tidal marshes, which
um they are either connected to the saltwater marsh, but
they're far enough inland that the saltwater doesn't make its
way in there. Um, so it's a freshwater marsh, but
it's still is affected by the tides. And then I
had no idea about this, um, And I used to
(09:27):
vacation on Lake Erie. But apparently the Great Lakes are
so big that they have tides themselves. You didn't know that.
I had no idea. I even knew that. And I'm
a dumb dumb when it comes to the Great Lakes. Well, Chuck,
I think you got me beat big time in this case,
because I could know a million other things about the
Great Lakes. And if you knew that one thing and
I didn't, you have me beat. Yeah, I knew that.
(09:49):
And so that means that they do have those tidal
marshes the Florida Everglades or another good example, um, and boy, Florida.
Just there's a lot of different types of wetlands in Florida. Well,
there's a lot of coastline, a lot of coastline, and
a lot of interior. Um wetness. Yeah, we have a
lot of wetlands around our place in Florida, for sure.
(10:10):
And there's mangroves and all sorts of stuff that we'll
talk about. Well, we're at mangroves. I love those things.
So mangroves I think they at least deserve a short
stuff because they're one of the most amazing plants of
all time. But they're they're they're a type of coastal
um coastal wetland themselves, a mangrove forest, or if you've
(10:31):
never seen a mangrove forest, there are these kind of um.
They have a growth habit for their the shrubbery on
top of like the hair that umpa lumpa has in
the original, the original Willy Wonka, the good one. And
they're the trunks split out into these cool like long
(10:53):
roots and legs that stick up out of the water
and they form this huge tangle, this riot of like
sh a woody shrub um, and they do all sorts
of amazing things to help the aquatic life and us
humans as well up on land just by being present. Yeah,
they're really cool looking. Uh. And this is another good one,
sort of like the oregami that if you're able and
(11:15):
you're sitting still to look up a lot of these
things as you go, because these mangrove for us, it
looks like it looks like a shrub. That's like, I
really want to be a shrub, but i don't want
to get wet, so I'm just gonna dip my legs
in a little bit. Yeah, that's really great. It's just
very cool looking. And and again just the adaptability that
(11:37):
these mangroves really want to live where they live even
though it's not very suited for them, and they become
suited for it. Right, if you've been sleeping on mangroves,
Welcome to reality. Well it's a T shirt if I
ever heard one. Yeah, that's all. I could use a
little work, But there's there's the beginnings of one in there.
You also got your inland wet lands. These are not
(11:58):
coastal in this case. We're talking about swamps and marshes
and bogs and fens at e n and marshes uh.
A lot of these you'll find near rivers, near streams,
uh lowland depressions, and they might periodically fill up depending
on rain what's going on, or or different types of
(12:18):
flooding that might happen. And they can be a few
inches deep, they can be several feet deep. Yeah, they're
most of the non title. Inland marshes are ephemeral wetlands,
so they're dry a lot of the year. Um they
might fill up seasonally, they might fill up with the rains,
they might fill up with the nearby river flooding. It's
like my backyard, and they, oh, really is that right? Yeah,
(12:41):
it's it doesn't drain. Well, I've got a drainage problem. Okay,
to you, it's a problem to nature. It's wonderful because
we'd like things that drain really quickly and dry and
then we can walk on them and the grass is fine.
But there's a lot of like benefits to things that
take their time, like um uh, there's something called the
old pool, which is a kind of non tidal marsh,
(13:04):
an ephemeral wetland, and it's basically just like say a
stretch of woods that had that's a little bit depressed there,
so that when it rains or river floods, it fills
with water. And because the underlying bedrock or clay is
not very poorous, it takes a while for that water
to go through. But that water is also not going
further downstream, so it prevents flooding from being as bad
(13:24):
as it could because a lot of the water collects
and stays there, and it also slowly recharges the groundwater.
And because it does get dry, it can't sustain fish,
which makes it a really great nursery for things like
newts and salamanders and frogs um things that that fish
eat their eggs. But since there's no fish, this is
(13:44):
like a really great place for them to to get
a good foothole and a brand new life. Uh, you've
also got your prairie pot holes. Uh, this is when
you should definitely look up. These are usually in the
upper midwest of the United States that codas Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin,
and these are where glaciers, ancient glaciers left these big
(14:06):
depressions in the landscape and they fill up sometimes during rain,
during the spring, during snow melt. And they're not small
like our our prairie pothole. And I got a vision
in my head, but if you look it up online,
they're beautiful and just they're very large though, and they're
kind of interconnected, just these big round holes scattered through
(14:26):
like a big open area full of water. And these
are great for migrating birds because that could be a
stopover that they might not have had had those potholes
not been there, And when they're flying over the Dacota
as they say, look, I see Van Nostran's house, our
buddy van nostran Um. And then there's also we said
(14:48):
that that wetlands occur in all different kinds of climates.
They also occur in the desert. There's something called pla lakes,
which are these depressions that apparently no one has any
idea exactly how they formed. It could have been from
a ocean, it could have been from an ancient sinkhole.
But there are depressions that are deep enough that when
the seasonal rains come, the water is held in there.
(15:08):
And just like the prairie potholes, it's very useful for
migratory birds to stop over. At um can really plays
a huge role in this ecosystem where there's almost no water,
and now all of a sudden, there's water, and it's
in this nice little lake. So let's all go gather
there and have a social hour. But but but responsibly
six ft apart. That's right, I think we should take
(15:31):
a break and we will talk a little bit about
inland swamps right after this. Alright, so inland swamps we
(15:57):
promised to talk about that these are are, for my money,
some of the coolest areas in the country, because I
think I talked about it at some point. But I
took a very special fund trip many many years ago
to the Okefinokee Swamp and did one of those canoe
trips where you have to rent. You know, there's no
place to stop in the Okefinokee Swamp if you're like,
(16:20):
I think I'll camp here, it's like in the water.
So they had these camping pads built up. The essentially
just decks um that are like six ft above the water,
and you have to reserve those. They are not just
wide open for anyone um because there's nothing else out there,
so you have to reserve them for specific nights on
these specific pathways or you know, paddleways. And me and
(16:43):
a couple of buddies did it one year and we
canoed from from deck to deck and uh, it was amazing.
Like one of the coolest trips I've ever taken. That
is very cool was ned Baity with you. No, but
you do wake up surrounded by alligators. It's just a
little creepy. Yes, alligators are very creepy. Like you wake
up on that pad and and p off the dock
(17:05):
and they're growling at you. Yeah, and you do not
want to get too close because they can move faster
than you think. Yeah, they can. It was It was
a lot of fun though, but not for the faint
of heart, because you know, you don't realize until you
get out there a how bad the sun is gonna
beat you up because there's no shade, and be how
tough it is to paddle all day long without like,
(17:27):
you know, let me get out and stretch my legs.
I mean, there is no getting out. You just you
just go and go and go, and by the time
you finally reach that jankie deck, it is like, uh,
might as well be the Plaza Hotel, you know. Nice.
But what I'm talking about in the case of the
Oki Finocchi, I thought it was a forest's or a
bottom bottom land hardwood swamp, you think from reading this,
(17:50):
But apparently it's called a non riverine swamp forest and
that is a forested swamp that fills up from non
river sources basically the rain or groundwater, right right, So
the what would make a forested swamp like a bottom
land hardwood swamp is a proximity to a river that
floods its banks or that is just so so big
(18:13):
it kind of spills over into some of the surrounding land,
and that surrounding land is swamp. I want to look
that up, though I'm not quite sure Dave's right. So well,
it's okay. It's so it's either river fed or groundwater
fed or precipitation fed. And if you're talking bottom land
hardwood swamps, that's or a river fed swamp. There's usually
also a shrub swamp, which is a transition or buffer
(18:36):
zone between the forested swamp and you know, somebody's backyard,
which is it's just dominated by shrubs, but it's all
the same thing. It's all fresh water swamp. Yeah, I
think I bet you anything that. Okay, Finocchi has several
different types of these would be my guess, because they
were full on lakes that we paddled through. Yeah, um
so that would be my guess. And I also think
(18:57):
if I had a country band, they would we would
be the bottom land hardwood swamp rats. Oh that's a
good one. That sounds like an all star band, you know.
Um So, another kind of wetland that you're going to
find all over the place, especially in Europe, which when
I think of bogs and fens, I think of Europe,
but apparently there's plenty of them in the United States too.
