Technology can change our understanding of nature.
Tehnologija može da promeni naše razumevanje prirode.
Take for example the case of lions. For centuries, it's been said that female lions do all of the hunting out in the open savanna, and male lions do nothing until it's time for dinner. You've heard this too, I can tell. Well recently, I led an airborne mapping campaign in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Our colleagues put GPS tracking collars on male and female lions, and we mapped their hunting behavior from the air. The lower left shows a lion sizing up a herd of impala for a kill, and the right shows what I call the lion viewshed. That's how far the lion can see in all directions until his or her view is obstructed by vegetation. And what we found is that male lions are not the lazy hunters we thought them to be. They just use a different strategy. Whereas the female lions hunt out in the open savanna over long distances, usually during the day, male lions use an ambush strategy in dense vegetation, and often at night. This video shows the actual hunting viewsheds of male lions on the left and females on the right. Red and darker colors show more dense vegetation, and the white are wide open spaces. And this is the viewshed right literally at the eye level of hunting male and female lions. All of a sudden, you get a very clear understanding of the very spooky conditions under which male lions do their hunting.
Uzmimo primer lavova. Vekovima se govorilo da lavice obavljaju sav lov u savanama na otvorenom, a da lavovi ne rade ništa dok ne dođe vreme večere. Rekao bih da ste to i vi čuli. Nedavno sam vodio kampanju vazdušnog mapiranja u nacionalnom parku Kruger u Južnoj Africi. Naše kolege su stavile GPS ogrlice za praćenje lavicama i lavovima i preslikali smo njihovo ponašanje pri lovu iz vazduha. Dole levo je prikazan lav koji osmatra krdo impala za ulov, a desno je prikazano ono što nazivam lavljim vidokrugom, ili koliko lav vidi u svim pravcima dok njemu ili njoj zelenilo ne zakloni pogled. Otkrili smo da lavovi mužjaci nisu lenji lovci kao što smo mislili. Oni samo koriste različitu strategiju. Dok lavice love u savani na otvorenom, na dugim relacijama, obično tokom dana, lavovi se služe strategijom zasede u gustoj vegetaciji i to često noću. Ovaj video prikazuje stvarni vidokrug pri lovu lavova na levoj strani i lavica na desnoj. Crvene i tamnije boje prikazuju bujniju vegetaciju, a bele otvorena prostranstva. To je stvarno pogled u ravni očiju lavova i lavica dok love. Odjednom su vam sasvim razumljivi jezivi uslovi u kojima lavovi love.
I bring up this example to begin, because it emphasizes how little we know about nature. There's been a huge amount of work done so far to try to slow down our losses of tropical forests, and we are losing our forests at a rapid rate, as shown in red on the slide. I find it ironic that we're doing so much, yet these areas are fairly unknown to science. So how can we save what we don't understand?
Iznosim ovaj primer za početak, da bih naglasio koliko malo znamo o prirodi. Do sada je mnogo učinjeno na pokušaju usporavanja gubitaka tropskih šuma, no gubimo ih velikom brzinom, kao što je prikazano crvenom bojom na slajdu. Čini mi se ironično da toliko radimo, a da su ipak ta područja prilično nepoznata nauci. Kako možemo da spasemo ono što ne razumemo?
