← Rewilding Earth Podcast
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- [00:07]
Larry Stevens
Every one of those springs is visited every day by deer, elk, black bear, mountain lions, you name it. Migrating birds, for example, can detect springs as they as they pass across landscapes and come in to get a drink of water. How they do that, I don't have a clue. These little patches in the landscape end up being keystone ecosystems, small, highly ecologically interactive points in the landscape. They are point sources of biodiversity, but they're also playing a much larger role in the landscape. And this is a different kind of conservation story.
- [01:12]
Narrator
You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast.
- [01:14]
Jack Humphrey
I'm your host, Jack Humphrey.
- [01:20]
Narrator
I first met today's guest, Larry Stevens, around a campfire on the Mogollon Rim in Arizona.
- [01:26]
Jack Humphrey
He took us out to see these
- [01:27]
Narrator
tiny shaded springs tucked away in the world's largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest. And I realized right then just how much of a blank spot springs were on my own map. Larry is the director of the Spring Stewardship Institute, and he spent his career proving that these are not just leaks in the ground, they are keystone ecosystems. In this episode, we're diving into the hidden universe of springs. We talk about how they provide half the flow for rivers like The Colorado, the 12 million year old species living inside them and and the massive data gap that's leaving them unprotected from the deep sea floor to the high desert. Larry explains why springs need a global PR campaign and how you can help map them. It's a fascinating look at the archipelago of life that supports everything from migrating birds to the last of our freshwater reserves.
- [02:18]
Jack Humphrey
Larry, thanks for coming on the Rewilding Earth podcast.
- [02:21]
Larry Stevens
Thanks so much, Jack, for having me.
- [02:23]
Jack Humphrey
So let's catch up with your work and what you've been up to.
- [02:27]
Larry Stevens
Okay. I'm the director of the Spring Stewardship Institute and we are a small organization based in Flagstaff, Arizona, with a mission to improve scientific understanding and management of spring ecosystems around the world. And it's a pretty big hat, but that puts us in a position of being able to interact with all kinds of people and groups that are trying to do the right thing. We manage all the Forest Service springs data for the country and are working with multiple agencies and different projects. The rendezvous there at the Muggy and Rim that you talked about, we went out to a couple of small springs that come out of the highlands along in central Arizona there. And those are remarkable little patches of habitat. They're forested springs, so they're shaded. There's not a whole lot of wetland vegetation, in part because forest management has allowed trees, conifers, and whatnot to start crowding the landscape there. And that shade knocks out the wetland vegetation. If you allow fires to go through those sites and open up the habitat, then the wetland vegetation responds really very positively. We're working with the Forest Service to try to talk with them about adjusting their buffer strategy in fires and protecting springs. But that springs we got through there, little features coming out, very anomalously tiny catchment areas that remain perennial even during severe drought. We've had, well, in the last 25 years, we've had the most severe droughts that this region has ever seen. And the world is certainly understanding that climate change, a phrase we can't use anymore. So I substitute the phrase integrated weather pattern alteration. IPWHA is IPWA is just taking its toll on groundwater infiltration, especially in these areas where snowpack is the big deal. Snow melts slowly and that allows groundwater to sink into the earth. And springs are 99.999% surface water, meteoric water. The water comes out in these little places that play. They have their own internal biology, many species unique to those. We saw stone flies at that site, some mollusks, mayflies, things that don't occur anywhere else in the landscape except at those tiny patches. And so there's a lot of intrinsic biology going on in those sites. And then every one of those springs is visited every day by deer, elk, black bear, mountain lions, you name it, the whole array of small and large animals. Bird life is just off the charts at those sites. Somehow migrating birds, for example, can detect springs as they pass across landscapes and come in to get a drink of water. How they do that, I don't have a clue. But not at all unusual to see bear sign and in some cases mountain lion sign, bobcat, coyote, all the predators come into those sites. So these are these little patches in the landscape end up being keystone ecosystems, in our terminology. Small, highly ecologically interactive points in the landscape. They are point sources of biodiversity, but