Stopping Illegal Mining in the Amazon with Satellite Data

why is it that all you need to grow a healthy plant is a crack in the pavement and you're telling me you can't grow a tree in the Amazon B maybe we should pave over uh the uh areas that's I should pave them over and then just put some cracks in them thank you Chuck [Music] this is Star Talk Neil degrass Tyson here your personal astrophysicist got with me Chuck nice Chucky baby how you doing hey Neil what's happening so in this episode we're going to explore what role space technology satellite imageries has in understanding what goes on on Earth's surface in this particular case related to mining yeah the mining of gold in the Amazon which involves not only the deforestation of trees but also a poisoning of the environment from Mercury that was used in the extraction of the gold tell me more about this episode because you did a lot of the homework behind it well you know it's great that you mentioned space And the connection of space to Earth we know that there are thousands of satellites that are active right now thousands thousands thanks a lot Elon where to go where to go baby most of them are yours baby where to go I'm winning space um I win whoever dies with the most satellites wins that's it that's it you know um as much as we depend on them and scientists use them and governments use them if we wanted to use those satellites they wouldn't really be accessible to us because for the most part you're going to get a lot of information in code okay but you mentioned the Amazon right let's just say you wanted to see what was happening in the Amazon with these Minds that you talked about that are indeed really deleterious to uh the ecology and the Amazonian ecosystem let's say you wanted to get a realtime picture of that well you know you would be able to do that with this satellite constellation database called skyfi now and they're and they're not just photos like Google Earth where there's like you know aerial photos these are actual satellite imagery and the analytics that go along with it and for this would be like a specific mind like in the uh Yanomami indigenous territory in the Brazilian Amazon we will be able to take a look at the actual Minds uh kind of like in a citizen science way so so it's more than just photos you're saying there's analytics that go with it that's an interpretation of the data that the satellite obtain right it's not just a slideshow like on Google Earth and there's nothing wrong with Google Earth love them but it's not just a slideshow it's actual usable information that if you're interested and you want to learn something which if you're watching Star TR you definitely want to learn something um that you can go in and and inform yourself about what's happening in in the area all right so Chuck you have examples of these images that you're talking about I wish I could take credit for doing it myself but our uh our producers at uh star talk here actually went and pulled some great images and information like right here we're going to put this up you can see the devastation from space for over a couple years in the Yanomami Brazilian Amazon so here are some images that show you the river and then you you see these white areas next to the river where that used to have trees used to have trees but those white spots now are water if you see the river is W the river is white CU it's water all those white spots that you see off the river those are where mindes were and that's why they're white now because they've left these ponds which are filled with you know terrible chemicals and Mercury uh that's the residual effect of the mining operation and you get to see it in real time here's another image this is in the Peruvian brainforce it's still part of the Amazon and what you I'd forgotten that that's right I I think Brazil owns the Amazon but no no no there's a Peruvian Amazon as Amazon and these are like highr satellite images and the light coloring are the Retention Ponds or those little water holes that we saw in the other image that contain mercury and all kinds of chemicals and you got to remember that these chemicals now they sink into the ground they become runoff and go into the water and once again poisoning the area not to mention the deforestation that happens to make these clearings in the first place right so if it gets into the water supply it gets into the fish right it gets into the ground it gets into the groundwater right so so it gets into your water supply and your food supply you're H there you go that's it that's that's all you have all you have food and water that's all you have is food and water baby I mean the the That's All She Wrote you know you know unless you learn how to unless you learn how to uh live on the air diet you know if you can't live the breatharian you're brear breatharian I'm a breatharian that was a real Movement by the way bre excuse me would you mind not smoking I'm trying to eat I'm a breatharian uh um uh here's another image the same highres Peru images is and you can see them in even greater detail in these two images side by side and you can see how they change how they've grown and the devastation that's caused now some of these are illegal some might have proper permissions but a large fraction of the gold production of Brazil comes out of illegal Minds yeah and so these satellites are basically catching them in the act you know and so why don't they just shut him down uh you know I think we're going to have to ask ask for that I don't know some things are some things are easier than other things to accomplish in this world exactly because I got here we have our as a as a special guest uh Dr Larissa Rodriguez let me pronounce that right again I was about to say you my friend are Puerto Rican and you messed up Rodriguez Rodriguez because this one has an S and not a z see that's what threw me off yeah the Portuguese has a Dr l Rodriguez welcome to Star Talk and did I pronounce your name properly you did hi Neil hi Chuck it's a pleasure to be here I'm very happy yeah that's Lisa Rodriguez