- NARRATOR: Major funding for this program was provided by ExxonMobil.

Additional funding was provided by the Scharbauer Foundation and the Rea Charitable Trust.

[gentle music] - The network of playas we drive past all the time and don't pay any attention to.

- They're very resilient in a very hostile environment.

[rattling] - LOREN SMITH: They're so dynamic.

They can change so quickly.

- COOK: You can come out here and you think this is totally devoid of life.

- SMITH: Then when the playa become wet, it's boom!

[geese honking] - COOK: Get a little rain, and you come out here, it's a new hope.

You start seeing wildlife that you didn't know existed out here.

[cranes calling] - The sheer number of the playas combined form a system that connects the ecology of the entire western Great Plains.

- COOK: You start understanding a bit little more what nature's all about and where your place in the world is.

- That kind of place is, is very special.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: A sea of grass 500 mi les wide and 2000 miles long, named simply for what it is: The Great Plains.

- WARREN CONWAY: The Great Plains of North America extend really from the southern part of the panhandle of Texas into southwestern Canada.

There are portions of prairie systems whether it's tallgrass, midgrass, shortgrass, that extend all the way through a big swath of the middle of the United States and Canada.

[prairie chickens boom] And they're really important for a variety of wildlife, [prairie chickens boom] migratory birds and a lot of wildlife conservation issues.

- NARRATOR: At the southern end of the Great Plains begins a network of virtually unknown yet critically significant wetlands called playas.

- HAUKOS: A playa wetland is a very unique wetland found primarily in the western Great Plains or High Plains of the United States.

It is a inland depressional recharge wetland that frequently only gets wet during rainfall events and then slowly dries out over time.

They have a very unique soil.

It's a clay soil that shrinks and swells.

So during flooding events, the soil will swell up and essentially form a seal just like a bathtub and during drying events that soil will shrink and cracks will form.

And so a healthy playa has that shrinking and swelling soil.

Randall clay is the soil type that is found primarily in the Texas playas but there are other types of hydric soils, other types of clays that form the bottom of playas as you go farther north.

They are small, very ephemeral, and quite numerous throughout the western Great Plains.

- NARRATOR: Below a portion of the Great Plains is the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest aquifer in the United States.

Overlying the Ogallala, you will find the majority of playa lakes.

- CONWAY: The playa lakes region which is really Texas, portions of eastern New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, southeastern Colorado.

They're never all going to be wet at the same time.

They are a source of recharge although the recharge rates are really, really slow.

- HAUKOS: In most of the High Plains, playas perform an ecological function that involves catching all the flood waters during a rainstorm and other precipitation events.

So they are the flood control structures for the High Plains.

And so water collects in those playas because there are very few natural rivers and streams.

And as a result, some of that water does percolate down into the Ogallala or the High Plains Aquifer.

And so, especially in the southern part of the playa range, playas are the only recharge areas for the Ogallala Aquifer.

They are fascinating systems in that they function, kind of in an opposite way of most wetlands.

So most wetlands are wet for most of the time and then they dry out during a drought, which is normal and natural.

Playas on the other hand are dry most of the time and the disturbance event is a inundation through precipitation, thunderstorms, and run-off like that.

- NARRATOR: It's this wet-dry cycle that enables playas to recharge the aquifer.

When rains fall and water flows into the playa, the cracks in the basin create a direct path to the Ogallala.

Water is filtered through the grasses on the surface and cleansed again as it passes through the soil.

After this initial flush, the clay begins to swell and the cracks close up.

Water held at the surface promotes seed germination in the soil.

As plants grow and their roots extend down, additional water permeates to the aquifer along the roots.

- SMITH: Most wetlands aren't like playas because they have a gradual depth gradient.

When you hit the basin of a playa, most playas that haven't been altered, the elevation of the bottom of the playa stays the same.

It's flat.

It's more like a miner's pan than it is a rounded basin.

So once you hit the edge of a playa and you walk across the playa, it's not going to get any deeper.

This playa has a good example of a real nice buffer around it which keeps the sediment out of the playa on most edges of it.

There's some coming from the east but most of this is very effective in keeping eroded soils out of the wetland.

This buffer here consists mostly of native grasses.