(19:18):
But um, bogs and fens are kind of their own thing.
Bogs in particular are very unique as far as wetlands go,
because not only are they anaerobic, which by definition of
wetland is anaerobic soil, they're like very little nutrient and
very high acidity. I've I've heard like the kind of
(19:39):
acid that is put out by the peat that's created
in the bog has the same acidity roughly of vinegar.
It's like, a yeah, it's really really acidic stuff, and
yet some plants prefer it. Like you can grow cranberries
and blueberries in a bog. You can preserve a body
from the Iron Age forward and bog. Do we ever
(20:00):
recover that the bog bodies? I feel like we did.
Maybe it might have been one of our video things
on YouTube. Maybe mummies, because I think, if I remember correctly,
our mummy episode covered more than just Egyptian mummies and
be covered like Inco mummies, and I'm sure we did.
We saw some then when we went to uh on
our our UK trip, We've got to visit some of
(20:23):
those cats, like firsthand, like right there in that in
that glass, right, like you know I have to do
is smash it with a hammer and it's yours, yeah,
or at least whatever you can grab like a bog
ear right, it just crumbles and in your hand. But
I was like, I was like, okay, why why are
the bogs so great for preservation? Part of it, from
(20:45):
what I understand, is that acidity that the bodies are
actually pickled. But another part is the the um aerobic
life is so devoid there. There's just anaerobic bacteria and
they don't decompose nearly well as aerobic bacteria, so the
decomposition doesn't set in and the remains are pickled. So
(21:06):
like you can preserve a body in a really great
state for a very like toall End band, you could
his whiskers are still intact on his face. Yeah, Like
that was the level of preservation, and he was sacrificed
into a bog, which is a very specific kind of wetland. Yeah,
and a fin like I said, it's f e n
it's sort of like a bog, and that it is
(21:27):
a peat pet wetland. But they're a little bit different
than bogs. The water supply doesn't come primarily from rain,
and it comes from the ground, So it's not it's
gonna be less acidic because I don't think we mentioned mentioned.
I know it's um partially because of the peat, but um,
the acidity also comes from the fact that there's acid
(21:48):
and rain that gets filling up, that fills up these bogs,
but not the case in a fin now, because that
groundwater is able to kind of dilute it a little bit.
So they're much more New Trent rich than a ball
get so they're gonna have much a much wider diverse
range of plants and animal life. Yeah, and this I
love that. This next section from day was called other
(22:09):
fun types of wetlands. Yeah, mud flats, Yeah, you get
your mud flat. It's another good country band. Um. My
favorite are seeps. These are just gorgeous little pieces of nature.
If you ask me, um, it's if you have a
spring that comes up out of the ground. Uh, it
spills over into the ground. So the surrounding ground is wetland,
and it's called a seep. That's right. It's where gnomes
(22:31):
like go and shower. Yeah, and it's not uh like
you said, it's a spring, so it's not like a creek. No,
it's actually coming up from the ground. You ever drink
from a natural spring? I did when I was a kid,
and my mom fired the babysitter that like took a
drink from a spring. Yeah. Who she was like, what
(22:51):
are you doing? It was either spring or like a
river in Ohio, and either way very different things. It's
like a Kyaga river. Ever, then you're in bad. It
was on fire while we were drinking. But I mean,
we have creeks. If if you're listening, you've never been
to Atlanta, Atlanta has creeks all over the place. Like
all of the Intown neighborhoods just are riddled with creeks.
(23:11):
They're just sort of out of view. Um. But like,
we have a creek, you know, a hundred and twenty
ft from our house, which might have something to do
with our drainage, who knows. And it's spring fed. No,
it's just uh, you know, just a part of the
Atlanta probably all comes from the Chattahoochee at some point.
So chuck, if that creek behind your house started meandering
(23:33):
in a different direction and left a body of water
where it originally flowed, it would be an oxbow lake.
But if you were in Australia and you were calling
it it's proper Aboriginal name, you'd call it a billabong,
which I had no idea. What does that have to
do with surfing? Oh? I think they just probably co
opted the name and it became more associated with surf
(23:56):
and surf gear than then It's true. Meaning that doesn't
seem right now, let's take it back, But that's what
an oxbow lake is in Australia. Among the Aborigines, it
is a billabong, which is great. That was some like,
along with op was one of the prime uh T
shirts to have when you were a kid in the eighties.
(24:17):
Oh yeah, if you were cool. I had this amazing
ope long sleeve blue shirt that they wore with my
parachute pants were the best my British nights. Remember those
long sleeve OP shirts. Yeah, they're good, gorgeous, so chuck.
One of the things we've been talking about is um
the kind of the characteristics that make a wetland a wetland.
(24:39):
It's not just the fact that the soil table or
the ground is either flooded or almost completely flooded up
to the surface level UM with water. That's that's not
the entirety of it. Like, different wetlands are characterized by
by how that water gets to it. Like we said,
you know, some kinds of swam so are fed by groundwater,
(25:01):
others are fed by precipitation UM summer tidal. So there's
a whole group of scientists out there that are called
UM wetland hydrologists, and what they study is how that
water gets into a wetland to create a wetland, what
happens to it while it's there, and then where it goes,
and how all these things kind of interact to form
(25:21):
this very unique ecosystem. Yeah, and we talked early on
about the kyd of the kind of soil. Hydric soil
is saturated with water, and so if it's saturated with water,
it's not gonna have nearly as much oxygen and usually
oxygen and soil or in these little tiny air pockets,
remember we talked about it in our soil episode. Yeah, exactly,
(25:42):
And in the case of a wetland, then those air
pockets are going to be filled with water or just
collapsed all together, and then you've got your anaerobic condition.
But if your plant, you need CEO two and oxygen,
and you'll get a little bit of that from photosynthesis
in the leaves, but the roots are like, what about
me down here? I need oxygen too. And if it
(26:03):
was an aerobic soil like we talked about in the
In the Soil podcast, the roots can get it from
those air pockets. But in wetlands they have to really
really adapt to become hydrophytic or water loving plants and
some pretty amazing ways. So I just have to say
that this is like a lifelong mystery solved and solved
in like the simplest way possible. Like it's anaerobic because
(26:26):
there's water there instead of air. The air can't be
in there because the water is there, ipso facto anaerobic.
I just I just think that's brilliantly simple. Did you
get that intuitively? Because I never did. Always thought it
was something mysterious, like we're talking about a whole different
type of soil or something else. No, I think I
got it. Okay, Well it was if I've been around
(26:49):
for forty four years and wondered it until just now, Well,
I'm forty nine, so I might have warned that in
the last five years. So, um, the plants that we're
talking about, like, they like you said, the roots still
need oxygen. So they said, okay, well, I really like
it here. I like this wet land area. This is
pretty amazing place to live. I'm going to change so
that I can stay here. And some of the ways
(27:10):
that plants have have adapted. Um, well, one good example
is a cat tail. Right. Cat tails are pretty much
synonymous with marsh lands. Yeah, they're beautiful. They're that long,
thin stem with like a big fat thing on top,
like a hot dog that's ready to be roasted on
the fire. Yeah. I grew up with those. I don't
know if it was a Southern thing, but there. They
(27:31):
can be decorative items in the home. Uh. And I
grew up, I feel like, with a lot of cat
tails in vases and stuff. Okay, so um that in
in wasps nests. So cattails have this thing called um
airin ici Um No, I've got aeron nickima erin Akaima Erinakaima.
(27:58):
I think I got it. Anyway, they like these um
these channels that basically direct air from the leaves and
the stem and every other part of the cattailed down
to the roots. So's here you go roots, here's some
oxygen fresh from the leaf. Yeah, so that that cat
tail can have as much roots as it once down
in this an aerobic soil. It doesn't matter because it's
getting it's oxygen from the air through the leaves. Yeah.
(28:21):
One of my favorites is the speckled alder. Uh. You
just look up a picture of that, and they have
these enlarged pores called lenticels, and they allow for the
passage of oxygen directly into that wood. And if you
look up a picture and you see those, you go, oh,
that's what those are. That's what those are for. There.
They look like someone took a knife, and they're just
(28:42):
tiny little horizontal slits all up and down the alder, guess,
and it's it's their breathing basically. Yeah, that's creepy as heck,
but it's like really neat little mouths, little slitty mouths.