Rodriguez Port Portuguese accent I'd love your education background you have a PhD in energy yes from the University of South Pao it's cool that you can get a PhD in that because it is so important it it energy and civilization go hand in hand and the exploitation of energy how you get it where it comes from uh and your expertise focuses on mining energy and land use at the let me get this right Institute esas what is that is es which is a nonprofit uh base here in Brazil working with sustainability so and and you got it right I got my background on energy studies and I went into that because I'm very interesting to know like how we as a civilization goes uh exploring natural resources and then from energy resources I transition my studies a little bit to Mining and also land use and I'm working on that like studying how we as humans use natural resources and how we regulate that wow and you know we take so much of it for granted that metal just shows up uh wherever you need it whenever you want it yes there's a market price for it but I don't think any of us or hardly ever say where did this come from well how did we uptain this I don't know that people think that I mean we can't do that we're American like if we were to do that half the stuff we buy would we wouldn't be able to buy like our heads would explode oh my go right so so we know uh Lara that satellite images of the Amazon Basin Basin or anywhere up and down the Amazon um you found evidence of gold mining but so what I mean if you're GNA mine for something you mine for gold why not why is that so differently important in this case what is important is these days is that we do have a big problem in Brazil and the problem is when we look at uh to gold half of the gold Brazil produces is considered to be illegal half of it and we talking about more or less 50 tons per year or $2.5 billion dollars per year it's a lot this is H half the gold that comes out of out of Brazil exactly and these gold is traveling the war because Brazil produces Golds to export so we produce in Brazil and then we export meaning that the illegal gold is traveling the world is not in Brazil anymore and then comes to the question that we should all ask where this goat comes from this goat comes mainly from the Amazon region so basically from illegal mines that have no authorization to operate whatsoever in many of them iside indigenous territories and also in other protected areas like national parks and all that is it illegal because they don't have a permit or is it illegal because you can't mine for gold on the native land no matter what both situations actually because some of them they legal because they don't have a permit and some of them like inside indigenous territories and national parks for example they cannot have a permit because it's not allowed to mine there not even gold or any other minerals so what can you tell us about the environmental impact apart from it just simply being illegal yes I mean there are very severe impacts when you talk about gold Min especially in the Amazon because it's the most biodiverse place on Earth so first of the environmental impacts what we can say it's about deforestation because to open up a new mining pit you DeForest the area and gold mining uses a lot of areas so we're not talking about tunnels or underground mine we're talking on the mining being done on the surface so we're on the same page generally when we think of a mine we think of someplace very deep below the ground but but what you're saying is there's a whole branch of mining that's surface mining where you need a lot of surface to put through your devices your filterings your machines to find something within the surface is that correct that's correct that's exactly what it is so you're talking about uh large land of big land and on the surface we're talking about uh operations that come with excavators to open a mining pit so the first step to it is to Deforest the area to cut down all the trees and just for you to have an idea in the past years deest station in the Amazon Associated only with mining activities grew by five times so they've been growing a lot so meaning that illegal gold mines or legal gold mines they're growing immensely in the Amazon over the the past decade so there is a lot of deforestation related to that and the thing is about the illegal the illegal mining sites they don't do land reclamation because the miners they don't they do not recover the area after they're done well they're they're legal that's like exactly you know that's like your drug dealer saying by the way I just opened a rehab exactly exactly don't do they're not going to do it you know exactly of course they won I mean they're completely illegal so they take the go and then run so they abandon the area and the picture we see when you go inside the mining like that it's like a dead land completely dead land right you can't do anything with the land afterwards and for anybody here in America that's trying to figure out what this is like it's the same except it's legal here uh would be Mountaintop coal mining here in America where they literally shave off the top oh strip yeah they shave off the top of a mountain so they can pull out the coal and that land is now unusable it's just done at least for another billion years or so so now the there are no trees and is there any chemicals that are invoked to try to extract the gold that become like waste products yes and the the the most dangerous one is mercury so uh all the gold mines in the Amazon they use mercury they use mercury to to do the mation like to separate goat from the other sediments and they're using like with no controls dumping to The Rivers dumping to the soil burning and like people uh breathing the the air with Mercury so it's a really big problem so we're talking environmental problem but also related to health problems the mining operations you describe the Mercury gets into the environment into the water supply into the air and so the Mercury enters your body in these ways that are kind of cloaked in the air in the