they're also playing a much larger role in the landscape. And this is a different kind of conservation story, I think, than than most people have in mind. You know, saving the Grand Canyon, saving the Pacific Ocean, saving the great whales. Those are conservation topics, broad ranging, hundreds if not thousands of stakeholders, all with their own opinion about what's the right thing to do. And because I sit in some of those meetings, it takes a long, long time to make even the slightest headway in conservation. In contrast, springs are these kind of archipelago of points in the landscape that play such an important role intrinsically and extrinsically within those landscapes that the conservation model is quite different. We don't really have a conservation model like that where you're looking at, you know, a broad array of island like patches of habitat that can be with where a little bit of attention can go a long way. Part of what we do in this Spring Stewardship Institute work is when we're working with agencies or private individuals trying to figure out what to do with their springs, be able to point out to them where the kind of shortfalls are in management. Oftentimes it's geomorphology, the site's been manipulated or it's been fenced in a way that forces livestock or cattle into the spring area to the detriment of the spring. So we use a, all kinds of metrics to describe this to the, to the spring manager, but can make recommendations about how that spring could be better manipulated and better managed. We also then using that same kind of quantitative tool, are able to say, okay, in a whole landscape. For the thousand springs on Apache Sitgraves National Forest, here are the 20 springs that we visited that where you get the most bang for your buck with management, where a little bit of money can reduce the risk to the integrity of the spring and improve its ecological functionality. And so being able to provide those kind of tools to the managers, I think is a real important step forward. So that's what we do at Spring Stewardship Institute, get information about springs to the managers who can best use them. And in addition, we're learning so much about the biota and the biology of the springs in forested settings like the one you visited, Jack, there, you know, there tend to be maybe just a couple of unique species, but we get into some of these desert springs, for example, arid lands where the springs are really isolated patches of very productive habitat. Montezuma, well, for example down in central Arizona, many sites in Nevada, these are dryland sites where the high productivity of the spring both is an incredible magnet for wildlife. But the springs have been there long enough that they host enormous numbers of unique species. Montezuma, well, with six or eight unique species in it, has the highest concentration of endemic species of any point that we know of in North America. For example, Quatro Cienegas down in Mexico, went down there for a conference this last year. 60 species that are endemic to the springs in that landscape. These are places that really, you know, where the conservation values are so high and the level of knowledge is actually so low that that bringing attention to them is part of why we're our raison D', etre, you know, why we're doing what we're doing at Spring Stewardship.
- [09:22]
Jack Humphrey
I realized when we first met and you were letting us know the importance of springs and about your work around the campfire, how little I knew about springs. It just dawned on me at that moment, wow, that's a real blank spot on my map. And since then, I've come to know a great deal more. As you move about the world as an expert in this, do people ask you a lot of the same basic questions as if they're just thinking about springs for the first time in their lives?
- [09:55]
Larry Stevens
Very often that's the case. Every. Every lecture I give on springs, I have to spend the first couple minutes saying, okay, we're not talking about the season. We're not talking the holiday festival with millions of young people. We're not talking about the mechanical device, and we're not talking about some computer program or a brand of shoe. We're talking about the hydrologic feature. And unfortunately, you go into the dictionaries and the hydrologic feature definition is way at the back. And I think Merriam Webster's at one point, it was the 16th definition of spring. The issue is homography. The word has so many meanings in, in our language that people are. They get lost and think in trying to think about it.
- [10:38]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, it was kind of a shocker for me. I spent the rest of that weekend learning how vitally important springs are in ways I had never thought of before. And that's one of the big reasons why I like having you here today, because I want everybody to realize some of the stuff that I did that weekend when you were showing us around on the Mogion Rim, because it's so incredibly important.