So um. The grasses that we talked about growing in
salt marshes um just like an iguana sneezes out excess
salts as part of digestion, Things like cord grass that
(29:05):
grow in these salt marshes. Um. They actually excrete salts
through their leaves, so they can sit there and take
all the nutrients they need from this sylinic environment um
and still not get overloaded with salt. It's just pretty
amazing that they can do that. Yeah. And then to me,
maybe the most amazing, and this is where the mangroves
(29:26):
kind of come back in. Although the mangroves apparently utilize
all these to stick around, but the bald cypress they
grow in those forested swamps where there's always water, and
they are deciduous conifers, and they grow this root structure
um that they call a knee. It's a new metaphor,
but like a knee on your leg is how it's spelled.
(29:47):
And they just sit above the water line and take
in oxygen. And that's what those I guess, mangroves, man creves.
There's a salt train joke in there somewhere. It struck
me as like a terrible jam band's name. Yeah, God,
you're right that that plays somewhere in Florida probably probably.
But the man grove uses, like I said, a lot
(30:09):
of these tricks, and I think certainly when you see
those roots, they're using those knees, Yeah, which is basically
it's a it's a it's a way to get oxygen
from the surrounding air down to the roots. The mangroves
do it. The bald cypresses do it. Mangroves have all
those adapt adaptations different species things. They can do things
(30:30):
like excrete salt. They can draw oxygen and from the environment.
They have channels where they can pump oxygen from one
part of the plant to the other. Um. The one
that gets me though, I'm just fascinated by box. So
we said that there it's an acidic um anaerobic, nutrient
depleted environment, and yet there's still plants that live there.
(30:51):
And one of those plants, one kind of plant is
carnivorous plants. They get their nutrients not from like the soil,
but from eating bugs. So they can just lived there
like a picture plant or a venus fly trap or
something like that. Yeah, those are nate nature. It wasn't
Venus fly trap one of the DJs on w k
r P. That's a great DJ name. Yeah, well he
(31:12):
was a great DJ. All right, So let's take our
final break and we'll talk about why wetlands are important
and what you can do to help them do their
thing right after this, Okay, Chuck, so um, just the
(31:44):
fact that wetlands are as amazing as they are means
that they should be saved. Um. But there's also like
a lot of benefits that we figured out. Like you
said that the fifties of the seventies were really rough
time for wetlands in the United States because we're filling
them in for crop land for real estate. Uh. And
even previous to that, we filled in a lot of
(32:05):
marshland in the US and built cities over from like
d C was built largely on marshland. Um. The fact
that mosquitoes tend to live in wetland areas uh, kind
of justified filling in a lot of the wetlands because
we were dealing with malaria at the time, so it
made a lot of sense. Get rid of the mosquito's
habitat you get rid of the mosquitoes. And it worked.
(32:26):
But we've paid a heavy price for it because over
time we've realized these wetlands provide some really important benefits
to to the local ecosystems and in turn humans who
live around them. Yeah, I mean helping flood conditions is
a big one. They are big, big natural sponges when
it comes down to it, and flooding would be way
(32:46):
way worse. And we still have floods obviously, but to
be way worse if we didn't have wetlands, they'd be
far more destructive if they weren't around to soak in
that excess water and then kind of slowly trickle it
to the water table below. Uh. And the same it
was obviously true of hurricanes and and big storm surges.
The wetlands basically operate as big storage tanks for water. Yeah.
(33:10):
I saw somewhere I can't find it now, but that like,
oh there it is an acre of wetlands can hold
up to about a million and a half gallons of
water just just one acre. So you've got to think
like that water is staying put there and it's not
flooding some human habitation instead, which is a good reason
to keep wetlands around just for that that buffer area,
(33:31):
or to slow down the surge like you were saying, Um,
I also saw that. We found out the same thing
goes for beaver dams that they build there like a
temporary artificial wetland and they provide a lot of the
same functions that natural or other I guess naturally occurring
or growing wetlands provide too. Um and I think we
should do a whole episode on beavers. Okay, totally way
(33:54):
into beavers. So water filtration is is an is it water?
I'm getting you back for the oregonic thing. So water
filtration is as another big service that wetlands provide. I
don't remember where we talked about this, but we talked
about it recently. Um where the water oh, I think
(34:16):
it was water treatment plants. The water is brought in
and it's got all the sediment and gunk and muck,
and it's cloudy and turbid, and then it slows down.
They slow it down like running it through some grates
or whatever, and as it slows down, the sediment that
is making the water turbin and polluted and everything has
a chance to settle the bottom. Well. Wetlands provide that
(34:37):
same function naturally, So when you have a bunch of
like polluted water basically come through there that it slows
down when it hits all those mangrove roots or tree
trunks or whatever it is, and it gives it a
chance for that seven sediment to fall to the bottom.
It's gets sucked up by the tree roots and stored
in the trees. Um or the microbial life can break
(35:00):
a lot of that stuff down too, And there's definitely
a limit to where you can very easily overload the
um wetlands ability to filter the water. But if you
if you gave it like a manageable supply, that is
a major service that it does. Is it cleans our water.
They call wetlands the kidneys of the earth. Yeah, And
they they've even done studies where they tried to, uh,
(35:24):
I guess, sort of monetize what an area of wetland
might do if it were a treatment plant. And there's
one in South Carolina called the Congaree bottom Land Hardwood Swamp.
These are just all country bands is They said that
that is basically um equivalent to about a five million
dollar water treatment plant just sitting there being a wetland
(35:46):
doing its thing. Thank you Nature. Pretty amazing. I saw
that beavers provide the the dams that that they build
that end up being temporary wetlands that somebody estimated it's
worth about a hundred grand if a human tried to
build an artificial one, which we do that if you
just let beavers do their thing, they will, UM, they
(36:07):
will do the same thing for free. That's right. You
don't have to pay a hundred grand Nope. UM. There's
also because there's so much going on UM in a wetland,
there's so much life, they kind of form like these
metropolis is for all sorts of different types of animals
on all the way up the food chain UM, including plants, animals,
(36:30):
microbial life, worms, fish, larger predators like dolphins and alligators, UM,
and all of them are sitting there providing food for us.
If you like gator tail, buddy, you better preserve those wetlands. Yeah,
it's UM. Dave points out here that the commercial fishing
(36:50):
industry in the US, the fish and shellfish harvested here
UM had fish that at least had a temporary home
in the wetlands, and that recordationally, if you're a recreational
fish person fisher person, then UH nine of the U
S fish catch UH is at least the breeding ground
(37:11):
lies in the wetlands for those fish. And the same
thing goes for birds too. They're they're enormously important habitats.
For birds, um, some permanent but also migratory too, because
if you're flying along and you're a bird, and you
are a water bird and you need a place to land,
not only you're looking for water, but you might really
enjoy a swamp because it offers protection from predators, it
(37:34):
offers import in the storm. It's just all around valuable
thing for birds too. Yeah. I mean, imagine flying from
Canada to Texas and you're going over Oklahoma and you're
a little tired. You look down, you see one of
those which ones where those the prairie ply is the
(37:55):
the know, the prairie pothole, prairie potholes. Oh man, what
a much sight. Aren't you describing a scene in Jonathan
Living sin Segal? Probably so. Uh So. The point is
we need to take care of our wetlands because they
are um a threatened, diverse, very useful um place all
(38:18):
over the world, especially here in the United States, and um,
if they are threatened and if things happen, there are
going to be all kinds of bad things, uh you know,
vegetative damage, um, the plant life just being maybe whitened out,
wiped out altogether, storm searches being way worse flooding being
way worse especially helps to see the value in them
(38:40):
if you consider them a buffer zone between us and
and the hardest ravages of nature. Yeah, and like you mentioned, pollution,
there is a limit, but they do absorb and mitigate
levels of water pollution, and um it just they just
can't take too much of us, you know, right exactly?
Which man, if they is anything that characterized humans in
(39:02):
the twentie and twenty one centuries, it's too much of us,
you know what I mean? What can we do though, well,
projects we can, We can definitely do that. You can
definitely do that. There's some good ones out there. Um.
I believe Ducks Unlimited is one of them, the Wetlands Initiative,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Wetlands International. Um. But apparently in
(39:25):
the United States something like se wetlands or I'm privately
owned property, and in the United States we have I mean,
private property is one of like the fundamental tenets of
American society. So if you say, I want to fill
in this wetland and kill off these beavers, you're allowed
to do that. Whether that's a good idea and whether
(39:46):
that's gonna affect other people, that's a different story. So
if you own private property with a wetland on it
and you're doing just fine with that wetland, leave the
wetland alone. It's very important. I guess this is where
it gets a little tricky in definitions, because in plenty
of places there are restrictions on building near water like this.
