(triumphant music) >>Funding for "Untamed" is made possible by... (water gurgling) >>It's often been said that our rivers, lakes and streams are like the veins and arteries of the planet.

And just like a healthy body depends on a healthy circulatory system, so too, a healthy planet depends on healthy watersheds.

Maybe you've even heard the saying: "We all live downstream."

Even if you don't live directly adjacent to a body of water, you still depend on the quality of that water.

You're connected.

What happens to the water affects you.

Everything needs water, from the simplest single-cell organism, to plants, animals, and yes indeed, humans.

Unfortunately, for a long time, our watersheds have been polluted, overused, misused, and we have created massive changes and ecological disasters, both upstream and downstream, because we haven't cared for our waters.

With a looming threat of climate change, protecting and caring for water is now more important than it ever has been.

It truly is a matter of protecting our planet and all life on earth.

Back in 1972, the Clean Water Act was passed, and at that time, it was intended to be the legislation that cleaned up our nation's fresh waters and rivers, lakes, and streams to benefit everybody.

Unfortunately, 50 years later, those rivers, lakes, and streams are still being threatened with pollution, with overuse, with misuse, with nutrient loading, and a whole array of problems that we thought we were going to fix 50 years ago.

If we can't find a way to protect and restore our watersheds, all may be truly lost.

We have to act while there's still time.

(upbeat music) >>I'm Chris Moore.

I'm a senior scientist with Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

So the Chesapeake Bay, in a lot of ways, is defined as the water body, which is about 200 miles from Havre de Grace, Maryland.

Basically here to Hampton Roads, Virginia.

But in a lot of ways, it's much bigger than that.

It's 64,000 square miles of watershed.

There's thousands of small streams and rivers that make up the bay.

The bay is really unique, because one, it's the largest estuary in North America, but it's also a place where salt water and fresh water meet.

So the fresh water coming from all those tributaries meets the salt water here at the ocean, and that gives us tremendous diversity, in terms of our fish species, our habitats, our bird species.

A couple of the unique habitats that we see in Chesapeake Bay, one, are oyster reefs, and another one that's really prolific are what we call underwater grasses.

Sometimes also called submerged aquatic vegetation.

And those are the two of the most vibrant and diverse habitats we have in Chesapeake Bay.

Lots of different species are found in those habitats, and they're very, very important for ecosystem health as a whole.

Oyster reefs are basic, three-dimensional structures.

You know, we think of oysters as being kind of shells, or almost like a rock, but they're actually growing three-dimensional habitat up off the bottom.

And a lot of people know about the diversity, how important coral reefs are, oyster reefs, in a lot of ways, are the coral reefs of the Chesapeake Bay.

Underwater grasses are basically underwater meadows.

And we think about how diverse and how many plant species and bird species may be in a meadow.

Same thing with our underwater grass beds.

You see lots of crabs that migrate into those areas.

You see lots of fish that migrate into those.

They help keep the water clean, and they also protect our shorelines from storm events.

So they have lots of different really important functions.

From a people perspective, the Chesapeake Bay is important for a number of different reasons.

First and foremost, it's really an economic engine for the region.

You think about all the commerce that actually happens.

You know, our ships come into the two major ports, both here in Hampton Roads and Baltimore.

So in a lot of ways, it's a very important transportation system.

It's still one of the largest producers of seafood in the United States.

So, it has the largest fishery on the Atlantic Coast, the Atlantic menhaden fishery, but it also has the much more iconic fisheries, like blue crabs and oysters.

We also have a really robust and growing aquaculture industry in the Chesapeake Bay region.

The Chesapeake Bay region is actually the largest producer of oysters on the Atlantic Coast, and the largest producer of clams in the US.

So, those are really important as well.

And then, you know, another reason that a lot of people like to visit the Chesapeake Bay, the tourism aspect.

Whether you like to come to the beach and swim, whether you like to go kayaking or paddle boarding, or whether you like to go out fishing, there's just a tremendous amount of recreational opportunities.

