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