Now I'm a global ecologist and an Earth explorer with a background in physics and chemistry and biology and a lot of other boring subjects, but above all, I'm obsessed with what we don't know about our planet. So I created this, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, or CAO. It may look like a plane with a fancy paint job, but I packed it with over 1,000 kilos of high-tech sensors, computers, and a very motivated staff of Earth scientists and pilots. Two of our instruments are very unique: one is called an imaging spectrometer that can actually measure the chemical composition of plants as we fly over them. Another one is a set of lasers, very high-powered lasers, that fire out of the bottom of the plane, sweeping across the ecosystem and measuring it at nearly 500,000 times per second in high-resolution 3D. Here's an image of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, not far from where I live. Although we flew straight over this bridge, we imaged it in 3D, captured its color in just a few seconds. But the real power of the CAO is its ability to capture the actual building blocks of ecosystems. This is a small town in the Amazon, imaged with the CAO. We can slice through our data and see, for example, the 3D structure of the vegetation and the buildings, or we can use the chemical information to actually figure out how fast the plants are growing as we fly over them. The hottest pinks are the fastest-growing plants. And we can see biodiversity in ways that you never could have imagined. This is what a rainforest might look like as you fly over it in a hot air balloon. This is how we see a rainforest, in kaleidoscopic color that tells us that there are many species living with one another. But you have to remember that these trees are literally bigger than whales, and what that means is that they're impossible to understand just by walking on the ground below them. So our imagery is 3D, it's chemical, it's biological, and this tells us not only the species that are living in the canopy, but it tells us a lot of information about the rest of the species that occupy the rainforest.
Ja sam globalni ekolog i istraživač Zemlje sa temeljima u fizici, hemiji biologiji i mnogim drugim dosadnim predmetima, ali sam pre svega, opsednut onim što ne znamo o našoj planeti. Tako sam stvorio ovo, Vazdušnu Karnegi opservatoriju, ili VKO. Možda izgleda kao avion sa elegantnim bojama, ali opremio sam ga sa više od 1.000 kg visoko tehnoloških senzora, kompjutera i vrlo motivisanom posadom, od stručnjaka za Zemlju do pilota. Dva naša instrumenata su jedinstvena: jedan se zove spektrometar za snimanje koji može da meri hemijski sastav biljaka dok ih nadlećemo. Drugi je skup lasera vrlo visoke moći koji deluju sa dna aviona, brišući po ekosistemima i mereći približno 500.000 puta u sekundi u visokoj 3D rezoluciji. Evo snimka mosta Golden Gejt u San Francisku, nedaleko od mesta gde živim. Iako smo preleteli tačno preko ovog mosta, snimili smo ga u 3D i ulovili mu boju u samo nekoliko sekundi. No, stvarna moć VKO je u sposobnosti da snimi stvarne gradivne materijale ekosistema. Ovo je mali grad u Amazoniji, snimljen sa VKO. Možemo rezati naše podatke i videti, na primer, 3D strukture vegetacije i zgrada ili možemo koristiti hemijske informacije da odredimo koliko brzo biljke rastu, dok ih prelećemo. Najtoplije roza boje su najbrže rastuće biljke. Možemo da vidimo biološku raznovrsnost na načine na koje ne biste mogli ni zamisliti. Ovako bi prašuma izgledala kada biste je preletali u balonu. Ovo je kako mi vidimo prašumu, u kaleidoskopskoj boji koja nam govori da postoje mnoge vrste koje žive jedne s drugima. Ipak zapamtite da su ova stabla bukvalno veća od kitova, što znači da ih je nemoguće razumeti šetajući se ispod njih na tlu. Dakle, naša 3D slika je hemijska, biološka, a to nam govori ne samo o vrstama koje žive u krošnjama, već nam daje i mnoge informacije o ostalim vrstama koje su u prašumi.
Now I created the CAO in order to answer questions that have proven extremely challenging to answer from any other vantage point, such as from the ground, or from satellite sensors. I want to share three of those questions with you today. The first questions is, how do we manage our carbon reserves in tropical forests? Tropical forests contain a huge amount of carbon in the trees, and we need to keep that carbon in those forests if we're going to avoid any further global warming. Unfortunately, global carbon emissions from deforestation now equals the global transportation sector. That's all ships, airplanes, trains and automobiles combined. So it's understandable that policy negotiators have been working hard to reduce deforestation, but they're doing it on landscapes that are hardly known to science. If you don't know where the carbon is exactly, in detail, how can you know what you're losing? Basically, we need a high-tech accounting system. With our system, we're able to see the carbon stocks of tropical forests in utter detail. The red shows, obviously, closed-canopy tropical forest, and then you see the cookie cutting, or the cutting of the forest in yellows and greens. It's like cutting a cake except this cake is about whale deep. And yet, we can zoom in and see the forest and the trees at the same time. And what's amazing is, even though we flew very high above this forest, later on in analysis, we can go in and actually experience the treetrops, leaf by leaf, branch by branch, just as the other species that live in this forest experience it along with the trees themselves.