(upbeat music) ♪ Hey, hey, hey Virginia waterways ♪ >>Hi, my name's Eric Chandler, and I'm a teacher and an instructional facilitator, and I wrote that song, "Virginia Waterways," to help my students not only identify the names of our waterways, but also to help them realize the importance of our waterways, and the impact that we have on them.

About 10 years ago, I was teaching a lesson on identifying the names of the rivers and finding them on a map, but also, in science, I was also teaching about the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

And I was sitting there one day and just kind of started strumming chords, and that phrase, "Hey, hey, hey Virginia waterways," came out and just started writing about it.

And I know that I didn't want kids just to be able to point to a location on the map and just be able to say, "That's the Potomac River, that's the Rappahannock River."

I also wanted them to understand the interconnectedness of the streams, the rivers, the bay, and understand that it's all connected, and what we do as humans to our waterways can impact all of that.

(upbeat music) >>My name is Dominick Ciruzzi.

I am an eco hydrologist and assistant professor of geology at William & Mary.

Eco hydrology can be interchanged with hydro ecology.

It's a study in geology that just describes the way that hydrological processes and ecological systems interact with each other.

A watershed is an area of land that collects all forms of falling precipitation, like rain and snow, and drains that into one body of water.

That could be a lake, if this watershed is enclosed, or a river.

And so, all the surface waters collect that water and go through the watershed, collecting at one sort of outlet.

But a watershed is also more than just the collection of water in the landscape.

Water moves through cities, it moves through agricultural fields.

It moves through forests, as well.

And so wherever water moves and collects, that's encompassing a watershed.

Hydrologists like to think about a control volume around a specific area to learn about the water cycle.

We could learn about the water cycle around a tree, for example.

We could say how much rain is coming near this tree, and how much water is this tree using?

A watershed gives us a scalable unit to look at all of the parts of the watershed and figure out what that water cycle is doing in that scale.

A watershed could be, you know a few square meters or millions of square miles.

When we decide to modify the landscape to fit a societal need, like we value cities.

We want to build for our environment.

Or when we want to grow food for an increasing population, we need to modify the watershed to fit those needs.

When that happens, though, a transformation occurs in a watershed.

That part of the water cycle is not the same anymore.

And so that water pathway becomes disrupted.

In the case of a city, more water falls through the city and collects in these storm sewer drains, draining into retention ponds or rivers.

This can cause flashier floods, it could cause increased rates of erosion in streams and disrupt that system from once it was before.

In the case of an agricultural system, more fertilizers or nutrients can be picked up, and the water flowing through there can be of a degraded quality than it once was.

There are a few ways that we could manage water resources in a sustainable way, but it matters along quite a bit of different axis.

We need to figure out what our societal values are.

We need to figure out, what do we care about in this watershed?

Do we value something more than another?

We need to figure that out.

In addition to our shared values, we need to connect communities together.

Stakeholders, politicians, just people in a watershed all live in the watershed itself.

So we need to have these conversations to think about, okay what do we value, and can we do this together?

In addition, we need to recognize the right of future generations to a healthy watershed.

When we have these values, this can paint a picture to holistically sustain a watershed now and into the future.

(upbeat music) >>My name is Tyler Twyford, and I work as an environmental educator at the James River Park System.

The James River Park System is part of the City of Richmond's division of parks, recreation and community facilities.

The James River Park System makes up a lot of the city-owned land along the banks of the river, as it flows through the city of Richmond.

So we're fortunate enough to have a 600 acre wilderness park here, along the borders of the James River.

The James River begins an Allegheny County, at the confluence of the Jackson River and the Cow Pasture River.

In the mountains, it flows rather quickly down the hills.

And then it slows down in the Piedmont Region of our state, meanders across the state a little bit, and then as the river approaches Richmond, it begins to speed up at the fall line here in our city.

And then it meets the tidal water of the bay a little bit further downstream.

The James River is one of five rivers that flow into the Chesapeake Bay, and the James River drains over one third of our state.

So it has a really large impact on the Chesapeake Bay, which is one of the biggest estuaries in the world.

