Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Eyes in the Sky with Larissa Rodrigues & Jennifer Holm About this episode How is new tech helping protect the rainforest? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice learn how space technology is helping uncover illegal gold mines and protecting the Amazon, with illegal mining expert Larissa Rodrigues and Earth researcher Jennifer Holm.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Chuck Nice? Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at SkyFi, the world's geospatial hub, bringing nearly instant access to high-quality satellite and aerial imagery, along with expert-created analytics to answer your most pressing questions. Create a free account and join over 60,000 explorers harnessing the power of SkyFi's visual insights today. For more, head to starTalk.SkyFi.com.
0:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm 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?
0:43 Chuck Nice? Maybe we should pave over the areas.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
0:47 Chuck Nice? We should pave them over and then just put some cracks in them.
0:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There we go.
0:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you Chuck for your... Problem solved.
0:56 Chuck Nice? There you go.
0:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Problem solved by Chuck.
0:58 Chuck Nice? Good.
1:01 Chuck Nice? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
1:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Got with me Chuck Nice, Chucky Baby, how you doing?
1:20 Chuck Nice? Hey Neil, what's happening?
1:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so in this episode, we're going to explore what role space technology, satellite imagery, has in understanding what goes on on Earth's surface. In this particular case, related to mining.
1:38 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
1:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mining of gold in the Amazon, which involves not only the deforestation of trees, but also a poisoning of the environment.
1:49 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From mercury that was used in the extraction of the gold. So tell me more about this episode, because you did a lot of the homework behind it.
1:57 Chuck Nice? Well, you know, think about when it's great that you mentioned space and the connection of space to earth, you know, uh, we know that there are thousands of satellites that are active right now.
2:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thousands, thousands.
2:11 Chuck Nice? Thousands. Thank you, Elon. Thanks a lot, Elon.
2:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's half of them.
2:15 Chuck Nice? Way to go, baby. Most of them are yours, baby. Way to go. I'm winning space.
2:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I win. Whoever dies with the most satellites wins.
2:24 Chuck Nice? That's it. That's it. You know, um, but you know, as much as we depend on them and scientists use them and governments use them, you know, 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. Um, but it's changing right now because there's, um, there's a company like you mentioned, the Amazon, right? Let's just say you wanted to see what was happening in the Amazon with these mines that you talked about that are indeed, um, really deleterious to, uh, the ecology and the Amazonian ecosystem.
3:06 Chuck Nice? Let's say you wanted to get a real time 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 mine, like in the, uh, Yanomami indigenous territory in the Brazilian Amazon. We would be able to take a look at the actual mines, uh, kind of like in a citizen science way. And when you're looking at, you know, something like gold mining and you're looking at the
3:48 Chuck Nice? Amazon forest, um, you, there's a lot of activity that goes on that is not detectable unless you're looking from space.
3:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, very good because I got here, we have our, as a, as a special guest, Dr. Larissa Rodriguez. Let me pronounce that right again.
4:07 Chuck Nice? I was about to say, you, my friend, are Puerto Rican and you messed up Rodriguez?
4:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rodriguez.
4:13 Chuck Nice? Okay.
4:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because this one has an S and not a Z. See, that's what threw me off. Yeah, the Portuguese has it. Dr. Larissa Rodriguez, welcome to Start Talking. Did I pronounce your name properly?
4:26 Speaker 02 You did. Hi Neil, hi Chuck. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm very happy. Yeah, that's Larissa Rodriguez.
4:34 Chuck Nice? Rodriguez.
4:35 Speaker 02 With the Portuguese accent.
4:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love your education background. You have a PhD in energy.
4:41 Speaker 02 Yes, that's right.
4:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From the University of Sao Paulo. It's cool that you can get a PhD in that because it is so important. Energy and civilization go hand in hand. And the exploitation of energy, how you get it, where it comes from. And your expertise focuses on mining, energy and land use. At the, let me get this right, Institute Escolhas? What is that?