- [11:01]
Larry Stevens
Well, so glad to have an impact. And springs are so multidimensional that it's like a hidden universe when you start getting into it, we have these dreadful information gaps. The mapping of springs is basically deplorable. Many countries, many states don't even have any kind of springs program. They don't know where the springs are. A few states are doing really great job. Florida, Wisconsin, now Nevada, Kentucky has a pretty good, pretty good springs database. California is getting there, but. But there's still. Every landscape we go into, we come across undiscovered springs, unreported springs. They are some mostly fairly small. Like I say, it's kind of a archipelago like distribution pattern with them. Sometimes they're clustered, sometimes they're highly isolated and trying to. And we've identified about a dozen different types of Springs. From a geomorphic standpoint, things that pour out of cliffs we call gushets, hanging gardens are a dripping feature in sandstone or basalt habitats with a wet back wall and all kinds of unique species living in them. Helicrenes are wet meadows, limnocrenes are big pool forming springs. So a whole array of spring types and understanding which are the rare types in the landscape and what kinds of species to expect that live at those sites really is a, is a pretty key conservation issue. I gotta say, it's really been wonderful and kind of dreadful in some ways, studying springs because most of our recent extinctions here in the Southwest, in many of the arid regions of the world, are of springs. At the same time, you know, we're bringing this brilliant technology into focus. Environmental DNA and genetics in general are allowing us to see how much biodiversity occurs at springs. Just a very recent study on the amphipods, which are the scuds of the Great Basin, a couple of species have been described. It looks like we've got at least 80 species in the Great Basin now, many of them at one or two or three springs. Only the same story, but with about triple the number of species for spring snails. Again, little tiny aquatic snails occurring at one or two or three springs, and they've been radiating evolutionarily for the last 12 million years. And as we just begin to learn about these things, we're seeing biodiversity levels we just haven't had any clue existed.
- [13:44]
Jack Humphrey
I just realized I got a lot of my spring knowledge from Edward Abbey, who wrote poetically about springs several times in his books, and specifically canyonland type springs. And even sitting and crying in one that he got up to but didn't have a way to get down out of and thought he was going to
- [14:05]
Larry Stevens
die there in Havasu maybe.
- [14:08]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, and when you describe the like hanging gardens and things like that, that's immediately what popped to. So maybe people know a little bit more about springs than they think, because almost everybody that listens to the Rewilding podcast has been down a river. And if you haven't, you need to. I mean, that's probably the easiest access for a lot of people to understand how that, how that all works, at least in that environment.
- [14:32]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, it's, it's often that the springs are the destination hikes. When you go on a river trip, for example, we, we've been doing a lot of exploration globally about how springs and rivers interact. The people who work on river basin modeling have not included springs in their logic. You know, we have a stream order system of that Strahler put together in the 50s with small streams feeding into bigger streams and going to really big streams. You get up to an Amazon sized river and you're dealing with an order 12, 10 or 12. But they haven't realized that springs are providing the critical base flow for those rivers. So pretty much not every river. Some rivers do emerge out of lakes and some are glacier fed. But a great many of the rivers and streams on the planet are base flow fed by springs. And so we've been going around and try to put those stories together. The Amazon, the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Yangtze, these are all spring fed river systems. So the Colorado river here in the Southwest, 53% of the water is groundwater. Between 49 and 53%. It's not just a snow melt. It's being fed by groundwater that's coming from springs.
- [15:44]
Jack Humphrey
Oh, people attribute every bit of that for to snowball all the time.
- [15:48]
Larry Stevens
Yeah.
- [15:49]
Jack Humphrey
I think I've ever heard anyone mention springs.
- [15:51]
Larry Stevens
Yeah.
- [15:51]
Jack Humphrey
Mentioned flow rates.
- [15:53]
Larry Stevens
Yeah. So it's, it's kind of astounding how, how important springs are to river basins. And for river basin hydrologists and ecohydrologists and whatnot, to be able to factor springs into their basin modeling and understanding watershed health is really critical.
- [16:16]
Narrator
We talk a lot on this show about the long game, the decades of work it takes to protect a landscape or bring a species back. Keeping this podcast on the air and growing is part of that long game. We don't have a giant corporate machine behind us. We rely on people like you who understand that these stories and deep dives into rewilding strategy are essential for the movement. If you find value in these conversations, please consider supporting the show. Your contributions directly fund the production and help us reach more people with the message that a wilder world is possible. Head over to rewilding.org donate. Every bit helps us reach a wider global audience.
- [16:59]
Jack Humphrey
I know that there was a spring near the wall. And Lakin Jordan and some others from center were taking pictures of them taking the groundwater out of this spring to
- [17:11]
Narrator
make cement for the wall.