Stvorio sam VKO da bih odgovorio na pitanja koja su se pokazala izuzetno zahtevnim sa bilo koje druge točke gledišta, sa recimo zemlje ili satelitskog senzora. Danas želim da podelim sa vama tri pitanja. Prvo pitanje je - kako upravljamo našim rezervama ugljenika u tropskim šumama? Tropske šume sadrže veliku količinu ugljenika u drveću, a ugljenik moramo zadržati u tim šumama ako hoćemo da izbegnemo dalje globalno zagrevanje. Globalne emisije ugljenika su nažalost, zbog krčenja šuma, sada jednake globalnom transportnom sektoru. Tu spadaju svi brodovi, avioni, vozovi i automobili zajedno. Zato je razumljivo da su politički pregovarači naporno radili da smanje krčenje šuma, ali u predelima jedva poznatim nauci. Ako ne znate gde je ugljenik tačno, do detalja, kako možete znati šta gubite? Uglavnom, treba nam visoko tehnološki knjigovodstveni sistem. U okviru našeg sistema možemo da vidimo zalihe ugljenika tropskih šuma do detalja. Crveno očito pokazuje zatvorene krošnje tropskih šuma i onda vidite prerez ili rezanje šume u žutim i zelenim bojama. To je kao rezanje torte, osim što je ova torta duboka kao jedan kit. A ipak, možemo da zumiramo i da vidimo šumu i drveće istovremeno. Neverovatno je da iako smo leteli vrlo visoko iznad ove šume, kasnije u analizi, možemo ući i zapravo doživeti krošnje, list po list, granu po granu, baš kao i ostale vrste koje žive u ovoj šumi mogu da ih dožive zajedno s drvećem.
We've been using the technology to explore and to actually put out the first carbon geographies in high resolution in faraway places like the Amazon Basin and not-so-faraway places like the United States and Central America. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take you on a high-resolution, first-time tour of the carbon landscapes of Peru and then Panama. The colors are going to be going from red to blue. Red is extremely high carbon stocks, your largest cathedral forests you can imagine, and blue are very low carbon stocks. And let me tell you, Peru alone is an amazing place, totally unknown in terms of its carbon geography until today. We can fly to this area in northern Peru and see super high carbon stocks in red, and the Amazon River and floodplain cutting right through it. We can go to an area of utter devastation caused by deforestation in blue, and the virus of deforestation spreading out in orange. We can also fly to the southern Andes to see the tree line and see exactly how the carbon geography ends as we go up into the mountain system. And we can go to the biggest swamp in the western Amazon. It's a watery dreamworld akin to Jim Cameron's "Avatar." We can go to one of the smallest tropical countries, Panama, and see also a huge range of carbon variation, from high in red to low in blue. Unfortunately, most of the carbon is lost in the lowlands, but what you see that's left, in terms of high carbon stocks in greens and reds, is the stuff that's up in the mountains. One interesting exception to this is right in the middle of your screen. You're seeing the buffer zone around the Panama Canal. That's in the reds and yellows. The canal authorities are using force to protect their watershed and global commerce. This kind of carbon mapping has transformed conservation and resource policy development. It's really advancing our ability to save forests and to curb climate change.