5:08 Speaker 02 Instituto Escolhas, which is a nonprofit base here in Brazil, working with sustainability. So, and you got it right. I got my background on energy studies. I went into that because I'm very interested in like how we as a civilization goes exploring natural resources. And then from energy resources, I transitioned 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.
5:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you know, we take so much of it for granted. That metal just shows up 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 obtain this? I don't know that people think that.
6:01 Chuck Nice? 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.
6:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Our heads would explode. Oh my, right. So, so we know, Larissa, that images, satellite images of the Amazon basin? Basin or anywhere up and down the Amazon? You found evidence of gold mining. But so what? I mean, if you're going to mine for something, you mine for gold. Why not? Why is that so differently important in this case?
6:39 Speaker 02 What is important is these days is that we do have a big problem in Brazil. And the problem is when we look to gold, half of the gold Brazil produces is considered to be illegal. Half of it, and you're talking about more or less fifty tons per year or two point five billion dollars per year. It's a lot. And then when we-
7:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is it half the gold that comes out of, out of Brazil?
7:07 Speaker 02 Exactly. And this gold is traveling the world because Brazil produces gold to export. So we produce in Brazil and then we export, meaning that the illegal gold is traveling the world. It's not in Brazil anymore. And then comes the question that we should all ask, where this gold comes from? This gold comes mainly from the Amazon region, so basically from illegal mines that have no authorization to operate whatsoever. And many of them is signed indigenous territories and also in other protected areas like national parks and all that. So that's a really big problem.
7:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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?
7:55 Speaker 02 Both situations actually, because some of them, they are illegal 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.
8:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what can you tell us about the environmental impact apart from it just simply being illegal?
8:18 Speaker 02 Yes, I mean, there are very severe impacts when you talk about gold mining, 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 are not talking about tunnels or underground mine. We're talking on the mining being done on the surface.
8:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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 up. 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?
9:09 Speaker 02 That's correct. It's exactly what it is. So we are talking about a large lands of big land and on the surface. We're talking about 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, deforestation 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 are growing immensely in the Amazon over the the past decade. So there is a lot of deforestation related to that.
9:53 Speaker 02 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.
10:03 Chuck Nice? Well, they're they're illegal. That's like.
10:05 Speaker 02 Exactly.
10:06 Chuck Nice? That's like your drug dealer saying, by the way, I just opened a rehab.
10:10 Speaker 02 Exactly. Exactly. They don't do it.
10:14 Chuck Nice? They're not gonna do it, you know?
10:15 Speaker 02 Exactly. Of course, they want. I mean, they're completely illegal. So they take the gold 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.
10:29 Chuck Nice? 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, would be mountain top coal mining here in America. So they can pull out the coal and that land is now unusable. It's just done.
10:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. So now there are no trees. And is there any chemicals that are invoked to try to extract the gold that become like waste products?
11:01 Speaker 02 Yes, and the most dangerous one is mercury. So all the gold mines in the Amazon, they use mercury. They use mercury to do the amalamation, like to separate gold from the other sediments. And they're using like with no controls, dumping to the rivers, dumping to the soil, burning, and like people breathing the air with mercury. So it's a really big problem. So we're talking environmental problem, but also related to health problems.
11:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The mining operations you described, 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 foods, in the food stocks. So what are the consequences of mercury poisoning?
11:52 Speaker 02 And that's
11:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or the symptoms, I should say.
11:55 Speaker 02 And you mentioned it very right, because it's like you don't, mercury has no taste. I mean, 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 it, don't feel it, you don't see it. So that's very 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.
12:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so we lose the trees, we're poisoning it with chemicals, mercury in particular. And, and what else, what's another? If that isn't enough.
12:52 Speaker 02 Exactly.
12:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What else, is there anything else that, that is a consequence of this activity?
12:59 Speaker 02 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 are talking about invasion of indigenous lands. So indigenous communities that, like the world saw what happened with the Yanomami people, the humanitarian crisis that we have there now, is that illegal miners come 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.