There are some exotic grasses in here but it's mostly native grass.

Most of the species around the edge of this playa are called moist soil species and they produce a lot of seeds and that's why they're so good for migrating waterfowl.

But they can also live a long time in the seed bank and what I mean by the seed bank, they fall into the soil and get covered up by other soil and they don't germinate.

In the future they're exposed and it's warm and it's moist, the seeds will germinate and form a good mat of smartweed.

Some of these seeds can live for a hundred years in the soil.

The same can be said for different invertebrates.

Water fleas or daphnia, they can live in sediments for a couple of hundred years and if they're exposed to the right conditions, they'll hatch.

- We're in the Rainwater Basin which is located in southcentral Nebraska, and these wetlands are important to wildlife, especially for migration.

The birds, waterfowl, ducks and geese, they stop here on their migration and refuel.

They put on some weight that they need when they get up on the breeding grounds to successfully reproduce.

So these wetlands are kind of like rest stops for the ducks and geese and then the shorebirds that will follow later.

And so they're strategically located in a very important part of their flyway between the wintering grounds and their breeding grounds.

[gentle music] [avocets tweet] - The presence of playas in the landscape greatly enhances the biodiversity of anybody's property, any landscape.

Not only from vertebrate life but invertebrate and plants as well.

We've documented a much greater, like a ten or twenty-fold increase in species occurrence for areas that have playas versus areas that do not have playas.

[gentle music] - SMITH: Once they receive water and those plants start germinating and the invertebrates start hatching and the birds start showing up.

It's almost phoenix-like, the way they change that quickly.

It's, it's amazing.

[gentle music, ducks quacking, birds singing] [gentle music, birds singing] [gentle music] - NARRATOR: Settlers arriving in the Great Plains held dreams of vast fields of cr op replacing the wide expanse of the prairie.

[gentle music] There was only one thing missing.

[water spraying] Technologic solutions helped realize the dream of vast cropland.

As it often goes, over time, the solution itself has proven problematic.

- FRENCH: The water levels have changed throughout the Ogallala since people began pumping groundwater for agriculture, for farming and so forth.

The story varies, depending on where you're at.

There are areas in the Ogallala where the water level has dropped hundreds of feet and there are certain areas where the groundwater level has been fairly stable.

Overall the entire picture throughout the Ogallala would be of general decline and that varies throughout the area.

- NARRATOR: The Ogallala is the single most heavily used groundwater sources in the United States.

Ninety-five percent of the water drawn from the Ogallala is used for irrigated agriculture.

This limited resource fuels the economy of the region, generating 35 billion dollars annually in food, fuel, and fiber.

[train horn blows] [gentle music] - PHIL JOHNSON: The Ogallala was developed really extensively in the 50s.

The decline really started in the 70s, we started to see that decline, so irrigated acres has gone down and we've seen a lot of decline in the last 10 years.

But it is a big part of the local economy.

[gentle music] In terms of the dollars, it varies quite a bit.

Just from cotton, each year we're probably producing somewhere close to a billion and a half dollars in gross value, just in this area.

And that's just cotton, there's other agricultural products that are very dependent on the Ogallala.

The number one agricultural commodity, really from a dollar standpoint, is cattle.

The Ogallala is very important to that and they need to have the water.

[gentle music] - RAINWATER: Nebraska has most of the water.

There, the aquifer is very thick and they have many springs that feed their rivers and it's a very different system.

Once we get out of Nebraska, the aquifer has varying thicknesses.

There are some places where it is thick and plentiful.

There are other places where it is thin and less productive.

- NARRATOR: Nearly two million people depend on the Ogallala for drinking water and household use.

While recharge through playas cannot offset irrigation, it can help support municipalities and rural communities.

[gentle music] [water sprays] [traffic] [water sprays] - JOHNSON: Irrigation will not completely go away.

You'll find a point where it balances out because you quit pumping so much.

And you finally reach a point that you have a balance.

But it's at a very low level of irrigation.

The southern part of the Ogallala, this is the test lab for how do you manage a declining water resource?

One of the things that we will probably will see more of is more of these acres planted to forages for grazing because it's not dependent completely on irrigation.

What we're seeing now is producers trying to figure out how to make those transitions.