Koristimo tehnologiju da istražimo i da zapravo postavimo prvi ugljenikov zemljopis u visokoj rezoluciji u udaljenim mestima kao što je amazonski basen i ne tako udaljenim mestima kao što su SAD i Srednja Amerika. Odvešću vas na prvu turneju u visokoj rezoluciji ugljenikovih predela Perua i zatim Paname. Boje će se menjati od crvene do plave. Crvena je izuzetno visoka zaliha ugljenika, vaša najveća šumska katedrala koju možete zamisliti, a plava je vrlo niska zaliha ugljenika. I reći ću vam da je Peru neverovatno mesto, potpuno nepoznato u smislu ugljenikove geografije do danas. Možemo da odletimo do područja na severu Perua i da vidimo veoma visoke zalihe ugljenika crvene boje, i reku Amazon sa plavnom ravnicom kako se useca kroz njega. Možemo ići do predela potpunog uništenja izazvanog krčenjem šuma, u plavoj boji, a virus krčenja šuma se širi u narandžastoj. Možemo odleteti na jug Anda gde vidimo liniju drveća i tačno kako se zemljopis ugljenika završava ako se popnemo gore u planinski sistem. A možemo i da odemo do najveće močvare u zapadnoj Amazoniji. To je vodenasta zemlja snova nalik na "Avatar" Džejmsa Kamerona. Možemo da odemo i u jednu od najmanjih tropskih zemalja, Panamu i da vidimo ogroman raspon ugljenikovih varijacija, od visokog u crvenoj do niskog u plavoj boji. Nažalost, većina ugljenika se gubi u nizijama, a ono što vidite da je ostalo od visokih zaliha ugljenika u zelenom i crvenom, to je, u stvari, gore u planinama. Od toga je zanimljiv izuzetak tačno u sredini ekrana. Vidite tampon zonu oko Panamskog kanala, u crvenoj i žutoj boji. Vlasti kanala koriste silu da bi zaštitili svoj rečni sliv i globalno poslovanje. Ova vrsta mapiranja ugljenika je transformisala konzervaciju i razvojnu politiku resursa To je stvarno napredak naših mogućnosti u spasavanju šuma i u zaustavljanju klimatskih promena.
My second question: How do we prepare for climate change in a place like the Amazon rainforest? Let me tell you, I spend a lot of time in these places, and we're seeing the climate changing already. Temperatures are increasing, and what's really happening is we're getting a lot of droughts, recurring droughts. The 2010 mega-drought is shown here with red showing an area about the size of Western Europe. The Amazon was so dry in 2010 that even the main stem of the Amazon river itself dried up partially, as you see in the photo in the lower portion of the slide. What we found is that in very remote areas, these droughts are having a big negative impact on tropical forests. For example, these are all of the dead trees in red that suffered mortality following the 2010 drought. This area happens to be on the border of Peru and Brazil, totally unexplored, almost totally unknown scientifically.
Moje drugo pitanje: kako se pripremamo za klimatske promene u mestu kao što su amazonske prašume? Znajte da sam proveo mnogo vremena u tim mestima, i da već opažamo promene klime. Temperature su u porastu, i svedoci smo mnogih suša, koje se ponavljaju. Ovde je crvenim označena mega-suša iz 2010. prikazujući predeo veličine zapadne Evrope. 2010. je Amazon toliko presušio da se čak i sam glavni tok reke Amazon delimično presušio, kao što vidite na fotografiji u donjem delu slajda. Otkrili smo da u vrlo udaljenim područjima ove suše imaju veliki negativni uticaj na tropske šume. Na primer, crvene boje su sve mrtva stabla koja su stradala posle suše 2010. Ovo je područje na granici Perua i Brazila, potpuno neistraženo, skoro sasvim nepoznato nauci.
So what we think, as Earth scientists, is species are going to have to migrate with climate change from the east in Brazil all the way west into the Andes and up into the mountains in order to minimize their exposure to climate change. One of the problems with this is that humans are taking apart the western Amazon as we speak. Look at this 100-square-kilometer gash in the forest created by gold miners. You see the forest in green in 3D, and you see the effects of gold mining down below the soil surface. Species have nowhere to migrate in a system like this, obviously.
Mislimo, kao naučnici Zemlje, da će se vrste morati seliti s klimatskim promenama s istoka u Brazilu na zapad u Ande i gore u planine da bi se smanjila njihova izloženost klimatskim promenama. Jedan od problema je to da ljudi rasklapaju zapadnu Amazoniju u ovom trenutku. Pogledajte ovu posekotinu šume od 100 kvadratnih km koju su napravili kopači zlata. Vidite šumu u zelenoj boji u 3D, i videćete posledice iskopavanja zlata ispod zemljine površine. Očito da vrste nemaju gde da se sele u sistemu kao što je ovaj.
