With the Wild Things: Wetlands

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|a With the Wild Things: Wetlands |h [electronic resource].

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|a Ft. Myers, Florida : |b Whitaker Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University.

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|a 5 podcasts, approximately 1 minute each in length

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|a Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the users responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.

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|a Source: Wetlands 1 Length of Segment: 00:01:12 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Water: it's the elixir of life. All living creatures need water to survive and the quality of that water influences the quality of life it supports. We understand this need for water and often view a beautiful lake or clean river as the epitome of quality water. But our purest water comes from underground sources called 'aquifers'. Wetlands are critical to the amount and quality of water in aquifers. What a wetland is, however, is often misunderstood. The Congress of the United States, through the Clean Water Act, has defined wetlands as, quote, “Those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances, do support a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions”, unquote. Is it any wonder that developers throw up their hands in frustration? It's difficult for the average person to identify everything that fits into the category of wetland, yet it is of great importance that those managing our lands recognize the nature and importance of wetlands.

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|a Source: Wetlands 2 Length of Segment: 00:01:09 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. Water is essential for life and we find the greatest abundance and diversity of life in wetlands where there are the largest, most accessible, most reliable sources of water within each kind of habitat. This vital link between wild creatures and habitats they require is recognized in the definition of wetlands by the Clean Water Act of the United States: an area is officially designated a wetland on the basis of the plants that grow there. Soil types, climate, amount of water, seasonal nature of variation in water present, and other factors make each wetland unique. Nitrogen-poor soils of the Florida Panhandle include bogs dominated by pitcher plants capable of trapping and consuming insects as a source of nitrogen. Much of the Everglades is dominated by sawgrass prairies, wetlands with specific wet and dry seasons. Cattail marshes, salt marshes, and bald cypress swamps are other important Florida wetlands. The sum of all wetlands creates a grand mosaic of opportunities for wild things.

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|a Source: Wetlands 3 Length of Segment: 00:01:11 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. When thinking of wetlands, it's important not to forget the land; it is wet land that we're talking about. Many creatures live in open water but the greater abundance of life is found at that fragile fringe: the interface of land and water. At the edge, creatures take advantage of the food and shelter provided by either or both the dry land and the water. If the shoreline hosts a natural diversity of plants, that structural diversity will result in an abundance of animal life. Developers often want to replace natural wetlands with man-made lakes and manicured shorelines, but these are often poor substitutes for natural wetlands. A lake may be wet, but it doesn't function as a wetland. Water evaporates more quickly from a pond surface exposed to the wind and sun. In a wetland covered with natural vegetation, water collects beneath plants; much is held by shaded soil and both the aquifer and the ecosystem are enriched. From a diversity standpoint, an open lake lacks the hiding places, the nest sites, and the food resources provided by a natural wetland.

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|a Source: Wetlands 4 Length of Segment: 00:01:09 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. A century ago, much of South Florida was wilderness that humans thought needed taming. “Drain the swamps” was a refrain heard from the State House to the White House. “The swamps are sources of disease”, “We need the timber for our growing nation”, “We need new croplands to feed our people”. Government responded in concert with agricultural interests seeking fertile lands, and timber interests seeking more raw materials. Canals carried water from ecologically-rich wetlands, but then the system began to fail: wildfires threatened communities, wells dried up, pollutants poisoned fisheries in Lake Okeechobee and elsewhere, species such as the Everglades kite and Florida panther declined. Today, with the insight of past mistakes, decades of study, and use of space-age technology, efforts are being made to restore the mosaic of wetlands we call ‘the Everglades'. Most of all, we will benefit from recharged aquifers, healthier estuaries, reduced threats from drought and wildfire, and the stability of a healthy, naturally functioning ecosystem.

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|a Source: Wetlands 5 Length of Segment: 00:01:16 Hi, I'm Dr. Jerry Jackson, out with the wild things. When is the last time you changed the filters on your car or on your home air-conditioner? A dirty filter can be expensive in terms of energy efficiency and stress on the system. A wetland is a kind of filter. Keeping it in place, clean and functioning properly, is also critical to the efficiency and proper functioning of an ecosystem and to our well-being. The source of water is often an underground aquifer, the source of clean cool well-water. A selfish but important reason for us to protect wetlands is that they serve as catch basins and filters that cleanse water flowing into underground aquifers. As water percolates through soil, pollutants are filtered out. To destroy a wetland is to reduce the size of the filter. Reducing the size of the filter means that what's left of the filter gets clogged and dirty quicker and is less efficient. With loss of wetlands, more rain water flows off the land instead of into aquifers, and water entering our aquifers may not be as pure as we would like it. Reduced aquifer levels result in lowered levels of lakes and streams, less water is available for plants and animals, and the impacts can be far-reaching.

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|a Wetlands.

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|a Dr. Jerry Jackson.

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|t Wetlands 1

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|t Wetlands 2

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|a Everglades Digital Library: Reclaiming the Everglades.

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|a With the Wild Things.

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|a dpSobek |c Everglades Digital Library: Reclaiming the Everglades

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|3 FIU Helix Media Library |u http://libtube.fiu.edu/player?autostart=n&fullscreen=y&width=320&height=260&videoId=1061&quality=hi&captions=n&chapterId=0 |y Wetlands 5

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|a Everglades Digital Library: Reclaiming the Everglades