- [17:13]
Jack Humphrey
And they were giving this master class on what that spring was. And that water underneath it was a limited amount. It took millions of years to collect. And they're just making it for cement for a wall that's going to get torn down someday. The way that we can just quickly destroy something without ever knowing the importance of what we're doing. I know that's humanity's whole mo, but when it comes to springs, it just feels like a huge, huge blind spot. There as to the value. And, and I think that place was supposed to be protected, but some law was bypassed to allow them to do practically everything they've done down there, especially when it comes to parks and protected areas and springs. Yeah, I just, I'm kind of blown away. Springs need a PR campaign.
- [17:58]
Larry Stevens
They do, yeah. Yeah. And that's a big job because as you say, they just, they're not on people's radar as a, as a, as a resource or as a, as a habitat type. That, and partly that's because springs are complicated. Like I say, a dozen different landforms develop at the. Where springs emerge. But really the black box is groundwater because we can't see it. We can put wells into it, we can pump it, we can begin to do some science on it. Aging groundwater is possible. It's often the case that we're extracting, as in the example of the Oglala aquifer in the Great Plains or some of the aquifers around here. The groundwater can be thousands of years old, tens of thousands of years old, and it's not going to recharge. So it's a water resource that we can tap, but there's a big cost to over overdrawing it. And so we can't see the groundwater in almost any situation unless you do a lot of caving. And it remains just this kind of mysterious subsurface element to our lives that we almost like the subconscious. So we can't really get a very clear grip on Without a lot of
- [19:16]
Jack Humphrey
analysis and without eyes on something, it becomes something that's very vulnerable to being misused. You, you can't see what someone's done to an underground aquifer until you turn the spigot and nothing comes out. So I think it's just really easy for people to get away with making really, really bad decisions that they alone should not even be making.
- [19:41]
Larry Stevens
Yes. You know, the tragedy of the groundwater commons, I think is the, is the, is one theme that we need to think about because this is. We've only got, let's see, 0.6% of the water on earth is groundwater. And really it's our last reserve of fresh water. We've not been successful with any kind of cost effective desalinization of ocean water. And overdrawing the groundwater is a short path to loss of ability to support human life. But there's so many. Again, the multidimensionality of springs is just, it's just totally fascinating and off the charts. Been looking at economics of springs. I don't Personally think that we would have ranching and farming in North America without springs. Almost every spring, every farm in the east coast is found, is founded on a spring.
- [20:37]
Jack Humphrey
Ranchers and farmers all know where the springs are.
- [20:40]
Larry Stevens
Absolutely. They have to. They have to. And many of them are actually taking direct, you know, that's their direct kind of potable water supply as well as their livestock supplies and their irrigation water. In many cases, the water is critically important, but nobody's tried to really figure out what the cost of that, the value of that water is. It's enormous. It's many, many billions of dollars Americans drink. Oh, boy. Put your seat belt on here. We drink about a hundred million bottles of water a day, about a third of which are labeled as springs water. That's easily 20, $30 billion of industry just in the U.S. we're not even the most concentrated bottled water drinking nation. Italy is actually takes the cake there, I think. But so globally we're talking, you know, we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars in bottled water. The hot springs resort industry, I think, is about a $65 billion a year industry. You know, tallying all those, all those economic values up. Springs are playing just absolutely enormous and unrecognized role in our everyday lives. Understanding that when you're in the presence of a spring, you're in the presence of an interactive agent in the landscape that is playing a role, has been playing a role for time immemorial and with a little bit of care, can continue to function. If we can expand awareness and this sense of respect for the earth and these remarkable features like springs, I think we've done something good. So that's part of our mission with Spring Stewardship Institute too. Okay.
- [22:25]
Jack Humphrey
I think everybody understands springs and their importance a bit more now. So that's the ground level. What about the macro level?
- [22:31]
Larry Stevens
Yeah. So some colleagues and SSI got together and developed a motion for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature iucn. And we were able to get that motion passed last October. It's Motion 16, and it elevates springs to a global conservation concern. So what we're planning to do there is put together a global task force of experts, not just hydrologists, because we need to move beyond the concept of springs as a hydrologic commodity and into the realm of springs as keystone functional ecosystems that are playing such a big role in nature and for humanity. So putting together a global task force of the ethno ecologists that have worked on springs. Yes, a few hydrologists, the many people who work on the biota of Springs. And the task force will be led by our assistant director Joseph Hallway and also a woman from South Africa, Heidi Van de Vedder who has been mapping the springs of South Africa. And together they're going to co lead this team of task force experts to be able to develop a plan so that, that's a plan so that every nation knows what to do. Here's a plan for how to move forward with spring's mapping Spring's inventory and assessment and management in your nation. So that's, that's a very bold goal. Yeah.