The riparian area around a river is the area along the banks, where trees, shrubs and other plants can reach their roots down into the water table and access the water of the river.

So these riparian areas are incredibly valuable for the health of a river.

A planted or forested area near the edge of a river, we call a riparian buffer, and these buffers serve as the last stop for a lot of pollutants in a waterway.

Fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides that have been released in the watershed in the areas around the river, as they make their way down toward the river, planted riparian buffers, trees and shrubs are the last opportunity to absorb these nutrients before they make their way into the Chesapeake Bay and cause problems like nutrification.

Nutrients and pesticides reaching the bay can cause incredible amounts of problems, including algal blooms, fish kills, just a general loss of resources that we want to prevent.

Riparian buffers also reduce sediment pollution.

So sediment is a large pollutant in the James River, just loose dirt making its way down the banks and into the water.

And then when that loose dirt reaches the Chesapeake Bay, it covers up valuable nesting habitat for animals like the Atlantic sturgeon, as well as makes it difficult for oysters to attach to beds.

So the sediment is a large problem, and it can also be stopped by riparian buffers.

There's a lot of interplay between a river and the area of land around it.

The area of land surrounding a river is usually referred to as its watershed, where the water that falls in that area is gonna drain to one common body of water.

So the water that's here in the James today came from land surrounding the James further upstream.

So people have a huge impact on their river, especially downstream of them.

So obviously, litter that makes its way into the river here in Richmond will affect everyone downstream.

So it's very important that we mitigate that as early as possible.

When protecting and managing a resource like the James River that flows through a large urban area like Richmond, Virginia, it's important to maintain the health of the natural ecosystem, while listening to the concerns of people within that community.

So here in the city of Richmond, it's very important that we maintain a healthy recreational access to the river, while maintaining the quality of the water within the river.

In the past, the James River served many industrial uses, and that caused a great deal of pollution in the James River.

But since the passing of the Clean Water Act in 1972, the James River has been on a steady upward trend toward becoming a healthier and healthier environment.

The reality of the James River today is that it is a healthy habitat for a lot of wildlife which rely on this wonderful resource.

And it's still a wonderful and safe place to enjoy recreationally.

The health of the James is steadily improving, and we're looking forward to seeing how good it can get.

(tranquil music) >>We know that humans need water to drink, to irrigate our crops, to water our gardens, and indeed, waterways like this to inspire us and renew our soul.

But it's not just humans that need water and healthy watersheds.

The riparian habitat along streams and rivers like this are some of our most important wildlife habitat.

And it's not just wildlife above the water that needs to be protected.

There is wildlife in the water and in the waterway, and they deserve consideration as well.

(upbeat music) >>My name is Emmanuel Frimpong.

I'm a professor of fish ecology and conservation at Virginia Tech, in the department of fish and wildlife conservation.

Where you find a fish is a record of history, millions of years of evolution and events that have put the fish there.

And then they evolve.

And eventually, it is a match between the traits of the fish and the conditions that make it possible to to live there over a long term.

So essentially, it is the habitat, either the river, the stream or lake is a habitat supporting fish and other aquatic organisms.

Now, a little more technical terms, habitat, especially for for fluvial systems, for flowing streams, is a combination of what we will call geo morphology, or the shape of the land, and hydrology, the flow of water.

So if you combine the different levels of flow of water that different streams would have, or even no flow like in a lake or wetland, and the different shapes of the land, that would lead to a whole lot of different combinations of possibilities of habitat, and the type of fish you find is a match to the type of habitat there is.

So flow is everything.

Now, flow is not just a simple water headed in one direction.

You know, if you look at several streams, you begin to see differences in how fast the water is flowing, for example.

The size of the river and the depth of the river.

If you look at the single short reach of a stream, a hundred meters, the stream behind us.

You will see there are pools where the water is slow.

And then there are ripples where the water is fast.

There are runs when the water is in between fast and slow.

Fish segregate the habitat's use by these differences in the flow of the water.

And flow is usually characterized by the frequency, the magnitude and the duration of flow.

So the magnitude is how big the flow is.