(40:10):
I guess I just don't know, Like, um, you can't
build in a flood zone. You can't. I mean, it
depends on where you are, but in Atlanta you can't. Uh.
And then with these all these creeks and streams in Atlanta,
they have what's called stream buffers um fifty ft seventy
hundred foot and I think, I think is the lowest.
And for these you have to get variance is to
(40:31):
do anything which your neighborhood has to approve. And I
talked to a guy that apparently anything over um, anything
under seventy five is pretty pretty tricky to get approved.
So I don't know if they're wetlands or not, but
there are restrictions on stuff like that. Okay. So that
brings up the next point of what you and I
and everybody else can do, which is vote for people
(40:52):
for to local elected office. Who part of their platform
is protecting wetlands. Yeah, like all of those buffer zones,
all those variances, and all those probably ambitions, those are
those came from Atlanta City councils over the years that
decided that wetlands needed protecting. You don't find those everywhere,
but once they get put in place, they usually don't
get repealed very easily. So if if you make preserving
(41:16):
wetlands part of like what you're voting for, that would
have an impact for sure. And whatever you're voting for,
just vote, Okay, vote, especially the presidential elections are always
the big sexy votes, but the local politics matters even
more almost sometimes. Yeah, I vote for all of it.
(41:37):
Taking interest in the in your society. Okay. Uh, well
you've got anything else about wetlands. I don't either. This
is a good one. I'm pretty happy with it. Uh
And since I said that, everybody, it's time for listener mail. Yeah.
I'm gonna call this the first uh s y five
(41:57):
k oh Yeah you see these? Yes man, Congratulations everybody
who took part. Yeah. So what happened was, uh some
stuff you should know. Listeners got together and put together
h five k stuff you should know five K and
we got periodic updates from Aaron Huey, Mizzle or Myzell.
I'm not sure you pronounce it. I'm going with miss
(42:19):
le Mozel. But this is um. This is the final
email about how it went. Hey, guys, want to let
you know that the s y five ks over. It
was so nice to look at everyone's pictures and hear
what episodes of stuff you should know they listened to
because that was the idea imagined. Some people might have
fudged that and listened to Mark Marrin or whatever. That's
not like they're disqualified. I think a lot of us
(42:42):
have suffered from a lack of human connection at this time,
and the silly little virtual event gave us something to
bond over. I don't think I would have tried this
with any other group of people. The stuff you should
know Army is wonderful and it speaks volumes in regard
to you, guys. Uh. The tone that you set in
your podcast interesting and funny, carries over into your fan
base and it's created a little lovely corner of the internet. Um.
(43:02):
I totally agree Aaron, And the same can be said
of the movie Crush Page. Very very good people, not
snipy or rude and going after each other on Facebook,
which is kind of what Facebook seems to be all about.
Oh yeah, it's like a garden paradise over there. And
the s Y s K Army page. Yeah that's great.
Uh Now, I'm not suggesting that you made these people wonderful,
(43:24):
but the average stuff you should Know Army member is
like that interesting, funny and willing to participate in a
virtual five K with a complete stranger, and they love
stroop waffles. I even bought thirteen stuff you should Know
stickers to send out to some people as prizes. It's
just a little thing, but everyone that I've been in
touch with has been exceedingly kind. This is what we
need right now, these small human connections. A podcast to
(43:45):
listen to and laugh with, a walk run, bear chase
to do virtually with a bunch of near strangers, and
stuff you should have sticker to pull in your fridge
or on your laptop. If you get a chance to
go to the event page and scroll through some of
the posts, they're delightful, like the woman who did our
five K at three months postpartum and crushed it, or
the dad who pushed his adorable daughter in a stroller
(44:05):
on the five K while listening to his favorite episode,
which was Spam. We had first timers. It was a
good one. We had first timers, people recovering from injury,
runners and walkers, so many smiles and Stuff you Should
Know t shirts sign off for now, but just writing
to tell you, is this a success? We might even
do it again with love And that is again from
Aaron Huey Mozzell and that is great. Aaron, thank you
(44:28):
for doing this and that really does speak to UH,
to the quality of our listeners in every single way, indubitably. Yeah,
thanks a lot, Aaron. It's good to hear from you,
UH and everybody who participated in the s y five K.
You are the champions, our friends, even if you listen
(44:48):
to Mark Maron. But maybe that what Chuck just said,
that's it. Okay. Well, if you want to get in
touch of this like a and did and do something interesting,
we want to hear about it. You can write to
us in an email to Stuff podcast at I heeart
(45:08):
Radio dot com m H. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app
Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Do Do Do. We'll have a book coming out and
we would love it if you bought it, That's right,
that'd be great. It's called Stuff you Should Know colon
and that's it, just colon, Okay. Uh, well, I think
there's a little bit more to it, and I'll be
the one to say it. Then. It's called an Incomplete
Compendium of mostly interesting Things and the title is just
(00:22):
a flat outlie because it's all interesting, Chuck, it is,
and it's a really fun book. We're really proud of it.
It's got great illustrations from our new friend Carlie Minardo. Uh.
It was co written with us with a great guy
named Nils Parker, and the team all came together to
produce something that we're just super super proud of. That's right.
So you can order it everywhere you buy books. Pre
(00:43):
order now and we appreciate you. Welcome to Stuff you
Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works, Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Charles
and Jerry's over there, and this is Stuff you Should Know,
(01:05):
The Dripping Wet edition in these wet Lands. What I
knew that you would not get that is that a
Seeger reference. Oh gosh, why do you have to say
seeker when you always mean Springsteen? Was that Springsteen? It's
bad lands? Okay, baby, These wetlands are born to run. Sure,
(01:30):
run water. I don't. I don't like myself anymore. Run water.
That was a great save, Chuck. So we're talking wetlands.
I have to say, um, we have to give a
shout out to Tom Peterman, the foul Mouth wetland biologist
who keeps asking us to do this episode. How was
that where this came from? It was Tom peterman suggestion,
(01:52):
although I had already wanted to do it anyway. So yeah,
I mean, we love our scienist man. This one was
I was just smiling from ear to ear. Can you
imagine watching a Blacksmith Ford something in a wetland, in
a flooded woodland? Just Nirvana right there? Really, So we're
(02:15):
talking wetlands everybody, And um Dave Russ helped us put
this one together. And Dave likes to pop in jokes
every once in a while, and he said does He said, um,
what makes a wetland wet water? And then he says,
in all seriousness, that's basically that the water has to
be um largely present at least some parts of the
(02:37):
year in the soil in such amounts that you would
call something wet land. I mean, think of the name
wet land. It's about his earthy a term as science gets. Yeah,
and he um front loaded this with a few stats,
and I won't go through all of them, but I'll
go through a few that, uh kind of are instructive
as to why I love wetland so much. Uh. Years. One,
(03:00):
Although wetlands make up only five percent of the land
surface of the the United States, they are home to thirty
of our plant species. Yeah, not bad. One third of
America's threatened or endangered species species live only in wetlands.
I would propose that that's slightly misleading. I think they're
endangered because they live in wetlands, and wetlands are endangered,
(03:22):
as we'll see. Hmmmm, think about it, Chuck, I don't know.
I took it more as like they're all hiding out
in the wetlands because it's a terrible place to hide out. No,
it's not bad because it's got thirty one of the
plant species. I mean, it's a pretty rich, bio diverse
area to live in. If you're an endangered species for sure.
(03:42):
All right, well, we'll have to um hear from Thomas
Peterman the foul Mouth Wildlife for wetland biologists who can
let us not What does he say, like do f
and wet lands already? Yes, that kind of thing. Yeah,
I like this guy. I think that's an exact quote. Yeah,
he's my kind of dude. Uh So another stat that
(04:05):
I thought was pretty interesting that well, well just kind
of needs to form the basis or the undercurrent of
this whole episode, is that, so we keep talking about
the U S. There's wetlands found all over the world,
of different types of varieties and different climates and different
um different continents, every continent except the Antarctica. But in
the United States in particular, we have a long history
(04:25):
of filling in and draining wetlands for other purposes, so
much so that, um, let's see, I believe I don't
know how much we've lost, but in the sixteen hundreds,
the Lower forty eight States were covered with two hundred
and twenty million acres of wetlands, which is eleven percent
of the total surface area of the Lower forty eight States.