water supply in the food in the food stocks so what are the consequences of mercury poisoning and that's the symptoms I should say and you mention it very right because it's like you don't mercury has no taste I mean if if you drink water contaminated you don't know it if you eat a fish contaminated you don't know it you don't taste you don't feel it you don't see it so that's very uh dangerous and also the long exposure to it as long as a person is exposed to it there were to be the effects and the contamination levels and what is very well now is the neurological effects that the Mercury contamination has so you're you can start with simple headaches that you won't even have idea that relates to Mercury contamination but then it can also affect our movements and literally our neurological system so it's very dangerous so Lissa in reviewing the maps that we've seen from satellite imagery there's of course the very clear and obvious ones from the Amazon where in one image there trees and then there's another there isn't and it it's along you see the riverbed you see all the telltale signs but I've also seen images from Peru and what were you discovering from Peru so what we are discovering in Peru is basically the same situation in Brazil of course the the structures can be a bit different but the thing is like illegal money is increasing and we can see the the expansion of these um mining areas in the Amazon and basically you see that the pattern I mean the pattern of occupation is a bit different but what we see there like is Small Ponds of mud that's exactly the same way the they open up the pets and they operate the mine so it's the same pattern in terms of the the the little ponds the little uh Brown PS we see so these these the these are very large puddles of water ponds of water and and this is this and this is the the the the byproduct of the mining operation because it takes a lot of water I presume correct and actually this can be yeah two two situations actually the the by product but also like once you start digging the ground water come started to to Spring and then they build this ponds on the the water so you can pump the the water out of the mining pet and you put in a pond and then you keep pump water from the pond so you you can dig more and more and and take the gold out so the pond is highly contaminated I would guess is that correct yes because in this areas you use mercury indiscriminately so there's no controls whatsoever so basically with Mercury so Lissa I see another image where there's a Meandering River and we have a detail of the operations on the side of that River where the forest has been removed and it's it's it's been shaved bald so and I think I see a puddle there one of these ponds of mud is is everything you've described is that what I'm looking at in this image yeah that's exactly and the thir part of this images here we see a river probably already contaminated by Mercury it's inside the indigenous land it's inside the Yanomami indigenous land which has been under a humanitarian crisis because of the invasion of illegal miners so we see the once prein Forest completely destroyed now at this area so so uh it's dead land right and then we see we also here see the pawns that I was mentioning that to open up uh the mining pet miners need to pump water out of it so they use these ponds and normally these ponds all the water there it's contaminated so it's it's a pretty sad picture I would say okay so we lose the trees we're po poisoning it with chemicals mercury in particular and and what what else what's another if that isn't enough what is there anything else that that is a consequence of this activity yeah the direct consequence and it's also very well known at least here in Brazil is human rights violations because when we talk about illegal illegal mining in the Amazon we were talking about the invasion of indigenous lands so indigenous communities that like the word saw what happened with the Yanomami people the the humanitarian crisis that we have there now is that illegal minor H normally invading this area with violence there is a lot of violence involved with it and with the disturbance in the areas people lose their food uh because they they're not allowed to hunt anymore or collect fruits or also because their water is contaminated and also they're very exposed to new diseases so we we have this very side side of the story and also even the miners themselves they are very vulnerable they will are working under terrible terrible working conditions so there is no like really there is no good sign in the story of illegal mining the Amazon unfortunately so Lissa if you are indigenous you're probably living off the land and all the the local resources that have sustained you for thousands of years and if your food sources are contaminated basically this is a kind of a mini genocide just for the sake of gold uh is that am I overstating this you're not and actually in Brazil we are calling it a genocide because the Y people this area where the the territory is is a very um remote area in the Amazon in Brazil very remote so they don't have access to any other resources that they want that they have't Forest so other than the natural ones right there natural ones and they've lived there like since ever and yes forever forever forever that's how they used to live from the forest and now they they don't have food anymore because they they used to hunt and with the illegal miners inside the territory animals are not close enough for them to hunt them also there is also competition for food there now and the water is contaminated the fruits all that and also the diseases so why don't you just shut down the illegal mines this sounds like a stupid obvious question but if they're illegal and you know they're there verified by satellite imagery why don't why doesn't the military or whatever government agency just go on in and shut them down yeah the federal police and also the environment Authority in Brazil they both work together to crack down these operations and sometimes they do in the