13:42 Speaker 02 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 this story of illegal mining in the Amazon, unfortunately.
14:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Larissa, it seems to me that if the indigenous peoples are living off the land, as they've been doing for thousands of years, from the fish, the vegetation, that if that, if their entire environment is being poisoned, then it's poisoning them and their way of life and their food stocks. This sounds like a genocide to me, just for the sake of gold.
14:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that, am I overstating this?
14:30 Speaker 02 You're not, and actually in Brazil, we are calling it a genocide, because the Yanomami 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 than they want, that they have in forest. So.
14:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Other than the natural ones, right there.
14:50 Speaker 02 Other than the natural ones, and they've lived there like since ever, and.
14:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, forever, forever.
14:56 Speaker 02 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.
15:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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 doesn't the military or whatever government agency just go on in and shut them down?
15:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, the Federal Police and also the Environmental Authority in Brazil, they both worked together to crack down these operations. And sometimes they do. In the past year, they destroyed 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 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.
16:21 Speaker 02 Because in Brazil, you don't know, like if you buy gold, you don't know if it's legal or illegal. There's no way to attest the origin of gold. So I truly believe we should work with a traceability system, for example. So people, consumers, can know where the gold comes from. And then you somehow will close the door for illegal gold to enter into the market.
16:55 Chuck Nice? Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at SkyFi, the world's geospatial hub, bringing nearly instant access to high-quality satellite and aerial imagery, along with expert-created analytics to answer your most pressing questions. Get a bird's-eye view of anywhere on the planet with SkyFi's easy-to-use web browser or mobile app. Browse SkyFi's commercial image archive or download free data for a specific date and location and receive it in under 20 seconds. Four hours. Need something more specific? You can task a satellite to capture a new image during a date range of your choosing,
17:37 Chuck Nice? or connect directly to SkyFi's 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. Want more than just imagery? SkyFi enables you to order image-powered 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 SkyFi's visual insights today.
18:19 Chuck Nice? For more, head to startalk.skyfi.com, or click the link in the description below.
18:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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 other side of it is you try to control the demand. And if you can't do that, maybe you will never succeed. Because the marketplace is stronger than your noble environmental goals.
19:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. You know, and what I think is crazy about gold, because basically we use gold like for three reasons. Or for industry, like for iPhones and telephones. But that's like a tiny bit of the gold we produce goes to the industry.
19:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The circuitry, yeah, it's the wire, the circuitry, yes.
19:22 Speaker 02 Yes, and it's
19:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gold has a very, very high transmission of electricity within it. Very low resistance to electrical movement. So, so gold has very high value in an electronics universe.
19:35 Speaker 02 Yes.
19:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, but you don't need big chunks of it to make that happen.
19:38 Speaker 02 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.
19:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got a gold wedding ring, the wedding band, yeah.
19:56 Speaker 02 But you know what, I think it's crazy, the other half goes to the bank.
20:00 Chuck Nice? So it's, it's, it's, it's a form of capital or currency.
20:04 Speaker 02 It is, it is.
20:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
20:07 Speaker 02 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 it in a bank and you do nothing with it, nothing.
20:22 Chuck Nice? That's
20:22 Speaker 02 There's no use.
20:24 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah, that's wow. So it's basically bankers and rappers are the problem here.
20:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The big gold consumers.
20:34 Speaker 02 Yes.
20:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rappers with bling, yes. So you know how to, how to fix all of this? We just 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, lasso one of them and it'll basically put everyone else out of business overnight.
20:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you know. But, but then would gold be so valuable if it's so available? You see, there it is.
21:03 Chuck Nice? 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.
21:12 Speaker 02 Exactly.
21:12 Chuck Nice? Oh. Believe me, when, when Jeff Bezos does this, he is not going to bring all the gold at once.
21:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's martyred on that, yeah.
21:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the satellite imagery enables you to locate these. So in what way is the satellite data helping you?
21:28 Speaker 02 It helps a lot because, of course, 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 hub of illegal miners, without the satellite images, you will never be able to spot these places. So it's very important. And also, once, also like because the federal police, like the police, the authorities in Brazil, they have access to this kind of technology as well.
22:12 Speaker 02 But me, for example, as a researcher and working for a nonprofit and trying to study the issue and develop public policies, it's important to have data like that because then I can understand the problem. We can measure the problem, we can monitor it and all that. Without it, it's impossible. Like all the work-
22:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can't, if you don't have data, you got nothing.
22:34 Speaker 02 Exactly. And I mean, and I think in Brazil, in the last, in the past year, we did achieve some 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 it. And that was only possible because of satellite image, also combined with other databases. So we wouldn't be able to advance with the problem in Brazil if it wasn't for it.
23:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, Larissa, thank you for being our guest on StarTalk. This is a very new material for us to cover, and we're delighted to learn about it. And we've got top people like you analyzing the situation and trying to make a better world for it. So thank you.
23:22 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you.
23:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you for us, and thank you for the world, and thank you for the biodiversity of those parts of the Earth's surface that need it.
23:29 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you. It's such important to talk about it, and it's been an honor to be here. So, thank you.
23:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you. Chuck. Yes. You know, 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, uh, what's going on in the Amazon. Uh, so we found Dr. Jennifer Holm. Whoa. Jennifer, welcome to Startalk.
24:01 Speaker 03 Great, thank you. Yeah, I'm really excited to be here. This is a big honor. Thank you.
24:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent. No, no, no, no, it's, no, just you, we, you honor us. I'm gonna go with what you said, Jennifer.
24:17 Speaker 03 No, thank you.
24:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, is that bad out there, Chuck? You need, you need a gold star today, Chuck. I'm having a rough day. Jennifer, a rough day. 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 specialize in the earth climate systems modeling, is that right? And, and, okay, but how about humans? How, how do we play into that modeling?
24:54 Speaker 03 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 decisions 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 a bit, a big part of it.
25:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. On the risk that you use colloquial jargon there, when you say a carbon sink, please tell me what you mean by that.
25:27 Speaker 03 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 and 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.
25:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nice. So it pulls in the CO2 and it keeps it?
25:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It keeps it in the tree. You're not breathing the CO2 that's in the tree, right?
25:56 Speaker 03 There is a flux of it. So 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 sequestered, and not try to disturb these forests where we disrupt that balance and that flux. So more going out than coming in.
26:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. So do you have a special focus? Because in this episode, 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 do you have a focus there? Or is that just part of your total modeling that you care about?
26:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, Amazon is a big major focus, but this couple of projects that I work on, you know, we do care about all tropical forests globally and pantropically. But yeah, you're right that the Amazon Basin does play a huge role in curbing the climate crisis. So, you know, there's about, give or take 100, 150 billion tons of carbon stored in these trees. And if that was 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 it's a big, yes, source of carbon that's stored. And it's really important to really preserve its capacity and keep sequestering this carbon and mitigate climate change.
27:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's been analogized as, or personified as the lungs of the earth. But I don't think that's right, right? Aren't there other sources?
27:35 Chuck Nice? Ah, look at you. You gotta be a killjoy, huh?
27:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What? I mean, it sounds all poetic and it makes a great headline. You know, they're plowing down the lungs of the earth.
27:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I looked at the numbers and as important as Amazon is, it's not the most important lungs of the earth. Am I right there?
27:56 Speaker 03 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 the world. And it's funny that it is kind of called the lungs of the earth.
28:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's poetic, but I like being...
28:14 Chuck Nice? It really should be the reverse lungs of the earth because it does absolutely the opposite of what our lungs do. Our lungs...
28:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, interesting.
28:23 Chuck Nice? Yeah, 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.
28:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the opposite.