(04:46):
And I think starting in the fifties, we were doing
away with wetlands at a rate of about sixty thousand
of those acres per year. Yeah, and it's gotten better
since then. But yeah, in the boy up until the
Clean Water Act, it was just like, hey, you know,
it looks great. They're a resort with like three golf
courses and a bunch of tennis. That's been such a
(05:09):
driving force, Like it's it's like looking at land or
ecosystems are being like our humans making money off of it. No, well,
then drain it and repurpose it. Set it on fire
and repurpose it. Stop it from burning, and repurpose it. Like,
if we can't make money off of it, it can't
possibly be useful. And luckily, since the environmental movement really
started in the seventies, we've realized that that's not necessarily true.
(05:30):
That even if you are just a heartless dummy, there's
still a lot of benefits that humanity has given from
things like wetlands that seem problematic or nonproductive. You know. Yeah,
that was one of danger fields big lines in Caddyshack,
as al servit was golf courses and cemeteries the two
(05:51):
biggest waste of prime real estate. That's a good one.
So let's talk about wetlands. He said that they are
only some of them are only wet for short periods,
sometimes when there's snow, melts or just rain. Yeah, those
are called ephemeral wetlands, which is a cool term. It's
a great term. Some are wet all the time. And
the key parts of being a wet land or the
(06:12):
key characteristic is that it's either permanently or periodically flooded
or wet, and that the soil is got it's called
hydric soil and is dominated by anaerobic processes, meaning it
loves water and the plants there love water. But which
is weird because you used another word that shouldn't really
(06:33):
jibe with plants, and that's called anaerobic, which means there's
very little to no oxygen present um. And we'll explain
why later. But the fact that there are plants means
that those plants have adapted to the wetlands. Yes, and
its hydrophytic, and we'll talk about those plants later. It's
it's another Another thing I love about wetlands is just
that it really underscores the remarkable evolution that something will
(06:56):
go through to survive, very cool, very very awesome. Yep
so Um, there's also so but you hit upon something
like they're not necessarily wet year round, right, So there's
a whole bunch of different types of wetlands or wetland
environments that fill those that check those boxes. UM. One
(07:18):
of the ones that most people think of when they
think of wetlands or coastal wetlands, like marshes and a
marsh is basically like this area between inland and the ocean.
It's like a transition zone, a buffer zone. And because
it's because of its proximity to the ocean, UM, it's
usually salty or at least brackets, which is a mixture
(07:38):
of salt water and fresh water. And one of the
one of the ones that really come to mind if
you're thinking coastal wetlands, you're thinking marsh lands, and you're
thinking tidal marsh lands, probably especially if you're a Pat
Conroy fan. What was the name of her character that
he repeats over and over in a whisper. I think
(07:59):
I remember Umber Chuck. It was Bobby Jim, Bobby Jim.
This is one of those scream at the uh at
the pod player moments. Was it in. Was it in
the Prince of Tides? Yeah, Lowenstein? Was that it? You're
sure it wasn't Bobby Jim. I think it was Lowenstein.
Was it his oh his shrinks his shrink girlfriend's name, yeah,
(08:20):
Babs Okay, yeah, I don't remember. I think it was Lownstein. Alright,
So anyway, title Marsha's yes, Prince of Tides. They obviously
you're it's because they're title. They're gonna come in and
out with the high and low tide. And like you said,
they're generally saltwater, and the salt marshals are are very
nutrient rich, and they do have a lot of diversity,
(08:42):
but obviously only the kind of things that can tolerate
the salt um as far as plants and animals go,
which is a pretty short list really, because salt is
not conducive to life. Instead, there are some plants that
have figured out how to deal with salt um. But
most of the time when you're king at salt marshes,
you're looking you're the plant life is is basically grasses
(09:04):
of some sort. Um. There's also freshwater tidal marshes, which
um they are either connected to the saltwater marsh, but
they're far enough inland that the saltwater doesn't make its
way in there. Um, so it's a freshwater marsh, but
it's still is affected by the tides. And then I
had no idea about this, um, And I used to
(09:27):
vacation on Lake Erie. But apparently the Great Lakes are
so big that they have tides themselves. You didn't know that.
I had no idea. I even knew that. And I'm
a dumb dumb when it comes to the Great Lakes. Well, Chuck,
I think you got me beat big time in this case,
because I could know a million other things about the
Great Lakes. And if you knew that one thing and
I didn't, you have me beat. Yeah, I knew that.
(09:49):
And so that means that they do have those tidal
marshes the Florida Everglades or another good example, um, and boy, Florida.
Just there's a lot of different types of wetlands in Florida. Well,
there's a lot of coastline, a lot of coastline, and
a lot of interior. Um wetness. Yeah, we have a
lot of wetlands around our place in Florida, for sure.
(10:10):
And there's mangroves and all sorts of stuff that we'll
talk about. Well, we're at mangroves. I love those things.
So mangroves I think they at least deserve a short
stuff because they're one of the most amazing plants of
all time. But they're they're they're a type of coastal
um coastal wetland themselves, a mangrove forest, or if you've
(10:31):
never seen a mangrove forest, there are these kind of um.
They have a growth habit for their the shrubbery on
top of like the hair that umpa lumpa has in
the original, the original Willy Wonka, the good one. And
they're the trunks split out into these cool like long
(10:53):
roots and legs that stick up out of the water
and they form this huge tangle, this riot of like
sh a woody shrub um, and they do all sorts
of amazing things to help the aquatic life and us
humans as well up on land just by being present. Yeah,
they're really cool looking. Uh. And this is another good one,
sort of like the oregami that if you're able and
(11:15):
you're sitting still to look up a lot of these
things as you go, because these mangrove for us, it
looks like it looks like a shrub. That's like, I
really want to be a shrub, but i don't want
to get wet, so I'm just gonna dip my legs
in a little bit. Yeah, that's really great. It's just
very cool looking. And and again just the adaptability that
(11:37):
these mangroves really want to live where they live even
though it's not very suited for them, and they become
suited for it. Right, if you've been sleeping on mangroves,
Welcome to reality. Well it's a T shirt if I
ever heard one. Yeah, that's all. I could use a
little work, But there's there's the beginnings of one in there.
You also got your inland wet lands. These are not
(11:58):
coastal in this case. We're talking about swamps and marshes
and bogs and fens at e n and marshes uh.
A lot of these you'll find near rivers, near streams,
uh lowland depressions, and they might periodically fill up depending
on rain what's going on, or or different types of
(12:18):
flooding that might happen. And they can be a few
inches deep, they can be several feet deep. Yeah, they're
most of the non title. Inland marshes are ephemeral wetlands,
so they're dry a lot of the year. Um they
might fill up seasonally, they might fill up with the rains,
they might fill up with the nearby river flooding. It's
like my backyard, and they, oh, really is that right? Yeah,
(12:41):
it's it doesn't drain. Well, I've got a drainage problem. Okay,
to you, it's a problem to nature. It's wonderful because
we'd like things that drain really quickly and dry and
then we can walk on them and the grass is fine.
But there's a lot of like benefits to things that
take their time, like um uh, there's something called the
old pool, which is a kind of non tidal marsh,
(13:04):
an ephemeral wetland, and it's basically just like say a
stretch of woods that had that's a little bit depressed there,
so that when it rains or river floods, it fills
with water. And because the underlying bedrock or clay is
not very poorous, it takes a while for that water
to go through. But that water is also not going
further downstream, so it prevents flooding from being as bad
(13:24):
as it could because a lot of the water collects
and stays there, and it also slowly recharges the groundwater.
And because it does get dry, it can't sustain fish,
which makes it a really great nursery for things like
newts and salamanders and frogs um things that that fish
eat their eggs. But since there's no fish, this is
(13:44):
like a really great place for them to to get
a good foothole and a brand new life. Uh, you've
also got your prairie pot holes. Uh, this is when
you should definitely look up. These are usually in the
upper midwest of the United States that codas Minnesota, maybe Wisconsin,
and these are where glaciers, ancient glaciers left these big
(14:06):
depressions in the landscape and they fill up sometimes during rain,
during the spring, during snow melt. And they're not small
like our our prairie pothole. And I got a vision
in my head, but if you look it up online,
they're beautiful and just they're very large though, and they're
kind of interconnected, just these big round holes scattered through
(14:26):
like a big open area full of water. And these
are great for migrating birds because that could be a
stopover that they might not have had had those potholes
not been there, And when they're flying over the Dacota
as they say, look, I see Van Nostran's house, our
buddy van nostran Um. And then there's also we said
(14:48):
that that wetlands occur in all different kinds of climates.