past year the they destroy hundreds and hundreds of illegal operations in the Amazon so they are doing now a good job on that and it's effective because then like burning the machinery and all that you increase the risk for these operations but the thing is it's not always that the Brazil government put resources on that also the agen uh the agencies they also need more resources to do that so one thing that I think it's important is not only to work with law enforcement because these operations are law enforcement but also on the demand side because in Brazil you don't know like if you buy good you don't know if it's legal or illegal there's no way to attest the orange of gold so I truly believe we should work with a traceability system for example so people customers can know where the go come comes from and then you somehow will close the door for illegal goal to enter into the market how much of this is just because we're primates and we like shiny things and that demand is never going to go away because the the other side of it is you try to control the demand and if that if you can't do that maybe you will never succeed because the the the marketplace is stronger than your your Noble your Noble environmental goals yeah yeah you know and what I think it's crazy about gold because basically we use gold like for two reasons or for industry like for iPhones and cell phones and but that's like a tiny bit of the gold you produce goes to the industry the circuitry that yeah is the wire the circuitry yes yes and it's gold has a very very high transmission of electricity within it very low resistance to to electrical movement so gold has very high value in an Electronics universe but you don't need big chunks of it to no exactly no like considering like the whole War demand for gold like less than 10% goes to the industry like the other 90% it's more or less divided half by half like by jewelry so the jewelry industry yeah I got a gold wedding ring wedding band yeah but you know what I think it's crazy the other half goes to the banks it's like it's a form of capital currency basically that's it it is I think it's kind of crazy that we still need uh to extract gold from underground or from soil and then you process it and then you keep into in a bank and you do nothing with it nothing there's no use yeah so it's basically bankers and rappers are the problem here the big gold consumers yes rappers with blink yes so you know how to how to fix all of this we just go go and mine an asteroid there are asteroids that have pre-sifted all the heavy ingredients of the universe into one place so they're iron nickel asteroids that have very high gold concentration we just get Grant lassu one of them and it'll basically put everyone else out of business over just so you know but but then would gold be so valuable if it's so available you see there it is it's out in space so you just you just bring it down as slowly as possible so that you keep the value you keep the value High you know oh believe me when when Jeff basos does this he is not going to bring all the gold at once yeah he's murdered and that yeah so the satellite imagery enables you to locate these so in what ways satellite data helping you it helps a lot because uh of course like if you go to a specific place in the Amazon everybody knows there is illegal gold mines there but not in the whole region because the Amazon is huge so it's very important to have satellite images and monitoring because in some places like sometimes in a very pristine area very far from where the the the Hub of illegal miners uh with without the satellite images you'll never be able to to spot these places so it's very important also like because the federal police like the police the authorities in Brazil they have access to this to this kind of Technology as well but me for example as a researcher and working for a nonprofit and trying to study the issue and develop Public public policies it's important to have data like that because then I can understand the problem I we can measure the problem we can monitor it and all that without it it would be impossible if you don't have data you got nothing exactly and I mean and I think in Brazil in the past year we did achieve some uh advancements in terms of regulating the market only because we were able to size the problem to show the problem and expose that I was very invested on researching and working with the data on that and that was only possible because of satellite image also combined with other databases so we wouldn't be able to to advance with the problem in Brazil if he wasn't for it all right Lissa thank you for being our guest on Star Talk this is a very new material for us to cover and we're delighted to learn about it and that we got top people like you analyzing the situation and trying to make a better world for it so thank you no thank you it's such important to talk about it and it's it's been an honor being here all right thank you today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Sky by the world's geospatial Hub bringing nearly instant access to highquality satellite and aerial imagery along with expert created analytics to answer your most pressing questions get a bird's eyee view of anywhere on the planet with skyfi easy to ous web browser or mobile app browse skyfi commercial image archive or download free data for a specific date and location and receive it in under 24 hours need something more specific you can task a satellite to capture a new image during a date range of your choosing or connect directly to skyfi API and integrate their powerful Solutions into your business's daily workflow with access to a network of over 150 satellites including a variety of resolutions and sensors unlock the full potential of our planet's data with skyfi but more than just imagery skyfi enables you to order image powerered analytics to answer questions like how many buildings were damaged in This Disaster or where is flooding most likely to occur on my property create a free account and join Over 60,000 explorers harnessing