Wetlands! Wetlands! Wetlands!

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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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.

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 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 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.

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 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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, 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, 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 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

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.

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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 a break and we will talk a little bit about

inland swamps right after this. Alright, so inland swamps we 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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

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. 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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