They also occur in the desert. There's something called pla lakes,
which are these depressions that apparently no one has any
idea exactly how they formed. It could have been from
a ocean, it could have been from an ancient sinkhole.
But there are depressions that are deep enough that when
the seasonal rains come, the water is held in there.
(15:08):
And just like the prairie potholes, it's very useful for
migratory birds to stop over. At um can really plays
a huge role in this ecosystem where there's almost no water,
and now all of a sudden, there's water, and it's
in this nice little lake. So let's all go gather
there and have a social hour. But but but responsibly
six ft apart. That's right, I think we should take
(15:31):
a break and we will talk a little bit about
inland swamps right after this. Alright, so inland swamps we
(15:57):
promised to talk about that these are are, for my money,
some of the coolest areas in the country, because I
think I talked about it at some point. But I
took a very special fund trip many many years ago
to the Okefinokee Swamp and did one of those canoe
trips where you have to rent. You know, there's no
place to stop in the Okefinokee Swamp if you're like,
(16:20):
I think I'll camp here, it's like in the water.
So they had these camping pads built up. The essentially
just decks um that are like six ft above the water,
and you have to reserve those. They are not just
wide open for anyone um because there's nothing else out there,
so you have to reserve them for specific nights on
these specific pathways or you know, paddleways. And me and
(16:43):
a couple of buddies did it one year and we
canoed from from deck to deck and uh, it was amazing.
Like one of the coolest trips I've ever taken. That
is very cool was ned Baity with you. No, but
you do wake up surrounded by alligators. It's just a
little creepy. Yes, alligators are very creepy. Like you wake
up on that pad and and p off the dock
(17:05):
and they're growling at you. Yeah, and you do not
want to get too close because they can move faster
than you think. Yeah, they can. It was It was
a lot of fun though, but not for the faint
of heart, because you know, you don't realize until you
get out there a how bad the sun is gonna
beat you up because there's no shade, and be how
tough it is to paddle all day long without like,
(17:27):
you know, let me get out and stretch my legs.
I mean, there is no getting out. You just you
just go and go and go, and by the time
you finally reach that jankie deck, it is like, uh,
might as well be the Plaza Hotel, you know. Nice.
But what I'm talking about in the case of the
Oki Finocchi, I thought it was a forest's or a
bottom bottom land hardwood swamp, you think from reading this,
(17:50):
But apparently it's called a non riverine swamp forest and
that is a forested swamp that fills up from non
river sources basically the rain or groundwater, right right, So
the what would make a forested swamp like a bottom
land hardwood swamp is a proximity to a river that
floods its banks or that is just so so big
(18:13):
it kind of spills over into some of the surrounding land,
and that surrounding land is swamp. I want to look
that up, though I'm not quite sure Dave's right. So well,
it's okay. It's so it's either river fed or groundwater
fed or precipitation fed. And if you're talking bottom land
hardwood swamps, that's or a river fed swamp. There's usually
also a shrub swamp, which is a transition or buffer
(18:36):
zone between the forested swamp and you know, somebody's backyard,
which is it's just dominated by shrubs, but it's all
the same thing. It's all fresh water swamp. Yeah, I
think I bet you anything that. Okay, Finocchi has several
different types of these would be my guess, because they
were full on lakes that we paddled through. Yeah, um
so that would be my guess. And I also think
(18:57):
if I had a country band, they would we would
be the bottom land hardwood swamp rats. Oh that's a
good one. That sounds like an all star band, you know.
Um So, another kind of wetland that you're going to
find all over the place, especially in Europe, which when
I think of bogs and fens, I think of Europe,
but apparently there's plenty of them in the United States too.
(19:18):
But um, bogs and fens are kind of their own thing.
Bogs in particular are very unique as far as wetlands go,
because not only are they anaerobic, which by definition of
wetland is anaerobic soil, they're like very little nutrient and
very high acidity. I've I've heard like the kind of
(19:39):
acid that is put out by the peat that's created
in the bog has the same acidity roughly of vinegar.
It's like, a yeah, it's really really acidic stuff, and
yet some plants prefer it. Like you can grow cranberries
and blueberries in a bog. You can preserve a body
from the Iron Age forward and bog. Do we ever
(20:00):
recover that the bog bodies? I feel like we did.
Maybe it might have been one of our video things
on YouTube. Maybe mummies, because I think, if I remember correctly,
our mummy episode covered more than just Egyptian mummies and
be covered like Inco mummies, and I'm sure we did.
We saw some then when we went to uh on
our our UK trip, We've got to visit some of
(20:23):
those cats, like firsthand, like right there in that in
that glass, right, like you know I have to do
is smash it with a hammer and it's yours, yeah,
or at least whatever you can grab like a bog
ear right, it just crumbles and in your hand. But
I was like, I was like, okay, why why are
the bogs so great for preservation? Part of it, from
(20:45):
what I understand, is that acidity that the bodies are
actually pickled. But another part is the the um aerobic
life is so devoid there. There's just anaerobic bacteria and
they don't decompose nearly well as aerobic bacteria, so the
decomposition doesn't set in and the remains are pickled. So
(21:06):
like you can preserve a body in a really great
state for a very like toall End band, you could
his whiskers are still intact on his face. Yeah, Like
that was the level of preservation, and he was sacrificed
into a bog, which is a very specific kind of wetland. Yeah,
and a fin like I said, it's f e n
it's sort of like a bog, and that it is
(21:27):
a peat pet wetland. But they're a little bit different
than bogs. The water supply doesn't come primarily from rain,
and it comes from the ground, So it's not it's
gonna be less acidic because I don't think we mentioned mentioned.
I know it's um partially because of the peat, but um,
the acidity also comes from the fact that there's acid
(21:48):
and rain that gets filling up, that fills up these bogs,
but not the case in a fin now, because that
groundwater is able to kind of dilute it a little bit.
So they're much more New Trent rich than a ball
get so they're gonna have much a much wider diverse
range of plants and animal life. Yeah, and this I
love that. This next section from day was called other
(22:09):
fun types of wetlands. Yeah, mud flats, Yeah, you get
your mud flat. It's another good country band. Um. My
favorite are seeps. These are just gorgeous little pieces of nature.
If you ask me, um, it's if you have a
spring that comes up out of the ground. Uh, it
spills over into the ground. So the surrounding ground is wetland,
and it's called a seep. That's right. It's where gnomes
(22:31):
like go and shower. Yeah, and it's not uh like
you said, it's a spring, so it's not like a creek. No,
it's actually coming up from the ground. You ever drink
from a natural spring? I did when I was a kid,
and my mom fired the babysitter that like took a
drink from a spring. Yeah. Who she was like, what
(22:51):
are you doing? It was either spring or like a
river in Ohio, and either way very different things. It's
like a Kyaga river. Ever, then you're in bad. It
was on fire while we were drinking. But I mean,
we have creeks. If if you're listening, you've never been
to Atlanta, Atlanta has creeks all over the place. Like
all of the Intown neighborhoods just are riddled with creeks.
(23:11):
They're just sort of out of view. Um. But like,
we have a creek, you know, a hundred and twenty
ft from our house, which might have something to do
with our drainage, who knows. And it's spring fed. No,
it's just uh, you know, just a part of the
Atlanta probably all comes from the Chattahoochee at some point.
So chuck, if that creek behind your house started meandering
(23:33):
in a different direction and left a body of water
where it originally flowed, it would be an oxbow lake.
But if you were in Australia and you were calling
it it's proper Aboriginal name, you'd call it a billabong,
which I had no idea. What does that have to
do with surfing? Oh? I think they just probably co
opted the name and it became more associated with surf
(23:56):
and surf gear than then It's true. Meaning that doesn't
seem right now, let's take it back, But that's what
an oxbow lake is in Australia. Among the Aborigines, it
is a billabong, which is great. That was some like,
along with op was one of the prime uh T
shirts to have when you were a kid in the eighties.
(24:17):
Oh yeah, if you were cool. I had this amazing
ope long sleeve blue shirt that they wore with my
parachute pants were the best my British nights. Remember those
long sleeve OP shirts. Yeah, they're good, gorgeous, so chuck.
One of the things we've been talking about is um
the kind of the characteristics that make a wetland a wetland.