the power of skyi visual insights today for more head to stt talk. ski.com or click the link in the description below well we're back back and Chuck yes we needed some expertise on what effect deforestation has on the climate yeah if we're going to be start talking in complete about this topic of what's going on in the Amazon uh so we found Dr Jennifer Hall Jennifer welcome to Star Talk great thank you yeah I'm really excited to be here this is a big honor thank you excellent no no no no it it's no just you we do you honor us I'm going to I'm going to go with what you said Jennifer you're taking it chck is taking anything you can get no thank you Chuck is it that bad out there Chuck you need you need a gold star today Chuck so Jennifer you're a climate scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory this is one of the doe Department of energy Labs there's several many actually across the country and this is one of them managed by the University of California Berkeley oh my gosh so you you specialized in the earth climate systems modeling is that right and and okay but how about humans how do we play into that modeling yeah that too yeah so within the whole global Earth system I focus a lot more on the terrestrial land component so kind of understanding how ecosystems are being carbon sinks and carbon sources uh but you're right the human component is a very big part of that it's the decision we're making up land use change land cover change what we're doing to different forests different grasslands management so yeah the human component is also bit a big part of it on the risk that you use colloquial jargon there when you say a carbon sink please tell me what you mean by that yeah yeah exactly so forests you know all around the world and all different different vegetation uh through photosynthesis it will pull in CO2 for us so all the CO2 that we're polluting every day in climate change it will pull in CO2 and let out oxygen so this is the the carbon sink that will go into into natural vegetation nice so it pulls into the CO2 and it keeps it yeah well it keeps it in the tree you're not breathing the CO2 that's in the tree there is a flux of it so there there is a flux that comes and goes during photosynthesis and respiration but there is a part that stays stored and locked into the tree so we want to try to keep that pulled in keep that sequester and not try to disturb these forests where we disrupt disrupt that balance and that Flux Of more more going out than coming in do you have a special Focus because in this episode we're we're thinking about the rainforest the tropical rainforest of course the preeminent among them is the one in Brazil and we've seen some deforestation there related to Mining and so uh do you do you have a focus there or is that just part of your total modeling that you care about yeah it is the Amazon is a big major Focus is but this um couple projects that I work on you know we do care about all tropical forests globally and pantropically um but yeah you're right that the Amazon basin does play a huge role in curbing the the climate crisis so you know there's about give or take 100 150 billion tons of carbon stored in the these trees and if that was to to go up and that carbon go into the atmosphere of CO2 that's about 10 years worth of all just our global Humanity emissions of CO2 so so it's a big yes source of carbon that's stored um and it's really important to really preserve its capacity and keep sequestering this carbon and mitigate climate change it it's been analogized as or or personified as the lungs of the earth LS but I don't think that's right right aren't there other look at you got be a kill Joy huh what I mean it sounds all poetic Mak a great headline you know they're plowing down the lungs of the earth the earth but I looked at the numbers and and as important as Amazon is it's not the most important lungs of the earth am I am I right there yeah you're right there are definitely other I mean the oceans and phytoplankton and a lot of other things also produce tons of oxygen and all other you know kind of forest tropical systems throughout out the world and it's funny that it is kind of called the lungs of the earth um it's poetic you know it really should be the reverse lungs of the Earth because it does absolutely the opposite of what our lungs do oh interesting our lungs pull in oxygen and then through transference puts it into our bloodstream pulls out the CO2 from that bloodstream and then we Excel OPP it's the ABS it's the opposite of what lungs do yeah Jennifer what do got to say about that it is I know it is the exact opposite exact opposite of a lung however I think the message is hey you like breathing right breathing's good and you know this is this this is what this is doing this is helping us you like this oxygen oygen Like Oxygen you like breathing it's the lungs of the Earth yeah exactly we like clean air We Like Oxygen so yeah so people think lungs they think breathing they think oxygen and forests do produce oxygen Forest pull in CO2 you're right where lungs do do the opposite of that they pull in oxygen let out CO2 um but but yeah there's so many other ecosystem services that that the Amazon provides and I kind of like to focus on all those other ecosystem Services too instead of just you call them services like it's a bank or something you know no yeah which it's an interesting term that people use because I think we do want to try to think of it as a commodity and something that does have a money value on it and you're show something we should value it's you get the economist to listen to you that wouldn't otherwise care believe it or not there's a uh International movement around uh of underfoot to try and pay uh Brazil and other countries that uh where the Amazon is located to not cut down trees because it is such a commodity so it's like why don't we commodify it how about this you guys don't cut down the trees you don't do farest we give you this much money yeah yeah and there there's a lot surrounding that of making sure that that's done