For example, how many times within say a hundred years would you see a flood that floods where we are standing right now?

The fish are still here.

They are not going anywhere, but the water can be everywhere in the basin.

That's a big, large flow.

Then the duration, how long does this flow last when it's this big?

And then the frequency, how often does that happen?

These three characteristics, when you permitted them, make many different habitats, and fish are adapted to this natural flow regime differently from one species to another.

We change flow when we build on a watershed, because flood and the size of flood increases when you don't have natural surfaces right?

It's impermeable.

And so, there is more surface runoff when it rains.

So urbanization, for example, causes flashy flows when a little storm can lead to big floods.

And then, when storms are over, very little flow, which is very different from constant, steady flow.

So when we change flow drastically, it affects how the fish is able to feed.

It affects how the fish is able to reproduce, it affects even the sheltering, because if the system becomes too fast for a fish that needs the quiet, they either disappear from there, or they have to adapt to a different lifestyle, where they can swim against current all the time.

The way we can reduce our impact is to make our harvest and extraction of water and our exploitation of the natural system mimic nature as much as possible.

And to be able to do that, we have to do more research to understand how species have evolved to be so tightly linked with their life history to this natural ecosystem functioning, and try to do management that doesn't change the ecosystem functioning drastically.

(upbeat music) >>The Chesapeake Bay's health has been struggling for many years, but it is getting better, slowly, not as fast as we'd like it to be.

And you know, it takes the work of really everyone in the watershed to make sure we continue to improve the health of the bay.

Overall, if you look at our State of the Bay Report, the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment pollution, which are the three biggest pollutants in Chesapeake Bay, those numbers are going down.

A lot of the habitats that are really important to the bay, like those underwater grasses, those stream side buffers, we're kind of holding our own when it comes to those.

On a fisheries front, we're having some success with some species, like oysters.

We're doing a good job restoring those, but there're some real concerns out there about species like striped bass.

So there's a tremendous amount of work that goes into restoring the bay.

From things like stream side buffers, way away from the actual bay itself, on small cold-water streams, to things like wastewater treatment plant upgrades, to smaller things on your yard, like converting some of that impervious surface to gardens or to pervious surface or planting native plants, things like that.

Some of the things that we're doing now to restore the bay are things, in some cases, we've been doing for a long time, but in a lot of cases, one of the great things about bay restoration now, is we're continuing to develop new ideas and new technologies to actually help us save the bay.

So some of the things that happen in the more urban areas is we're continuing to increase the water quality out of our wastewater treatment plants.

So making sure we do a better job treating our sewage effluent and effluence that come from industries.

We're also looking at ways to decrease the impact of storm water.

So we're thinking about things like rain gardens and rain barrels, that help treat that storm water, improve the quality of that storm water, before it actually gets to our streams.

As you move up the watershed, into some of the more agriculture areas, we're working with farmers to fence cattle out of streams.

We're putting in riparian buffers.

We're also restoring habitats in those streams.

So things like brook trout and muscles can actually live in those streams again.

And we can see the benefits of a healthier environment in those waters as well.

(pensive music) >>Managing watersheds for the protection and preservation of fresh water ecosystems is essential for all life on this planet.

And we can achieve it together.

And there are things that you can do every day, right in your own home.

Number one, the simplest thing, conserve water.

Turn off the water when it's not in use.

Take a shower just a few minutes shorter than you might otherwise, and be mindful of how to reduce your wasting water.

Number two, dispose of all toxic, household chemicals in a responsible way.

Most communities will have a hazardous waste collection day for things like used oil, old paint, but never, ever pour that out on the ground, down a drain, and especially never into a storm sewer.

Third thing you can do right at home, pick up after your dog or cat.

Seems like a small thing, but yes indeed, waste from our pets contributes to the pollution of waterways.

Finally, let your elected officials know you want them to take a stand for clean water and for the protection of watersheds around your community and around the world.

Together, we can make a real difference.

>>Funding for "Untamed" is made possible by... (water gurgling) (birds singing) (majestic music)