How Watersheds Work

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 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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. 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 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

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, 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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,

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

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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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?

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. 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

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.

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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 after this. All right, Charles, where's the where's the silver

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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?

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

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 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 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

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