[gentle music] - BEN HOLLAND: Cactus Feeders is a cattle production company.

We have ten feed yards -- seven which are in Texas and three in Kansas.

We are a big user of products of row crops.

We feed a lot of corn.

But if we look at how we might use the water resources that we have and the land uses, what's the best for the region and for our company?

We're shifting our irrigated acres away from row crop production and shifting toward annual and perennial pastures and using those acres to grow cattle outside of the feed yard, prepare them for entry into the feed yard.

We decided that we're going to let the people that are really good at growing corn and the regions that are really good at growing corn, do that work.

And we are going to use the resources that we have and the expertise that we have to focus on producing cattle.

So starting that now prepares us to be more resilient, a long time in the future.

- JOHNSON: Producers are now really understanding that they have to manage their water but we're going to see a shift from a predominantly irrigated production to predominantly dryland over time.

- I'm a fourth-generation farmer.

I have some irrigated farm country, some dryland farm country and some grass.

Grow a little bit of irrigated corn, milo, mainly grow wheat, run and graze cattle.

I guess we're entering in an era up here in this country to where we're running out of water and so we're having to kinda try to adapt.

It takes all pieces of the puzzle to kinda make this country work for ya.

This country up here, I believe was probably made for cattle and wheat.

A lot of times we'll get that planted in late August, early September.

As quickly as we can get it rooted down and get a little growth on it, we will put some livestock on there.

And generally we'll be able to graze until about the middle of March.

By that time you decide whether you would like to take it to grain and harvest it or you can leave the cattle on there and continue to let them graze it plum out.

- NARRATOR: This is another special piece of the puzzle at the Gibson farm.

- GIBSON: This would be a playa lake that I have on one of my pastures.

It's just been part of the area and we just try to keep it undisturbed and try to let it do its job that it's supposed to do for us up here.

- A playa recharges about three inches of water towards the aquifer a year and to put that in real people's terms, a four acre playa recharging three inches, that generates one acre-foot of water and that's enough water for a family of four for a period of two years.

- You know, we've seen results of this through some of our wells around playas being more productive especially after a big rain.

If playas are a natural way that water recharges the aquifer, it's very important that we protect this resource.

And really something that we can leave as a legacy for the benefit of future generations.

[crickets chirping] [gentle music] - I think playas, historically, were viewed as an impediment.

They were an impediment to agriculture and transportation and so it's a series of things that have happened in the wetland to make them more productive for cropland primarily that have caused wetlands in many places to go away.

- The number one threat to playas is filling in through sedimentation.

And what that is, is eroded material moving from the uplands surrounding playas into the playas and accumulating at a rate quicker than can be blown out of those playas.

And so, as a result, the volume of the playas because they are very shallow can be erased very, very quickly through sedimentation.

[bulldozer rumbling] People have used and altered playas in many ways.

Playas were altered back in the 1950s and 1960s to serve as irrigation water catchment pits for row flood irrigation which was the dominant form of irrigation once the ability to pump water from the Ogallala aquifer was developed.

- So now all these ditches and pits that were dug into the playas are sitting unused and they are detrimental to the functioning of a healthy playa because they concentrate water and don't allow it to spread over that clay basin.

And so a lot of that water just sticks there and isn't able to return to the aquifer.

- Also because playas do go dry, landowners have frequently plowed playas.

- We fought playas my entire life.

The first time I ever got a tractor stuck was in a playa out behind the house and it was not, not pretty.

So, yeah, you will harvest a crop out of those playas sometimes but overall, going back and looking at the last five years of records that we've got, look at each field that has playas on it and it's pretty evident those are a big fat zero on most of the years, it really makes sense to those out of production and put them back into conservation.

- There's an amazing diversity of programs available for private landowners who are interested in wetland conservation and it's confusing to know which ones and to understand them all.

So just talk to your local wildlife or USDA contact and they can walk you through the options that are available.

- It's been good for me.

It's a 100-year easement, so the dirt work was all paid by other entities and then the grass and the fence and the stock well cost me 20% and the other was paid, 80%.

It was all done real nice.

I guess I grown up here all my life, so I guess I get just the joy of, even if I'm farming, if I see the wildlife, it's nice to see, you know?