- [24:05]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Congratulations. I know that you've had an awful lot to do with that. I don't know how many Larry's there are in the world.
- [24:13]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, so there are about 250 I would say Springs conservation focused Springs people in the world. Not very many. You know typically some continents just have a few. North America has, has quite a few, some really great ones. Doug Glaser, Don SATA, Robert Knight are just heroes in the, in the springs world. I get to communicate with some of the most wonderful people that I think are on the planet. Deep knowledge of very strange biology. People who have spent their whole lives dissecting the reproductive organs of minute snails to try to distinguish the species and, and then these just global thinkers were looking at productivity and conservation topics that are just all around the world. So I get to deal with really fun people and putting this task force together and assembling kind of a background choir of global Springs folks is, is going to be really fun.
- [25:12]
Jack Humphrey
But yeah, I loved getting people together. One of my jobs back in the 90s was taking people out into wilderness and in forest service and ripping up roads with Sky island alliance and man, the cast of characters that you can attract to a volunteer thing like that is just nuts. You would get an education in so many different specialties, some of which you've never heard of before and then you. And then it opens up this world and it's like well in their world this is a really big thing and it's a rich diverse world of information and knowledge and, and you're just like I can't believe I'd never even heard of this before.
- [25:52]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, yeah. The world is so, you know, there's so many dimensions to it. The more, the more of those kind of people you meet, the more your eyes are open to how incredibly glorious this planet is, its place in the universe.
- [26:05]
Jack Humphrey
Yeah, we really love maps at the Rewilding Institute and you know we work with one of the few world's greatest conservation GIS mappers. Kurt Mincke. Yeah, yeah, over all of, all of these years. And so I'm thinking about his layer that he would pull up for springs. And you said earlier that layer probably you shouldn't expect too much from it because that's another glaring hole in all of this is the mapping. Can you tell us how that can be improved or what's the state of it is now?
- [26:36]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, sure. One of the things we've done with Spring Stewardship Institute is develop a data portal so that anybody interested in springs can. Can put their information into it. Having GPS coordinates for the spring allows us to to be able to improve understanding of where springs are everywhere in the world. In North America for example, we've got about a closing in 170,000 springs in the. In the database and some of those have really a lot of data in it. A few of them have really super inventory data. We've been going out and using our survey protocols which give us a rapid, thorough assessment of a spring. Done that on about 3,000 springs now all across elevation, land use and different spring types and whatnot. So very rich database there. Anybody can sign up for that database to put information about their spring in it. They can start their own project. The information is protected by password protected, so it's their data. If they want to share it, it's up to them. But it's a way to allow people to really begin to assemble data and figure out the history of the springs and photographs. And the database can take pretty much anything, videography and data, photographs, whatever, whatever you've got in terms of information about a spring. So we totally invite anybody who's interested in springs to go ahead and start their own project. Start mapping springs in your area and we can get those in. Just have to sign up for, sign up for@springs data.org and sign up for an account there. But the mapping is still the very. It's the weakest part of the entire effort here. The map that Curt would put pull together would show lots and lots of springs in. In the US no springs in Canada because Canada doesn't put them on their topo maps and there's no way to search for them. They're beginning to in some places, but it's very rudimentary. Scandinavian countries have the springs in the southern portions of their country. Sweden, Finland, Norway, pretty well mapped, but the far north not at all. Australia has a lot of focus on the great Artesian Basin, but they have springs all through the mountains in the eastern side of the country. And almost nobody knows anything about tropical springs. Central Africa, just no, no data. South America, much of South America, Very, very little data. So the mapping is. Mapping is really a big. Is really a big deal. It's the first priority for a lot of these countries.
- [29:05]
Jack Humphrey
How much are we talking about discovery versus local knowledge that's not been put in a central location?