appropriately in the right way and with the right safeguards of protecting people's livelihoods wait wait Chuck I got a tree in my backyard pay me to not cut it down right now here's some money you got to let me know what kind of tree it is cuz if it if it's a ficus nobody gives a damn yeah wa wait if the Amazon is not the lungs of the planet or Sor the inverse lungs of the planet and if we give that to the Plankton and the the phyto Plankton then what is it to us if it's not our lungs yeah exactly well it does Supply a lot of oxygen but yeah there's lots of other ecosystem services that it does provide and services are being like just things that really do benefit us and benefit Humanity that it's almost invaluable to put a price on so giving us air making sure we have oxygen and we could breathe but they also purify the water for us which is very invaluable they help to renew soil fertility and cycle the movement of nutrients and Forest and The Roots help stop erosion land slides they mitigate floods and droughts and one of the coolest things that I think is they really help to moderate uh extreme weather events so with the trees intact they could help stop storms you know and do wind breaks and everything and through the shading and cycling of water that they provide they really help stabilize our climate in what way does the Amazon forest mitigate drought so tropical forests really can act as their own local water pump which I think is super interesting so Forest will receive a certain portion of their own water Supply naturally through a recycled rain that they have made so they could act as their own conduits of their own water pumps and um this is occurring because as as you know storms and everything kind of comes in and trees hold this water in the soil uh and then through pumping out water through the little conduits of the trees through the leaves through a vapo transpiration they can then create their own clouds above them their own own rain so they can really kind of help yeah recycle and reuse reuse this water wow yeah that's pretty intense okay so what you what you're saying is they have so much stored water in their root system in their Leaf system in their the body the physical body of the trees themselves that they can survive a drought in ways that other vegetative regions of the world could not exactly that was that what you yeah because they're so dense so big that yeah that that's just more forested vegetative area of storing this water and they can maintain this water recycling that kind of goes back and forth where if you had other ecosystems where it's smaller vegetation you know more of the rain that comes through is runs off or is leads somewhere else and then it can't it doesn't keep it it doesn't keep it as much yep so let's get to the the satellite images that we saw where there's a mining operation that is involves deforestation and contamination of surrounding soils and and and water uh water sheds so is this small compared to what you normally would concern yourself with on a global scale or do you just concern is is the trend line bad is that really what's going on it still is concerning yeah because we we do look at you know every little piece that that's being deforested and wear um because in kind of putting a little bit of grounding kind of on deforestation and in the Amazon is that to date of about around 17 to 18% of the Amazon basin has been deforested so that's around 100 million square kilometers damn yeah and most of this the main driver is actually cattle ranches C Ranch beef and dairy and then second next is is mining um so this rate and status of deforestation you know is tricky as we track it over time because it depends a lot on human choices human decisions politics um andan there's been Trends where deforestation did hit a peak around like 2,000 um but then in the 2010s there was this really large effort and a very successful effort to really curb deforestation um and in 2012 deforestation had declined almost 80% in the Brazilian Amazon which was a huge large feed and was a great great success um wait wait wait that's that excuse me Jennifer that's a low bar to say we succeeded by having less deforestation ACC yeah you know you got to up your up your game there Jennifer true we need to stop it so it's yeah yeah don't celebrate less deforestation that is true I guess I try toate small winds but you're you're right yeah just small WIS so the parts that have been deforested if you if if people gather wise people gather and they declare that we want to regrow this back into rainforest can that happen and if it can over how much time yeah yeah definitely so that's a large effort that's happening is really restoration regrowth um so just quickly an addition to to my role at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab I actually do work for um a nature tech company that's doing just this that's trying to restore and regenerate degraded forested lands um and that it could work it could definitely happen and but why wouldn't nature do that by itself it did it the first time we need to give it a up a little bit now so so that's the thing is that Forest nature hates us that's why oh no no I just said I've been I I where was I somewhere I was in Hawaii or somewhere else where there's a volcanic you know shelf off to the side and maybe the volcano was like 80 years ago or the the the the the spillage and there's like plants growing in the lava field right so nature is like you know I don't care if it's lava I'm gonna grow there anyway going up a driveway there's a crack in the pavement and a mushroom is coming up through the crack yeah why is it that all you need to grow a healthy plant is a crack in the pavement and you're telling me you can't grow a tree in the Amazon maybe we should pave over the uh areas that's should PVE them over and then just put some cracks in them there thank you Chuck for your problem solved there you go problem solved by Chuck good yeah that's such a great point I mean nature is resilient nature wins it grows and cracks it grows after lava Fields so