(24:39):
It's not just the fact that the soil table or
the ground is either flooded or almost completely flooded up
to the surface level UM with water. That's that's not
the entirety of it. Like, different wetlands are characterized by
by how that water gets to it. Like we said,
you know, some kinds of swam so are fed by groundwater,
(25:01):
others are fed by precipitation UM summer tidal. So there's
a whole group of scientists out there that are called
UM wetland hydrologists, and what they study is how that
water gets into a wetland to create a wetland, what
happens to it while it's there, and then where it goes,
and how all these things kind of interact to form
(25:21):
this very unique ecosystem. Yeah, and we talked early on
about the kyd of the kind of soil. Hydric soil
is saturated with water, and so if it's saturated with water,
it's not gonna have nearly as much oxygen and usually
oxygen and soil or in these little tiny air pockets,
remember we talked about it in our soil episode. Yeah, exactly,
(25:42):
And in the case of a wetland, then those air
pockets are going to be filled with water or just
collapsed all together, and then you've got your anaerobic condition.
But if your plant, you need CEO two and oxygen,
and you'll get a little bit of that from photosynthesis
in the leaves, but the roots are like, what about
me down here? I need oxygen too. And if it
(26:03):
was an aerobic soil like we talked about in the
In the Soil podcast, the roots can get it from
those air pockets. But in wetlands they have to really
really adapt to become hydrophytic or water loving plants and
some pretty amazing ways. So I just have to say
that this is like a lifelong mystery solved and solved
in like the simplest way possible. Like it's anaerobic because
(26:26):
there's water there instead of air. The air can't be
in there because the water is there, ipso facto anaerobic.
I just I just think that's brilliantly simple. Did you
get that intuitively? Because I never did. Always thought it
was something mysterious, like we're talking about a whole different
type of soil or something else. No, I think I
got it. Okay, Well it was if I've been around
(26:49):
for forty four years and wondered it until just now, Well,
I'm forty nine, so I might have warned that in
the last five years. So, um, the plants that we're
talking about, like, they like you said, the roots still
need oxygen. So they said, okay, well, I really like
it here. I like this wet land area. This is
pretty amazing place to live. I'm going to change so
that I can stay here. And some of the ways
(27:10):
that plants have have adapted. Um, well, one good example
is a cat tail. Right. Cat tails are pretty much
synonymous with marsh lands. Yeah, they're beautiful. They're that long,
thin stem with like a big fat thing on top,
like a hot dog that's ready to be roasted on
the fire. Yeah. I grew up with those. I don't
know if it was a Southern thing, but there. They
(27:31):
can be decorative items in the home. Uh. And I
grew up, I feel like, with a lot of cat
tails in vases and stuff. Okay, so um that in
in wasps nests. So cattails have this thing called um
airin ici Um No, I've got aeron nickima erin Akaima Erinakaima.
(27:58):
I think I got it. Anyway, they like these um
these channels that basically direct air from the leaves and
the stem and every other part of the cattailed down
to the roots. So's here you go roots, here's some
oxygen fresh from the leaf. Yeah, so that that cat
tail can have as much roots as it once down
in this an aerobic soil. It doesn't matter because it's
getting it's oxygen from the air through the leaves. Yeah.
(28:21):
One of my favorites is the speckled alder. Uh. You
just look up a picture of that, and they have
these enlarged pores called lenticels, and they allow for the
passage of oxygen directly into that wood. And if you
look up a picture and you see those, you go, oh,
that's what those are. That's what those are for. There.
They look like someone took a knife, and they're just
(28:42):
tiny little horizontal slits all up and down the alder, guess,
and it's it's their breathing basically. Yeah, that's creepy as heck,
but it's like really neat little mouths, little slitty mouths.
So um. The grasses that we talked about growing in
salt marshes um just like an iguana sneezes out excess
salts as part of digestion, Things like cord grass that
(29:05):
grow in these salt marshes. Um. They actually excrete salts
through their leaves, so they can sit there and take
all the nutrients they need from this sylinic environment um
and still not get overloaded with salt. It's just pretty
amazing that they can do that. Yeah. And then to me,
maybe the most amazing, and this is where the mangroves
(29:26):
kind of come back in. Although the mangroves apparently utilize
all these to stick around, but the bald cypress they
grow in those forested swamps where there's always water, and
they are deciduous conifers, and they grow this root structure
um that they call a knee. It's a new metaphor,
but like a knee on your leg is how it's spelled.
(29:47):
And they just sit above the water line and take
in oxygen. And that's what those I guess, mangroves, man creves.
There's a salt train joke in there somewhere. It struck
me as like a terrible jam band's name. Yeah, God,
you're right that that plays somewhere in Florida probably probably.
But the man grove uses, like I said, a lot
(30:09):
of these tricks, and I think certainly when you see
those roots, they're using those knees, Yeah, which is basically
it's a it's a it's a way to get oxygen
from the surrounding air down to the roots. The mangroves
do it. The bald cypresses do it. Mangroves have all
those adapt adaptations different species things. They can do things
(30:30):
like excrete salt. They can draw oxygen and from the environment.
They have channels where they can pump oxygen from one
part of the plant to the other. Um. The one
that gets me though, I'm just fascinated by box. So
we said that there it's an acidic um anaerobic, nutrient
depleted environment, and yet there's still plants that live there.
(30:51):
And one of those plants, one kind of plant is
carnivorous plants. They get their nutrients not from like the soil,
but from eating bugs. So they can just lived there
like a picture plant or a venus fly trap or
something like that. Yeah, those are nate nature. It wasn't
Venus fly trap one of the DJs on w k
r P. That's a great DJ name. Yeah, well he
(31:12):
was a great DJ. All right, So let's take our
final break and we'll talk about why wetlands are important
and what you can do to help them do their
thing right after this, Okay, Chuck, so um, just the
(31:44):
fact that wetlands are as amazing as they are means
that they should be saved. Um. But there's also like
a lot of benefits that we figured out. Like you
said that the fifties of the seventies were really rough
time for wetlands in the United States because we're filling
them in for crop land for real estate. Uh. And
even previous to that, we filled in a lot of
(32:05):
marshland in the US and built cities over from like
d C was built largely on marshland. Um. The fact
that mosquitoes tend to live in wetland areas uh, kind
of justified filling in a lot of the wetlands because
we were dealing with malaria at the time, so it
made a lot of sense. Get rid of the mosquito's
habitat you get rid of the mosquitoes. And it worked.
(32:26):
But we've paid a heavy price for it because over
time we've realized these wetlands provide some really important benefits
to to the local ecosystems and in turn humans who
live around them. Yeah, I mean helping flood conditions is
a big one. They are big, big natural sponges when
it comes down to it, and flooding would be way
(32:46):
way worse. And we still have floods obviously, but to
be way worse if we didn't have wetlands, they'd be
far more destructive if they weren't around to soak in
that excess water and then kind of slowly trickle it
to the water table below. Uh. And the same it
was obviously true of hurricanes and and big storm surges.
The wetlands basically operate as big storage tanks for water. Yeah.
(33:10):
I saw somewhere I can't find it now, but that like,
oh there it is an acre of wetlands can hold
up to about a million and a half gallons of
water just just one acre. So you've got to think
like that water is staying put there and it's not
flooding some human habitation instead, which is a good reason
to keep wetlands around just for that that buffer area,
(33:31):
or to slow down the surge like you were saying, Um,
I also saw that. We found out the same thing
goes for beaver dams that they build there like a
temporary artificial wetland and they provide a lot of the
same functions that natural or other I guess naturally occurring
or growing wetlands provide too. Um and I think we
should do a whole episode on beavers. Okay, totally way
(33:54):
into beavers. So water filtration is is an is it water?
I'm getting you back for the oregonic thing. So water
filtration is as another big service that wetlands provide. I
don't remember where we talked about this, but we talked
about it recently. Um where the water oh, I think
(34:16):
it was water treatment plants. The water is brought in
and it's got all the sediment and gunk and muck,
and it's cloudy and turbid, and then it slows down.
They slow it down like running it through some grates
or whatever, and as it slows down, the sediment that
is making the water turbin and polluted and everything has
a chance to settle the bottom. Well. Wetlands provide that
(34:37):
same function naturally, So when you have a bunch of
like polluted water basically come through there that it slows
down when it hits all those mangrove roots or tree
trunks or whatever it is, and it gives it a
chance for that seven sediment to fall to the bottom.