- [29:13]
Larry Stevens
Yeah.
- [29:13]
Jack Humphrey
Is there a lot more discovery of springs out there that we just don't know about? And probably one or two people locally may. Or maybe it's a forgotten spring that is not on anybody's radar.
- [29:26]
Larry Stevens
Jack is all over the board. We go to remote places in Nevada and the springs have been pretty well mapped. But I went over to Reno, into the sierras there, and one of the 10 springs I encountered was. Had been previously reported. So somebody might know about them, but they're not on a map or nobody's really paid attention to them before. So, you know, they're just literally, they're novel finds. And what's really great about what we do is we go out and we might have an obligation to look at 24 springs. Well, we go out, we find 40 springs. 12, you know, 16 of those are new to the new that we document them, take a quick look at them. Sometimes we find remarkable things at them and pull those all into a database. The manager of that landscape then has a much more robust understanding of what the array of springs is and the number of springs on earth. We're now guessing it's about between maybe 20 and 30 million springs on earth. And not just in terrestrial settings, but seafloor. These deep seafloor vent springs and cold water seeps on the seafloor, they're getting better known, but there's lots and lots more to learn about their distribution and their ecology. Those deep sea floor springs, you know, they're doing almost exactly what desert springs are doing. They're rich hot spots of unique life that that life doesn't occur anywhere else. And like our desert springs, many of them are threatened. Now, more than 25% of the seafloor springs are threatened by mining, remote mining operations.
- [31:05]
Jack Humphrey
So when people hear about the fight for deep sea mining, this can put an image in their head why that's additionally important to the things they already knew and just weren't thinking about. Springs.
- [31:17]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, yeah. And what role those springs play. And the way the way springs work out biogeographically is they're often not terribly species rich, but at least for animals, you might have a few species there, but they're species that don't occur anywhere else in the landscape landscape. So we call that alpha diversity very high alpha diversity at springs contributing enormously to the, to the gamma diversity of the whole, of the whole landscape. Now that's a bit different for plants in that we have consistently gone to some rather small number of springs, 50 to 100 springs in a landscape all over North America. And it's not at all unusual to encounter many of the plant species in those landscapes. In Alberta, for example, we went to 54 Springs. We ended up encountering one quarter of the flora of Alberta in 10 acres of spring habitat. There's no way, no way else you could actually see that much of the biodiversity of plants other than by going to a group of springs. You get upland plants and wetland plants and then some local endemics that are, that are all mixed in there at the, around these springs. So again, the conservation value for plants with protecting the spring is enormous, just absolutely enormous, even though they're just little tiny features in the landscape.
- [32:40]
Jack Humphrey
I was also going to ask you, this is probably a novice question you answer on the first day, the first hour, when you're training people how to spot springs and do people have trouble recognizing whether it's one spring or two?
- [32:54]
Larry Stevens
Yes. Yeah, yeah. The whole landscape kind of configuration of the spring is wonderful, baffling subject of lots and lots of conversation. Certainly you can come up on a single source on a hill slope. The water is flowing down, you can see wet soil, sometimes a rivulet of water, sometimes a whole big stream of water coming down. But so those are pretty identifiable. What we consider to be the spring is the emergence point that if you can get this, the three dimensional configuration of that spring. So there's moist soil down below the spring that's supporting additional life underneath the spring and the periphery of plants that are tied into that spring. So the spring is actually this geomorphic complex. If it's got flowing water, the water might flow in a very distinctive kind of channel. Spring channels are different than surface channels, if that makes sense. A spring channel will be slightly incised, it has washed away the fine grained sediments, but it's linear feature, it's kind of hitting a rock and then bouncing off the rock and hitting a log and bouncing off. So it's kind of linear segments that are not symmetrical. When that stream flows for enough distance, surface process will begin to take over and the stream channel will start to become sinuous. So for us, where that sinuosity begins is the end of the spring, the zero stream order spring. And where the first order stream begins, if that makes sense.
