• Introduction: Hello my name is Dr.

Robert Doyle, I am a professor of ecology at

Baylor University, I study water systems and I am here today to teach you guys a
little bit about water
• I am here with a group of students from Baylor University who are all interested
in public health, and are interested in teaching people how to stay healthy and
safe
• And I teach a course in environmental health

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• Today I will be sharing information about water and how important clean water
is in keeping us healthy
• Clean water = healthy lives

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• So our planet is very beautiful and has a ton of water, 70% of our planet is
covered in water!
• And it is sometimes called the "Blue Planet" or the "Water Planet"
• But where is all this water? It is not evenly distributed on our planet. In fact,
later on in this presentation we will be doing an activity that will show how
water molecules can move among nine different places.

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• Of course the majority of the water will be in oceans
• But they can also be in rivers, lakes, in clouds, in a plant or animal, it can be in the
soil or deep underwater in our subterranean water locations, or it may be frozen
in a glacier
• So there are nine total places where a water molecule could be
• And later we will be playing a game where everyone will be a water molecule and
you will move to these different places

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• You may think that because this is the "Water Planet", that we have all the water
that we need
• But let me give you an example how precious fresh water specifically is to us
• It is not true at all that we have all the water that we need, the water that we
need and can use is actually rare and valuable

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36.67 m = oceans
Of that... 25.16 m = glaciers/ice caps & 11.04 m = ground water & 0.47 m =
freshwater

• Lets imagine that we will create a model, where the Christ Statue in Rio
represents all the water on the planet.
• Has anyone been to Rio and seen the Christ Statue? I am actually taking the
American students to Rio to go see the statue!
• The Christ statue is 38 meters high and image that that is representing all the
water on Earth.
• But how tall of a Christ Statue could you build if you only used fresh water?
• You would actually only be able to build a Christ Statue that is 95 centimeters tall!
• It would be a very tiny Christ Statue if you used only the fresh water
• But, most of that fresh water is unavailable to us, much of it is frozen in glaciers or
deep underground where we cannot get to it
• With the fresh water that is actually available to us, we would only be able to
build a Christ Statue that is 2.9 centimeters, that is all the fresh water on the
planet that we are able to get to and use

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• The water we need is not abundant and is very special
• Lets talk about water that is on the landscape
• We divide the landscape with political boundaries, you guys live in the state of
Espirito Santo, but there are many other states surrounding here and that is all
divided up politically

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• But water does not care about political boundaries
• Water is divided up by watersheds
• A watershed is a part of land where any water or rain that falls all drain to a single
point

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• There are some very big watersheds in the world.
• In fact, the largest one in the world is in Brazil and it is the Amazon river! it is a
very big watershed and is actually bigger than most countries in the world.

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• We have a watershed too, here in Espirito Santo. There is a river that passes right
outside of Anchieta, does anybody know the name of that river?
• It is called the Benevente's River
• This is a picture that was taken of the Benevente's River from the bridge here in
this town.

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• The Benevetes River has a watershed, here is what the watershed looks like and it
where th4e right lin4e is drawn
• All the water and the rivers that go through this red area all flow down to the
Benevente's River
• That is where you get your drinking water, cooking water, and bathing water

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• This is a model of a watershed, humans live in the watershed
• This watershed has a farm with a man and tractor with cows, there is a factory,
some houses and you can see construction going on, there is also a lake where
all of the water drains to

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• Humans add pollution to the watershed
• Pollution is something that is bad and damaging to the environment
• There are two types of water pollution: 1) point source pollution = one that
comes directly from the source, and can come from a pipe from a factory or a
water treatment plant

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• Examples of point source pollution, you can tell because it comes directly from a
pipe
• It comes from a single point
• These pictures come from a water treatment plant

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Second type of pollution: Non-point source
• It does not come from a pipe
• It is typically spread all over the landscape and when it rains it comes down
• Examples: fertilizers, tractors that make a mess, cows and dogs that poop
• All of these things are bad for the environment in some way
• And they do not come from a pipe, so are considered non point source pollutants

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• When it rains all of the nonpoint source pollutants in the watershed go to the
Benevente's river and you are going to be drinking that water
• Here are some cow in a river going to the bathroom in the river
• Here is a field with a lot of trashand plastic
• And here are some boys who needed to go to the bathroom