It's gets sucked up by the tree roots and stored
in the trees. Um or the microbial life can break
(35:00):
a lot of that stuff down too, And there's definitely
a limit to where you can very easily overload the
um wetlands ability to filter the water. But if you
if you gave it like a manageable supply, that is
a major service that it does. Is it cleans our water.
They call wetlands the kidneys of the earth. Yeah, And
they they've even done studies where they tried to, uh,
(35:24):
I guess, sort of monetize what an area of wetland
might do if it were a treatment plant. And there's
one in South Carolina called the Congaree bottom Land Hardwood Swamp.
These are just all country bands is They said that
that is basically um equivalent to about a five million
dollar water treatment plant just sitting there being a wetland
(35:46):
doing its thing. Thank you Nature. Pretty amazing. I saw
that beavers provide the the dams that that they build
that end up being temporary wetlands that somebody estimated it's
worth about a hundred grand if a human tried to
build an artificial one, which we do that if you
just let beavers do their thing, they will, UM, they
(36:07):
will do the same thing for free. That's right. You
don't have to pay a hundred grand Nope. UM. There's
also because there's so much going on UM in a wetland,
there's so much life, they kind of form like these
metropolis is for all sorts of different types of animals
on all the way up the food chain UM, including plants, animals,
(36:30):
microbial life, worms, fish, larger predators like dolphins and alligators, UM,
and all of them are sitting there providing food for us.
If you like gator tail, buddy, you better preserve those wetlands. Yeah,
it's UM. Dave points out here that the commercial fishing
(36:50):
industry in the US, the fish and shellfish harvested here
UM had fish that at least had a temporary home
in the wetlands, and that recordationally, if you're a recreational
fish person fisher person, then UH nine of the U
S fish catch UH is at least the breeding ground
(37:11):
lies in the wetlands for those fish. And the same
thing goes for birds too. They're they're enormously important habitats.
For birds, um, some permanent but also migratory too, because
if you're flying along and you're a bird, and you
are a water bird and you need a place to land,
not only you're looking for water, but you might really
enjoy a swamp because it offers protection from predators, it
(37:34):
offers import in the storm. It's just all around valuable
thing for birds too. Yeah. I mean, imagine flying from
Canada to Texas and you're going over Oklahoma and you're
a little tired. You look down, you see one of
those which ones where those the prairie ply is the
(37:55):
the know, the prairie pothole, prairie potholes. Oh man, what
a much sight. Aren't you describing a scene in Jonathan
Living sin Segal? Probably so. Uh So. The point is
we need to take care of our wetlands because they
are um a threatened, diverse, very useful um place all
(38:18):
over the world, especially here in the United States, and um,
if they are threatened and if things happen, there are
going to be all kinds of bad things, uh you know,
vegetative damage, um, the plant life just being maybe whitened out,
wiped out altogether, storm searches being way worse flooding being
way worse especially helps to see the value in them
(38:40):
if you consider them a buffer zone between us and
and the hardest ravages of nature. Yeah, and like you mentioned, pollution,
there is a limit, but they do absorb and mitigate
levels of water pollution, and um it just they just
can't take too much of us, you know, right exactly?
Which man, if they is anything that characterized humans in
(39:02):
the twentie and twenty one centuries, it's too much of us,
you know what I mean? What can we do though, well,
projects we can, We can definitely do that. You can
definitely do that. There's some good ones out there. Um.
I believe Ducks Unlimited is one of them, the Wetlands Initiative,
Natural Resources Defense Council, Wetlands International. Um. But apparently in
(39:25):
the United States something like se wetlands or I'm privately
owned property, and in the United States we have I mean,
private property is one of like the fundamental tenets of
American society. So if you say, I want to fill
in this wetland and kill off these beavers, you're allowed
to do that. Whether that's a good idea and whether
(39:46):
that's gonna affect other people, that's a different story. So
if you own private property with a wetland on it
and you're doing just fine with that wetland, leave the
wetland alone. It's very important. I guess this is where
it gets a little tricky in definitions, because in plenty
of places there are restrictions on building near water like this.
(40:10):
I guess I just don't know, Like, um, you can't
build in a flood zone. You can't. I mean, it
depends on where you are, but in Atlanta you can't. Uh.
And then with these all these creeks and streams in Atlanta,
they have what's called stream buffers um fifty ft seventy
hundred foot and I think, I think is the lowest.
And for these you have to get variance is to
(40:31):
do anything which your neighborhood has to approve. And I
talked to a guy that apparently anything over um, anything
under seventy five is pretty pretty tricky to get approved.
So I don't know if they're wetlands or not, but
there are restrictions on stuff like that. Okay. So that
brings up the next point of what you and I
and everybody else can do, which is vote for people
(40:52):
for to local elected office. Who part of their platform
is protecting wetlands. Yeah, like all of those buffer zones,
all those variances, and all those probably ambitions, those are
those came from Atlanta City councils over the years that
decided that wetlands needed protecting. You don't find those everywhere,
but once they get put in place, they usually don't
get repealed very easily. So if if you make preserving
(41:16):
wetlands part of like what you're voting for, that would
have an impact for sure. And whatever you're voting for,
just vote, Okay, vote, especially the presidential elections are always
the big sexy votes, but the local politics matters even
more almost sometimes. Yeah, I vote for all of it.
(41:37):
Taking interest in the in your society. Okay. Uh, well
you've got anything else about wetlands. I don't either. This
is a good one. I'm pretty happy with it. Uh
And since I said that, everybody, it's time for listener mail. Yeah.
I'm gonna call this the first uh s y five
(41:57):
k oh Yeah you see these? Yes man, Congratulations everybody
who took part. Yeah. So what happened was, uh some
stuff you should know. Listeners got together and put together
h five k stuff you should know five K and
we got periodic updates from Aaron Huey, Mizzle or Myzell.
I'm not sure you pronounce it. I'm going with miss
(42:19):
le Mozel. But this is um. This is the final
email about how it went. Hey, guys, want to let
you know that the s y five ks over. It
was so nice to look at everyone's pictures and hear
what episodes of stuff you should know they listened to
because that was the idea imagined. Some people might have
fudged that and listened to Mark Marrin or whatever. That's
not like they're disqualified. I think a lot of us
(42:42):
have suffered from a lack of human connection at this time,
and the silly little virtual event gave us something to
bond over. I don't think I would have tried this
with any other group of people. The stuff you should
know Army is wonderful and it speaks volumes in regard
to you, guys. Uh. The tone that you set in
your podcast interesting and funny, carries over into your fan
base and it's created a little lovely corner of the internet. Um.
(43:02):
I totally agree Aaron, And the same can be said
of the movie Crush Page. Very very good people, not
snipy or rude and going after each other on Facebook,
which is kind of what Facebook seems to be all about.
Oh yeah, it's like a garden paradise over there. And
the s Y s K Army page. Yeah that's great.
Uh Now, I'm not suggesting that you made these people wonderful,
(43:24):
but the average stuff you should Know Army member is
like that interesting, funny and willing to participate in a
virtual five K with a complete stranger, and they love
stroop waffles. I even bought thirteen stuff you should Know
stickers to send out to some people as prizes. It's
just a little thing, but everyone that I've been in
touch with has been exceedingly kind. This is what we
need right now, these small human connections. A podcast to
(43:45):
listen to and laugh with, a walk run, bear chase
to do virtually with a bunch of near strangers, and
stuff you should have sticker to pull in your fridge
or on your laptop. If you get a chance to
go to the event page and scroll through some of
the posts, they're delightful, like the woman who did our
five K at three months postpartum and crushed it, or
the dad who pushed his adorable daughter in a stroller
(44:05):
on the five K while listening to his favorite episode,
which was Spam. We had first timers. It was a
good one. We had first timers, people recovering from injury,
runners and walkers, so many smiles and Stuff you Should
Know t shirts sign off for now, but just writing
to tell you, is this a success? We might even
do it again with love And that is again from
Aaron Huey Mozzell and that is great. Aaron, thank you
(44:28):
for doing this and that really does speak to UH,
to the quality of our listeners in every single way, indubitably. Yeah,
thanks a lot, Aaron. It's good to hear from you,
UH and everybody who participated in the s y five K.
You are the champions, our friends, even if you listen
(44:48):
to Mark Maron. But maybe that what Chuck just said,
that's it. Okay. Well, if you want to get in
touch of this like a and did and do something interesting,
we want to hear about it. You can write to
us in an email to Stuff podcast at I heeart
(45:08):
Radio dot com m H. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more
podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart radio app
Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
H
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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