- [34:30]
Jack Humphrey
I did not know if I was asking a good question or not. I do now and I'm so glad I asked that question. That is perfect. Because don't you need people who are out hiking and discovering things to interact with your site and help build your database to know how to really spot a full spring and what that might look like? I know you have a million ways to describe them and they come in all shapes and sizes, but hopefully this encourages people to remember when you're on a hike, if you see something, drop a pin and. Yeah, and get that information back to you guys. Even if you've already mapped it, right?
- [35:06]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, absolutely. And a photograph of that site, which you can easily add to the to springs online@springsdata.org site allows us to keep track of springs over time. Very, very little monitoring of springs. That's been also kind of a shocker. Very few springs are monitored over any length of time. Many springs have deep history of human use, sometimes going back thousands of years. Think the Oracle of Delphi, for example. What role did that spring play in human history? But it's not monitored. So we don't know what water chemistry changes or flow dynamics are really going on there.
- [35:45]
Jack Humphrey
Time to gamify it. That's how you get Everybody involved. There's 50 ways to count and keep track of birds and help the organizations, but we should think about doing that for springs.
- [35:57]
Larry Stevens
I think so, too.
- [35:58]
Jack Humphrey
Another thing to count to do, to feel useful, to not just make donations to organizations. That's very important, by the way. And this podcast and Larry's organization could both use donations. But people want to do more. They want to get their hands dirty. They're out there hiking already. Anyway. We have a page dedicated to every episode. This will be episode 171. And at the bottom of every episode, we have extra credit. And Larry is going to ply me with all kinds of extra credit. And in that will be resources for you guys to take with you on your next hike, instructions like Larry's just given and probably a lot more detail than that so that you can be of use to this very, very big need that is out there. Springs time have come and we really, really need people to understand how important they are. And it's time to stop overlooking them, even from the conservation community. I know that you probably are too polite to say it, but I know you've been just as shocked that the conservation community rarely, rarely talks about spring. And we need to change that.
- [37:06]
Larry Stevens
Yeah, yeah, we do. And it's again, this getting away from this hydrologic commodity viewpoint of springs, where there is something to be used which is so dominant in our culture as a way of thinking about them, to understanding that these are ecosystems in their own right that are playing just enormous roles intrinsically and in relation to the surrounding landscapes and cultures that are around them. So they are wonderfully important topics. Their importance needs to be elevated and the respect that we need to develop in terms of appreciating them also is something to really focus on.
- [37:47]
Jack Humphrey
What else would you love to get some support with and some interaction and engagement from our audience?
- [37:55]
Larry Stevens
Our knowledge of springs is, is in terms of mapping is better in arid regions. So the west of the hundredth meridian we have a better, a more detailed understanding of springs. East coast, east central Appalachians. So many springs have not been there there, but they've not been mapped. So as people are hiking again, just take. Get a GPS point and a photograph and that's enough to actually document a spring in landscapes that could easily be an unreported spring. That's a big help. If you're interested in participating in workshops to learn about how to really get into the inventory and assessment process and begin to help agencies and people that are trying to manage springs. We offer those a couple times a year. Do lots and lots of webinars as well. You can stay in touch with us about that. Our website has all that information on it.
- [38:52]
Jack Humphrey
Excellent. All right, well, everybody, you've got your marching orders. You've got a new cool, fun thing to do that's a real serious contribution. Every single spring matters and there's one in your area that needs a pin and a picture reported on the site. You'll find all of that information and more in the extra credit section of this episode@rewilding.org podcast. Larry, thanks so much. I know that this is just scratching the surface. I'm so glad to introduce you to more people so they can. I mean, people think I'm crazy when I talk about you and, and the very few people I know like you, who just know so much about this stuff and then a lot of stuff around your specialty because it touches so many things. It's been very fun to have you on today and I hope you'll come back.
- [39:40]
Larry Stevens
Jack, thank you so much. Keep up the great work.
- [39:44]
Narrator
Thanks for listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. We do what we do because of you. This podcast is supported by listeners like you who long to live in a wilder world. Please consider donating@rewilding.org and subscribe to our weekly News and Article Digest While you're there to go the extra mile, you can follow and share Rewilding Earth on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Bonus points for sharing this podcast with your friends.
- [40:08]
Jack Humphrey
To listen to past episodes, go to
- [40:10]
Narrator
rewilding.org pod that's rewilding.org pod.