If you haven't been to the Amazon, you should go. It's an amazing experience every time, no matter where you go. You're going to probably see it this way, on a river. But what happens is a lot of times the rivers hide what's really going on back in the forest itself. We flew over this same river, imaged the system in 3D. The forest is on the left. And then we can digitally remove the forest and see what's going on below the canopy. And in this case, we found gold mining activity, all of it illegal, set back away from the river's edge, as you'll see in those strange pockmarks coming up on your screen on the right. Don't worry, we're working with the authorities to deal with this and many, many other problems in the region.
Ako niste bili u Amazoniji, trebalo bi da odete. To je svaki put neverovatno iskustvo, bez obzira gde idete. Verovatno ćete je videti ovako, na reci. No, događa se mnogo puta da reke sakriju ono što se stvarno dešava u samoj šumi. Leteli smo nad ovom istom rekom, sistem je snimljen u 3D. Šuma je na levoj strani. A onda možemo digitalno da uklonimo šumu i da vidimo šta se dešava ispod krošnje. U ovom slučaju smo otkrili aktivnosti iskopavanja zlata, sve su bile ilegalne, smeštene podalje od ruba reke, kao što ćete videti u tim čudnim rošavim mrljama koje se pojavljuju na desnoj strani ekrana. Ne brinite, mi radimo s vlastima koje se bave ovim i mnogim drugim problemima u regionu.
So in order to put together a conservation plan for these unique, important corridors like the western Amazon and the Andes Amazon corridor, we have to start making geographically explicit plans now. How do we do that if we don't know the geography of biodiversity in the region, if it's so unknown to science? So what we've been doing is using the laser-guided spectroscopy from the CAO to map for the first time the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest. Here you see actual data showing different species in different colors. Reds are one type of species, blues are another, and greens are yet another. And when we take this together and scale up to the regional level, we get a completely new geography of biodiversity unknown prior to this work. This tells us where the big biodiversity changes occur from habitat to habitat, and that's really important because it tells us a lot about where species may migrate to and migrate from as the climate shifts. And this is the pivotal information that's needed by decision makers to develop protected areas in the context of their regional development plans.
Da bi se sastavio plan konzervacije za ove jedinstvene, važne koridore kao što je zapadna Amazonija i koridor od Anda do Amazona, moramo početi već sada da pravimo geografski eksplicitne planove. Kako da to uradimo, ako ne znamo geografiju biološke raznovrsnosti u regiji, ako je to nauci nepoznato? Zato smo koristili VKO laserski vođenu spektroskopiju, da bismo po prvi put mapirali biodiverzitet amazonske prašume. Ovde vidite stvarne podatke različitih vrsta u različitim bojama. Crvene su jedna vrsta, plave su druga, a zelene su treća. Kad sve to uzmemo zajedno i proporcionalno povećamo do regionalnog nivoa, dobijemo potpuno novu geografiju biološke raznovrsnosti, nepoznate do sada. Iz ovog se vidi gde se pojavljuju velike promene biološke raznovrsnosti od staništa do staništa, što je jako važno jer pokazuje gde i odakle bi vrste mogle da migriraju kada se klima promeni. To je ključna informacija koja je potrebna donosiocima odluka da razviju zaštićena područja u kontekstu svojih regionalnih razvojnih planova.