yes nature will regenerate um but we're in a time crunch with with climate change and so we want to give nature a leg up we want to try to do assisted regeneration we're speeding the process we're not really doing it we're speeding the process and also there's this um idea called additionality where yes nature will we grow on its own but we want to pull in additional carbon to make up for what we're putting in the atmosphere spere so we could try to get at this Net Zero because we're still constantly buring fossil fuels and as we do that we want to add in even more additional carbon into regrowth so that's why we do this assisted regeneration and also so quickly talk about Forest degradation is increasing so there's it's very very different from deforestation is just you know the complete change of of a land type where you took a forest you completely changed it into cattle grazing mining Urban Roads um but Forest degradation is just as impactful it covers the exact same area in the Amazon as what's being deforested and it's it's harder to to track and it's more pervasive because it's these smaller scale disturbances things like fires or or logging or drought stress um so that that's happening all across the Amazon and Forest degradation is going up so that's why we also want to try to recover to combat both deforestation and degradation right so your models you know when I think of climate models just coming to it as a physicist I think of well there's the energy from the Sun there's the temperature gradients and the atmosphere and how you know what's the inventory of energy where is it going where's it coming from how's it coming in how is it getting reflected back that's what I think of but since you you're worried about land how many parameters are in your models that must be huge yeah it's a lot and and the more parameters you have it seems to me the harder it would be to have confidence in your conclusions because there's so many knobs you have to turn and trust that you turn them the right way yeah Jennifer responds with that's why I'm a boss Neil exactly that's why I'm a boss because I I I do it like that I I got it so so you have all of this and then then we have the satellite data so it seems to me you might be Limited in the Precision of or the accuracy of your models by the kinds of data you can get from satellites that do see all the land masses of the world so can you break down what are your knobs that you're turning in your software yeah you're you're right that there are a lot of parameters that that go into land processes vegetation processes and we we work on all of those and we really use remote sensing a lot more now to help us really satellite satellite yes sorry remote sensing satellite remote sensing from satellite and remote sensing from from drones as well so airborne and see right here we are remote sensing you over this true true very true true I remote sense you you're iny over the internet right so you mean satellite sensing satellite satellite sensors yeah sensors that are on satellite and space that's our kind of remote sensing that that we're doing so we could use you know these high resolution satellite images that are really able to show uh distinct Chang over time and and this is useful when we look at time series analysis so you could see on the one hand on on left there there's more vegetation cover and then when you look at the the image on the right there is less veget vegetation cover here um and so this is really important when when we do have less and less vegetation coverage then it just makes these larger edges and more of the just uh dis fragmented Forest creates more Forest edges which what that does is it it heats up the the edge of the forest so before like a forest canopy can really help with shading and cooling but when you have more exposed ground to to radiation and to the sun it heats up that area which then kind of gets heater or heater hotter areas into into the the forest and just more of that open area will just lead for more encroachment of maybe things like fires or logging or human encroachment um so yeah so it's really important to be able to have the these high resolution images to see where this vegetation change is occurring is it expanding over time is it becoming less over time and as Forest ecologists we really want to try to track that and and monitor it so when I'm talking about Edge effects that that means that before we have you know an intact continuous Forest where over large areas of land large area of hectars there's forests that's all being intact and when it's all intact it has its own microclimate it's cooler underneath it it Cycles water and energy um but when you degrade forests or when there's different Forest fragmentations like we're seeing here in the images it will create these these open boundaries where there's open land next to continuous forest and that's that edge and the edge effects is is a type of degradation that that we see into the forest because there's change in temperature and radiation um and those those that edge can then lead to to more degradation of that intact continuous Forest I personally you know like to look a lot at Forest disturbance and regrowth that we talked about so I like to pay attention to things that track growth and recovery and a lot of this is changes in Forest structure so for this you know we'll we'll use something maybe called liar which stands for light detection and ranging and lar is great because it can penetrate through the forest can and could give us good vertical information Jennifer if elf stands for light and you're penetrating the farest canopy you're not using visible light for this because last time I tried to look through a forest canopy I couldn't and my eyes use visible light so presumably there are other frequencies of light that do have this penetration that the satellites are providing so that sounds like a really good place to be because otherwise you're you're blind to what's going on on the ground levels right exactly yep you're exactly right yeah there's these mult