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• We call this other type of pollutant eutrofication
• Eutrofication is when we add nitrogen and phosphorus to the water
• This comes from humans, from agriculture, we have nitrogen and phosphorus in
our urine and poop
• When we get too much of this, it can cause a problem, the water can turn bright
green
• This can cause fish to die when the wqater becomes too polluted

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• Here are some pictures of eutrofication
• With all of the green algae that grows from too much nitrogen and phosphorus

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• What can we do about this?
• We can use the nutrients that we add to the watershed and agriculture better
• We can treat our waste water correctly
• And we can minimize the use of nitrogen and phosphorus

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• Another problem in watersheds and pollutants is a bacteria called E. Coli
• E. Coli is present in humans and warm blooded animals
• Most do not cause problems, but some can make people very sick and can kill
you if not treated
• If we drink water that is contaminated with E. Coli, that means we drank water
that was contaminated with poop

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• This is a student we had one time who came with us, and she got very sick with
E. Coli
• She ended up in the hospital
• The solution:
• Wash your hands very well
• Water your food well
• Do not drink water from a river or a pool, drink them out of a bottle or
filter

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• Another problem in the environment = medicines in the environment
• When we take medicine, those medicines end up out in the environment
• How do they get there? (answer on next slide)

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• When we take medicine, only a part of it is absorbed into our body
• Most of it, goes through the toilet and into the water system
• When we take medicine, a lot of the medicine comes out in our urine and feces
and ends up in our water systems
• Sometimes we may even throw out old medicine down our toilets

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The animals that are living in the environment are responding to medicines.
One type of compounds humans take is a pill to not get pregnant. It turns out that
fish are responding to the estrogen compounds. Here is a male fish and her is a
female fish, and now we are getting some fish that are in-between the male and
female gender because of their exposure to the estrogen in the water.

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So what can we do?
We can turn in old medicines that we have and do not need anymore to health
centers.
We should not throw medicine in the toilet.
We should use only the medicines that we need.

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A final problem I am going to talk about today is an ugly one, plastics in the
environment.
We use a lot of plastic everyday. There is enough plastic to where if we put all of the
pieces of plastic side by side, we would go around our plant four time. That is huge
number of plastic!
Examples of plastic are: bottles, bags, and different types of packing materials

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What is the problem with using plastic?
Plastic gets into the environment, then some animals think its food and they get
caught in the plastic.
This can cause the animal to suffocate.
If the plastic gets inside the animal it can get stuck in the animals stomach/digestive
system

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What can we do?
We can recycle as much as possible.
When possible, we can not use plastic materials and instead use reusable bags or
water bottles.

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So we have talked about a few different types of pollution today; chemical
pollutions, plastic pollutions, and water pollutions.
One of the problems is pollution destroys the animals that live in the environment.
Some of those animals are extremely useful. In fact moqueca uses lots of animals
that are caught in the water, and if we keep polluting our environment, we might not
have enough fish, shrimp, and other organisms to make moqueca and that would be
very sad!

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Now I am going to illustrate the topics we have talked about and I will need some
help towards the end of this demonstration. We are going to do the water model
demonstration and then we will come back to discuss.

*reference enviroscape script*

There are people who living in the watershed who did not take care of their water
and now the lake is polluted.

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Finally we are going to discuss the water cycle.

*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Introduction

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Introduction

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Instructions

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*reference water cycle incredible journey script* Conclusion

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Let's review some of the things we learned today
Do we have all of the water we need? The answer is no! There is a lot of water on
the planet but the fresh water that we need from lakes and rivers is rare and not
abundant.
What is a watershed? A watershed is the land that drain to a single point. Humans
live in watersheds and we need to take care of watersheds because if we don’t we
will add pollution to our water.
We talked about different kinds of pollutions we might add to our water.
Do you remember the two types of water pollution? Point source pollution and non-
source point pollution
Lastly, we talked about several impacts of pollution and the environment. Plastic is
killing animals. Medicines are impacting animals. Nitrogen and phosphorus is making
algae grow rapidly.

I hope you had a good time and I look forward to some of you working really hard to
become a biologist and I can come back and work with you! Have a good day, thank
you!

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