Water: A Natural History

2010-02-12T13:51:00.008-05:00

As the MCCD’s Watershed Specialist, I chose to launch the book blog by reading a book titled Water: A Natural History by Alice Outwater. This book is an ideal spring read. As the snow melts and the rain falls, we are mindful of water more now than during any other season of the year. At 186 pages, the book is a quick read and sheds some light on the history of man’s use of the land in relation to water. Below, please read my book review, which includes additional facts and opinions that are not part of the book.

In Water: A Natural History the author takes you on a historical tour of land development in our country since the arrival of the pilgrims up to today. Along the way, the author highlights the particular animal species which have provided ecosystem benefits over the years. Either due to the greed for what these animals had to offer (eg. Beaver and buffalo) or dislike of the troubles the animals caused (prairie dogs), people have greatly reduced the populations of these animals over time. This, in turn, has decreased the function of these ecosystems and has altered the movement of water over and through the ground.

The book begins in Europe with the onset of the fur trade. After settling in the New World in the early 1600s, the Pilgrims discovered a plentiful beaver population which soon replaced the depleted population back in Europe for use as fur. The settlers traded goods with the Native American tribes in exchange for beaver pelts, which were then shipped to Europe to be worn by the wealthy. With the extirpation of the beaver from many areas of the country over time came the decline of wetlands, which provide homes for many wildlife, which aid in pollutant removal, and which reduce downstream flooding. It wasn’t until about 30 years ago that the federal government began to realize the benefits of wetlands with the passing of the Clean Water Act.

The Native Americans had subscribed to a slash and burn method of agriculture for many years. This meant that they would set fire to tracts of forestland around their villages in order to clear land for crops. This burning provided numerous benefits. It would produce ash, thus quickening the recycling of nutrients to the soil. It also restarted the succession of plants which provide smaller fruiting shrubs for wildlife and game. And, it created a forest/field edge, which increased the biodiversity of these areas. The colonists had a different reason to use forests. Large-scale logging took place across the country to provide fuel, furniture, railroad lumber, etc. A few key people observed the changes in the landscape and wrote about them (Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir) or advocated for the establishment of National Parks and National Forests (Muir and T. Roosevelt). The protected lands began reverting back to forest, but not to the forests of old. Those tracks of untouched, old-growth forest are few and far between. The author compares the loss of forestland to that a removal of a kidney to our streams. Most of the state of Pennsylvania had once been used as farmland and has since reverted back to forestland. To see what an old growth forest of 200+ year-old hemlocks and white pines look like, I suggest visiting Cook Forest State Park. Those trees are jaw droppers! To think that all of our forests once had a similar appearance and function is amazing.

The book goes on to describe the water cycle, forested vs. non-forested streams, the removal of logs from streams by municipalities for “safety” purposes, and the importance of logs from headwater streams all the way down to the ocean. A chapter devoted to the grasslands supplies intriguing information on the benefits of prairie dog towns and water buffalo wallows to the infiltration of water into the surface of the ground in the plains. The fall of the buffalo and the prairie dog by European Americans resulted in a change in the recharge of Ogallala Aquifer, which was later discovered.

With broad-scale agriculture came a great need for water. Water rights were loose, and owners of farmland adjacent to creeks could dam up their creek to irrigate their crops with no regard for downstream users. Unlike buffalo, which briefly visit creeks or puddles to get a drink, cattle prefer to spend time in creeks. This destroys stream banks and creates a muddy mess of the water. Moving into the 1900s, the construction of dams for various purposes (irrigation, drinking water, energy production) greatly altered the flow and temperature of our streams and rivers, inhibited fish migration, and “spawned” the idea of fish hatcheries to replace the loss of wild species of fishes. These are still fish, but are not the same as the native wild species of fishes.

At this point in reading the book, I wrote this down: “As technologies advance and we Americans become smarter about how to produce things quicker, cheaper, and with less effort, our impact to land and water resources increases unnoticed. Years later, when we realize what has occurred, and if it impacts us, we “fix” the problem, make it work, and in turn cause another problem for the future…borrowing from the next generation.”

Years ago the US Army Corps of Engineers conducted the damming, dredging, and channelization of waterways and the draining of wetlands for agriculture and water transport all in the name of progress. Today, that same agency works to protect wetlands. The author goes on to describe the way wastewater used to be handled and how the construction of sewer systems grew over time. These systems initially drained directly into waterways without treatment. Combine that with industrial waste, and you have a massive human health problem which no one could ignore. Around 1962, when Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, the movement to clean up our waters began. In 1972, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act) was passed with the goal of improving water quality by a 1985 deadline.

Born after the passing of this Act, myself and generations following did not experience the pollution of our waterways just a decade or two before our birth. And, the generations before us have observed improvement in water quality over the years. In both cases this can result in a hard sell for people to take even small steps to conserve water and protect water quality. We should be making every attempt to make good decisions because pollution problems do exist whether or not we see them or smell them. There are many water uses and pollution sources which have consumed the quantity and degraded the quality of water in American in the past 50 years which are not mentioned in this book. These include: the automobile, extraction of coal, oil, and natural gas for fuel, sprawl, etc. Even without these sources mentioned, this book sends the message that, just because humans are an intelligent species, it does not mean that we have used those smarts in order to work toward a common goal of sustaining water resources for the future of the human species.

Monroe County Conservation District's Book Blog

Water: A Natural History