multispectral bands that that we use on a lot of these different sensors that can do everything from visible light to to near infrared um and yeah and that that just allows us to see a lot of different things and see a lot of really cool vegetation traits even which I really think is interesting so in addition to the forest structure we could also look at other indicators that are proxies for vegetation productivity um so some things that we could detect are proxies for how plants are photosynthesizing and if they're healthy um and yeah so there are sensors that have these specific spectral bands that are actually associated with chlorophyll content so they can look at something called solar induced fluoresence which is when when the leaves and the vegetation canopy will light up when plants are absorbing uh white light and when like photosynthetic activity is occurring so yeah yeah the these sensors are very helpful at looking at Forest structure different traits different variables so Jennifer it's it's it's pretty clear that in a mining operations where they've removed the trees you don't have to you don't need special satellite wavelengths to see through the canopy because it's on full display anyway really then uh your lar and other sort of specialized satellites uh will help you get through the clouds because I as as if I remember my Earth maps rainforest have mostly Cloud we don't put telescopes on the equator because it's mostly cloud cover there is that right so half of what you got to get through is a before you even get to the canopy you got to get through the cloud exactly yep that's exactly true so so that's kind of a hard challenge of making sure that we use the right near infrared band and we we use yeah the right capability to try to get through the clouds or just repeat measurements over and over and hope we non- cloudy day so it is a little challenging now there's so much data when we think of you know a buzz term at least the last 10 years has been crowdsourcing the analysis of data and if people have access to satellite imagery uh maybe they could help out if they know what to look for is that something you guys have considered oh yeah exactly yeah that there's so much more ways to be able to do crowd sourcing because it the data is becoming more accessible easier to use there's better computing power better online platforms to really being able to interrogate the data and look at the data so yeah I think it's really exciting time to really be able to play with it in different in different ways that's kind of what uh you know uh skyfi is all about the the oh the skyfi people yeah democratize yeah democratize the access to data they made it they made it so that anybody can pretend to be Jennifer you know no there are no substitutes do you ever take information that you see in the natural restoration after a disturbance like a fire or something and learn something that will help you assist in restoration of an area that might have been degradated from something we've done what he's saying is why have you done anything useful instead I just translated what he said are you just you just analyzing but not helping the situation terrible that was kind of a question but I didn't mean it like that that was great no I hope so I mean I'm really really excited about new developments and new things that we're doing to to fight climate change and I I am really hopeful about these new advancements like for example I'm I'm working with a company called cultivo that's helping to regenerate nature and restore degraded lands um through this process called nature based climate Solutions and it's great because you know like we mentioned forests help us mitigate climate change by storing carbon pulling in carbon trees have been doing this for centuries and as long as they're not under threat and as long as we keep them healthy um you know they could keep doing this o over time and you know we really need to change the incentives for countries and different commodity sectors to have this large economic incentive to help restore lands and make sure these forests are durable able to disturbance and we're we're thinking about the livelihoods of of people who live in these forests and something that I'm super excited about is that the UN climate change conferences uh they they had this pledge to stop deforestation which is to Halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 and many Amazonian countries you know are really taking this seriously and doing it and Brazil is is making great great movements and um just a small little interesting side note that I I think is interesting is the highest greenhouse gas emitting countries in the world you know the top four like us and China um and Russia they it's burning fossil fuels in the energy sector that accounts for their biggest greenhouse gas emissions but in Brazil it's different they already use a lot of renewable energies and their majority of climate change emissions is not from burning fossil fuels but it's this land use change and deforestation and cattle ranching so if we could deforestation by 2030 and since they already use renewable energy sector they could really become a net zero emissions country and hit some of their targets before other people um and this means really reducing their emissions by by a lot so and yeah the Amazon forest benefits you know the entire world and and it's it's really helpful to curb climate change and making sure we're thinking about these large ecological and social biodiversity aspects um that the Amazon brings well Jennifer thank you for sharing your expertise no thank you for this opportunity this this was really wonderful all right this has been Star Talk Chuck always good to have you man always a pleasure Neil the grass Tyson your personal astrophysicist keep looking up [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 151,206

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, skyfi, amazon, amazon rainforest, mining

Id: p96AsUEFXM8

Length: 54min 23sec (3263 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 18 2024