Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Wetland Flood Absoprtion Demo?
You may recall this factoid from our wetlands discussion: One acre of wetland can absorb up to 1.5 million gallons of flood water. After a few back-of-the-napkin calculations, I estimate that that 1.5 million gallons over an acre works out to be a water depth of about 1.4 m (4.5 ft.). Not bad! My question is this: is there anyway we could demonstrate this in (or out of) the classroom? It'd make for a really impressive demo if we could. Thoughts? Ideas?
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1 comment:
I have to question something about that stat. Getting a visual of 4.5' of water over an entire acre is hard to believe. I wonder what they mean about 'absorb'? Surely it can't mean that the water level doesn't rise. If a wetland is inherently 'wet', wouldn't we assume that it would be nearly saturated most of the time, and therefore unable to absorb that quantity of water?
Not a sermon, just a thought.
Phil
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