Selects: Wetlands! Wetlands! Wetlands!

Stuff You Should Know

Hosts Chuck and Josh explore the diverse and vital ecosystems known as wetlands, ranging from coastal marshes to inland swamps. They detail

Key takeaways

• Wetlands comprise only 5% of US land but support 31% of domestic plant species.
• One-third of America's threatened or endangered species rely specifically on wetland habitats.

Main topics

• Types of wetland ecosystems
• Biological adaptations in hydrophytic plants

Notable quotes

What makes a wetland wet? Water.

Conclusion

Protecting wetlands is essential for maintaining biodiversity, prevent

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 3 (0:04) 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. 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, 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 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 gross road. So check out this episode from September 10th, all about wetlands. Speaker 1 (1:43) Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Speaker 2 (1:53) 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 2 (2:04) In these wetlands. What? I Speaker 4 (2:09) knew that you would not get that. Speaker 2 (2:11) Is that a Seeger reference? Speaker 4 (2:13) Oh, gosh. Why do you have to say Seeger when you always mean Springsteen? Was that Springsteen? Yeah, it's Badlands. Speaker 2 (2:20) Oh, okay. Baby, these wetlands were born to run. Sure. Run water. I don't like myself anymore. Run water. That was a great save, Chuck. Thanks. 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. Oh, is that where this came from? Mm-hmm. It was a Tom Peterman suggestion, although I had already wanted to do it anyway, so. Speaker 4 (2:50) Yeah, I mean, we love our earth sciences, man. This one was, I was just smiling from ear to ear researching this. Speaker 2 (2:57) Can you imagine watching a blacksmith forge something in a wetland in a flooded woodland? No. That's Speaker 4 (3:06) nirvana right there. It Speaker 2 (3:08) really is. So we're talking wetlands, everybody, and Dave Ruse helped us put this one together. It was a good one. And Dave likes to pop in jokes every once in a while. He does. He said, what makes a wetland wet? Water. 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 4 (3:43) 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 (4:05) Yeah. Speaker 4 (4:05) Not bad. One-third of America's threatened or endangered species live only in wetlands. I Speaker 2 (4:12) 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 4 (4:19) Hmm. Speaker 2 (4:20) Mm-hmm. Think about it, Chuck. I don't know. I took it more as... Like they're all hiding out in the wetlands? Because Speaker 4 (4:27) it's a Speaker 2 (4:27) terrible place to hide out. Speaker 4 (4:28) No, it's not bad because it's got 31 % of the plant species. I mean, it's a pretty rich, biodiverse area to live in if you're an endangered species. For Speaker 2 (4:37) sure. All right. You say tomato, I say tomato. We'll have to hear from Thomas Peterman, the foul-mouthed wildlife or wetland biologist who can let us know. What does he say? Do effing Speaker 4 (4:49) wetlands already. Speaker 2 (4:51) Yes. That kind of thing? Yeah. Speaker 4 (4:53) I like this guy. Speaker 2 (4:54) I think that's an exact quote. Yeah, Speaker 4 (4:57) he's Speaker 2 (4:57) my kind Speaker 4 (4:57) of dude. Speaker 2 (4:59) 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 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 filling in and draining wetlands for other purposes. Speaker 4 (5:25) Yeah. So Speaker 2 (5:26) 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 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 rate of about 60,000 of those acres per year. Speaker 4 (5:49) Yeah, and it's gotten better since then. But yeah, in the, boy, up until the Clean Water Act, it was just like... Hey, you know what would look great there? A resort. Right. With like three golf courses and a Speaker 2 (6:02) bunch of tennis. 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, 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 non-productive, you know? Yeah, Speaker 4 (6:38) 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 (6:50) That's a good one. Speaker 4 (6:51) 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 (6:59) Yeah, those are called ephemeral wetlands, which is a cool term. Speaker 4 (7:02) 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. Speaker 3 (7:14) And Speaker 4 (7:15) that the soil is got, it's called hydric soil and is dominated by anaerobic processes, meaning it loves. water, and the plants there love water. Speaker 2 (7:26) 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, Speaker 4 (7:41) and it makes them 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. Very Speaker 2 (7:54) cool stuff. Speaker 4 (7:54) Very, very awesome. Speaker 2 (7:56) Yep. So there's also, so you hit upon something like they're not necessarily wet year round. Right. Right. So there's a whole bunch of different types of wetlands or wetland environments that. fill those, that check those boxes. One of the ones that most people think of when they think of wetlands are coastal wetlands, like marshes. And a marsh is basically like this area between inland and the ocean. It's like a transition zone, a buffer zone. And because it's... because of its proximity to the ocean, it's usually salty or at least brackish, which is a mixture of saltwater and freshwater. And one of the ones that really comes to mind, if you're thinking coastal wetlands, you're thinking marshlands, and you're thinking tidal marshlands probably, especially if you're a Pat Conroy fan. What was the Speaker 4 (8:49) name of... Her character that he repeats over and over in a whisper. I Speaker 2 (8:55) think I remember, Chuck. It was Bobby Jim. Speaker 4 (8:58) Bobby Jim. This is one of those scream at the pod player moments. Was it in Speaker 2 (9:05) the Prince of Tides? Yeah. Lowenstein. Was Speaker 4 (9:08) that Speaker 2 (9:08) it? Lowenstein. You're sure it wasn't Bobby Jim? I think it was Lowenstein. Was it his, oh, his shrinks? His shrink girlfriend's name? Yeah, Babs. Okay. Yeah, I don't remember. I think it was Lowenstein. Speaker 4 (9:20) All right. 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. Speaker 3 (9:30) And Speaker 4 (9:30) 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 as far as plants and animals go. Speaker 2 (9:43) 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. Speaker 4 (10:01) Right. Speaker 2 (10:02) There's also freshwater tidal marshes, which they are either, They're connected to 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. You didn't know that? I had no idea. I even knew that. I'm a dum-dum when it comes to the Great Lakes. Well, Chuck, I think you got me beat big time. Well, in this case. Because I could know a million other things about the Great Lakes, and if you knew that one thing and I didn't, you had me beat. Speaker 4 (10:43) Yeah, I knew that. And so that means that they do have those tidal marches. Speaker 2 (10:48) The Speaker 4 (10:48) Florida Everglades are another good example. And boy, Florida just, there's a lot of different types of wetlands in Florida. Speaker 2 (10:56) Well, there's a lot of coastline. Speaker 4 (10:57) Yeah, a lot of coastline and a lot of interior wetness. Speaker 2 (11:02) 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 4 (11:09) Well, we're at mangroves. I love those things. Speaker 2 (11:12) 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're these kind of... They have a growth habit for the shrubbery on top of like the hair that Oompa Loompa has in the original Willy Wonka,