And third and final question is, how do we manage biodiversity on a planet of protected ecosystems? The example I started out with about lions hunting, that was a study we did behind the fence line of a protected area in South Africa. And the truth is, much of Africa's nature is going to persist into the future in protected areas like I show in blue on the screen. This puts incredible pressure and responsibility on park management. They need to do and make decisions that will benefit all of the species that they're protecting. Some of their decisions have really big impacts. For example, how much and where to use fire as a management tool? Or, how to deal with a large species like elephants, which may, if their populations get too large, have a negative impact on the ecosystem and on other species. And let me tell you, these types of dynamics really play out on the landscape. In the foreground is an area with lots of fire and lots of elephants: wide open savanna in blue, and just a few trees. As we cross this fence line, now we're getting into an area that has had protection from fire and zero elephants: dense vegetation, a radically different ecosystem. And in a place like Kruger, the soaring elephant densities are a real problem. I know it's a sensitive issue for many of you, and there are no easy answers with this. But what's good is that the technology we've developed and we're working with in South Africa, for example, is allowing us to map every single tree in the savanna, and then through repeat flights we're able to see which trees are being pushed over by elephants, in the red as you see on the screen, and how much that's happening in different types of landscapes in the savanna. That's giving park managers a very first opportunity to use tactical management strategies that are more nuanced and don't lead to those extremes that I just showed you. So really, the way we're looking at protected areas nowadays is to think of it as tending to a circle of life, where we have fire management, elephant management, those impacts on the structure of the ecosystem, and then those impacts affecting everything from insects up to apex predators like lions.
Treće i poslednje pitanje je - kako upravljamo raznovrsnošću vrsta na planeti u zaštićenim ekosistemima? Primer koji sam dao na početku o lovu lavova, bila je studija koju smo napravili iza ograde na zaštićenom području u Južnoj Africi. Istina je da će veliki deo afričke prirode opstati u budućnosti u zaštićenim područjima kao što sam pokazao u plavoj boji na ekranu. Time se stvara neverovatan pritisak i odgovornost na upravu parka. Oni moraju da donose odluke u korist svih vrsta koje štite. Neke od njihovih odluka imaju zaista velike posledice. Na primer, u kojoj meri i gde da koriste vatru kao instrument upravljanja? Ili, kako da se ophode sa velikim vrstama poput slonova, koji mogu, ako njihova populacija postane prevelika, imati negativan uticaj na ekosistem i na druge vrste. Dozvolite da dodam da takve dinamike stvarno utiču na okolinu. U prvom planu je područje s mnogo vatre i slonova: široko otvorene savane u plavom, sa samo nekoliko stabala. Kad pređemo ovu ogradu, stižemo u područje koje je zaštićeno od požara i bez slonova: guste vegetacije, radikalno drugačiji ekosistem. U mestu kao što je Kruger, sve gušća slonovska populacija je pravi problem. Znam da je to osetljivo pitanje za mnoge od vas i tu nema jednostavnih odgovora. No, dobra je novost da nam tehnologija koju smo razvili i sa kojom radimo u Južnoj Africi na primer, dopušta da mapiramo svako stablo u savani, a zatim da putem ponovljenih letova možemo da uočimo koja stabla slonovi uništavaju, u crvenoj boji, kao što vidite na ekranu i koliko se toga događa u različitim delovima savane. To daje upravi parka prvu priliku da upotrebi taktičke strategije suptilnijeg upravljanja koje ne dovode do krajnosti koje sam vam upravo pokazao. Danas razmišljamo da u zaštićenim područjima održimo krug života, pomoću upravljanja požarom, slonovima, onim što utiče na strukturu ekosistema i posledično na sve, od insekata do vrhunskih grabljivaca poput lavova.
Going forward, I plan to greatly expand the airborne observatory. I'm hoping to actually put the technology into orbit so we can manage the entire planet with technologies like this. Until then, you're going to find me flying in some remote place that you've never heard of. I just want to end by saying that technology is absolutely critical to managing our planet, but even more important is the understanding and wisdom to apply it.
Dalje planiram da znatno proširim opservatoriju u vazduhu. Nadam se postavljanju tehnologije u orbitu da bismo, tehnologijama kao što je ova, mogli da upravljamo čitavom planetom. Do tada ćete me pronaći kako letim nad nekim udaljenim mestom za koje nikad niste čuli. Na kraju bih želeo reći da je tehnologija apsolutno presudna za upravljanje našom planetom, ali je još važnije razumevanje i mudrost pri njenoj primeni.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)