And it's, kinda going back to, like you said when I was a kid, I guess.

[laughs] - NARRATOR: These programs to restore playas are available to landowners across the Ogallala region.

- We got a letter a few months ago now, offering to come out and clean some of the silt off this place and just sent the letter back, returned it, and they came out and did all they work for us.

They pulled four feet of soil out of one end of this playa over here and as little as maybe 18 inches on the north part of it.

They're down to the original playa soils.

There are many, many, many playas around here and the more of them we can clean off and get back to their natural state, the more water we get into our Ogallala basin.

- NARRATOR: For playas with pits, restoration only requires filling in the pit.

- FERN: So a lot of times when these pits and ditches were dug, there is a pile of material, a lot of it is the natural Randall clay that came out of that playa basin in the first place.

And so a lot of what we do is pushing that material back into the pit.

[bulldozer rumbles] Over the next few wet seasons that settles and then you have a functional, healthy, natural state playa.

- GRISSOM: Originally the playa was 100 acres of bare dirt with a pit in the middle.

And by filling that pit, allowing that water to spread out 30 or 40 acres six inches deep with some grass vegetation there, that causes an explosion of bugs and then creates the perfect environment for birds to stop over and rest and fuel up for their migration.

It blew my mind a little, we've had golden eagles, sandhill cranes come and stop, a lot of shorebirds stop.

[nail gun pops] - NARRATOR: Another threat to playas is urban expansion.

Here, too, playas present an opportunity communities can embrace.

- ERIC BERNARD: The most important thing is to understand how they work and how they function.

So understanding how a developer could develop around a playa basin, stepping out in rings so you could capture and hold water out of the residential community before it got to the playa basin.

How you could use the edge before it got to the annulus as a piece of green infrastructure to infiltrate water again but also clean and filter it coming out of neighborhoods.

We can get lot counts very similar to what developers are currently doing.

We need to prove the economics behind it, show them what the differences are between a traditional development and one that's designed to actually, really cherish and value the green infrastructure that playa lakes are to us all on a very large scale.

- NARRATOR: Midland, Texas is home to a unique playa that recharges more than the Ogallala.

- COOK: We're at the I-20 Wildlife Preserve.

This is a very unique riparian wetland.

We're surrounded on three sides by heavy oil field industry and on the south, we have an extremely busy interstate.

The ability to come out here and just sit and listen and hear nature around you can be extremely uplifting.

And then coming out a month later when the lake is higher and the frogs are out and the dove are here and it gets people back into an element that we've had for eons of time and we've kind of lost touch with.

And that's why this site is so great for people.

[uplifting music] You can come out here at any point in the year and it's going to be a little different, and it changes constantly.

That's just the nature of a playa.

- WOMAN: I love it.

- COOK: It's open to the public, on any day you can come out here and you'll find people walking, you'll have exercise classes coming out here, lot of photographers come out here and use the site.

And then you'll have a lot of people that just want to experience nature.

[quail calls] [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - LAGRANGE: And people they kinda scratch their head like, why do you even care, right?

Why are you conserving these spots?

[upbeat music] Oh, my goodness, there's all this life all of a sudden out here!

[upbeat music] - HAUKOS: It's all the playas together that provide all these ecological goods and services that the entire ecology of the western Great Plains depends upon.

[upbeat music] - GIBSON: It is amazing what comes to life in one of these things just right after a rain.

[upbeat music] - COOK: Being able to experience the long term high and lows of nature, I think is very good for the soul.

[upbeat music] - RAINWATER: When people have and manage significant tracts of land, it's a spiritual connection for a lot of the people that makes them want to make the most of it, to enjoy the passage of the seasons, which birds are here at which times and which wildlife are flourishing.

[upbeat music] - GRISSOM: The playa is an anchor in the middle of that wide open prairie, for people, for birds.

It has become a special place for me because of the variety of things that I see here.

[upbeat music] It really comes down to the landowner's personal philosophy of how they feel blessed by their little share of the planet.

[upbeat music, sandhill cranes calling] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: Major funding for this program was provided by ExxonMobil.

Additional funding was provided by the Scharbauer Foundation and the Rea Charitable Trust.