28:33 Chuck Nice? It's the opposite of what lungs do. But...
28:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
28:37 Chuck Nice? But I think...
28:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Jennifer, what do I say about that?
28:40 Speaker 03 It is. I know. It's the exact opposite of the...
28:43 Chuck Nice? It's the exact opposite of a lung. However, I think the message is, hey, you like breathing, right? Breathing's good. And, you know, this is what this is doing. This is helping us...
28:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You like this oxygen? You like oxygen today?
28:56 Chuck Nice? You like oxygen? You like breathing? It's the lungs of the earth, yeah.
28:59 Speaker 03 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. Forests pull in CO2. You're right, where lungs do the opposite of that. They pull in oxygen, let out CO2. But, yeah, there's so many other ecosystem services that the Amazon provides. And I kind of like to focus on all those other ecosystem services too, instead of just...
29:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Such as?
29:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. So also purifies...
29:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You call them services like it's a bank or something, you know?
29:29 Speaker 03 I know. 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 it's something we should value.
29:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You get the economists to listen to you that would otherwise care.
29:43 Chuck Nice? Believe it or not, I say there's a movement, an international movement around, of underfoot, to try and pay Brazil and other countries that, 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 deforest, we give you this much money.
30:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, and 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. But yeah.
30:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait Chuck, I got a tree in my backyard, pay me to not cut it down right now.
30:21 Speaker 03 Here's some money.
30:23 Chuck Nice? You gotta let me know what kind of tree it is, because if it's a ficus, nobody gives a damn.
30:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If the, Amazon is not the lungs of the planet, or sorry, the inverse lungs of the planet, and we give that to the plankton and the phytoplankton, then what is it to us if it's not our lungs?
30:43 Speaker 03 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 of being like just things that really do benefit us and benefit humanity that is almost invaluable to put a price on. So, giving us air, making sure we have oxygen and we can 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 forests and the roots help stop erosion, landslides, they mitigate floods and droughts, and one of the coolest things that I think is they really help to moderate extreme weather events.
31:24 Speaker 03 So, with the trees intact, they could help stop storms, you know, and do windbreaks and everything, and through the shading and cycling of water that they provide, they really help stabilize our climate.
31:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In what way does the Amazon forest mitigate drought?
31:41 Speaker 03 So, tropical forests really can act as their own local water pump, which I think is super interesting. So, forests 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 this is occurring because as, you know, storms and everything kind of comes in, and trees hold this water in the soil, and then through pumping out water through the little conduits of the trees, through the leaves, through evapotranspiration, they can then create their own clouds above them, their own rain, so they could really kind of help recycle and reuse, reuse this water.
32:25 Chuck Nice? Wow.
32:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:26 Chuck Nice? That's pretty intense.
32:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so what you're saying is they have so much stored water in their root system, in their leaf system, in their, in their, in the, in the, in the body, the physical body of the trees themselves, that they can survive a drought in ways that other, sort of, other, other vegetative regions of the world could not.
32:49 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
32:49 Speaker 03 Exactly.
32:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that what you mean?
32:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, because they're so dense, so big, that, yeah, that that's just more forested, vegetated 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 leaked somewhere else, and then it can't.
33:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It doesn't keep it, yeah.
33:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, it doesn't keep it as much, yep.
33:23 Speaker 04 Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
33:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, let's get to the satellite images where there's a mining operation that is, involves deforestation and contamination of surrounding soils and, and water, watersheds.
33:54 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
33:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, what, is this small compared to what you normally would concern yourself with on a global scale?
34:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is the trend line bad? Is that really what's going on?
34:08 Speaker 03 It still is concerning, yeah, because we do look at, you know, every little piece that's being deforested and where, because in, kind of putting a little bit of grounding, kind of on deforestation in, in the Amazon, is that to date, about around seventeen to eighteen percent of the Amazon basin has been deforested, so that's around a hundred million square kilometers.
34:31 Chuck Nice? Damn.
34:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, and most of this, the main driver is actually cattle ranches. Cattle ranches. Beef and dairy, and then second next is, is mining. 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. And there's been trends where deforestation did hit a peak around like 2000. But then in the 2010s, there is this really large effort and a very successful effort to really curb deforestation. And in 2012, deforestation had declined almost 80% in the Brazilian Amazon, which was a huge, large feat and it was a great, great success.
35:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, wait, that's, that's, excuse me, Jennifer. That's a low bar to say we succeeded by having less deforestation.
35:23 Speaker 03 I know, but it's still occurring.
35:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, you gotta up your, up your game there, Jennifer.
35:28 Speaker 03 True, we need to stop it. So.
35:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't celebrate less deforestation.
35:35 Speaker 03 That is true. I guess I try to celebrate small wins, but you're, you're right.
35:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, just small wins. So the part 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?
35:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, definitely. So that's a large effort that's happening is really restoration, regrowth. So just quickly, in addition to, to my role at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, I actually do work for a nature tech company that's doing just this, that's trying to restore and regenerate degraded forested lands. And that, it could work, it could definitely happen and because in a.
36:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But why wouldn't nature do that by itself? It did it the first time.
36:20 Speaker 03 We, we need to give it a leg up a little bit now. So, so that's the thing is that. Nature hates us, that's why.
36:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, it's just that I've been, I, I, where was I? Somewhere, I was in Hawaii or somewhere else where there's a volcanic.
36:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, shelf off to the side and maybe the volcano was like 80 years ago or the spillage and there's like plants growing in the lava field.
36:49 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
36:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nature is like, you know, I don't care if it's lava, I would grow there anyway. I'm going up a driveway, there's a crack in the pavement and a mushroom is coming up through the crack.
36:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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?
37:05 Chuck Nice? Maybe we should pave over the areas. Yes. We should pave them over and then just put some cracks in them.
37:13 Speaker 03 There you go.
37:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thank you, Chuck, for your.
37:18 Speaker 03 Problem solved.
37:19 Chuck Nice? There you go.
37:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Problem solved by Chuck.
37:21 Chuck Nice? We're all good.
37:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, that's such a great point. I mean, nature is resilient. Nature wins. It grows in cracks. It grows after lava fields. So, yes, nature will regenerate. But we're in a time crunch with with climate change. And so we want to give nature our leg up. We want to try to do assisted regeneration.
37:39 Chuck Nice? We're speeding the process. We're not really doing it. We're speeding the process.
37:43 Speaker 03 And also, there's this idea called additionality, where, yes, nature will regrow on its own, but we want to pull in additional carbon to make up for what we're putting in the atmosphere so we could try to get at this net zero. Because we're still constantly bookending 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 a land type, where you took a forest, you completely changed it into cattle grazing, mining, urban
38:24 Speaker 03 roads. But forest degradation is just as impactful. It covers the exact same area in the Amazon as what's being deforested. And it's harder to track and it's more pervasive because it's these smaller scales disturbances, things like fires or logging or drought stress. So 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.
38:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright, 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 in the atmosphere and, you know, what's the inventory of energy? Where's 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 you're worried about land. How many parameters are in your models? That must be huge.
39:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's a lot.
39:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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.
39:37 Chuck Nice? And Jennifer responds with, "That's why I'm a boss, Neil."
39:43 Chuck Nice? "That's why I'm a boss, because I do's it like that."
39:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got it. So you have all of this. And then we have these satellite data. It seems to be you might be limited in the precision 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 the, what are the, the, what are your knobs that you're turning in your software?
40:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're right that there are a lot of parameters that go into land processes, vegetation processes. And we work on all of those and we really use remote sensing a lot more now to help.
40:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Satellite, satellites.
40:25 Speaker 03 Yes, sorry. Remote sensing from satellite and remote sensing from drones as well. So airborne and.
40:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right here, we are remote sensing you over this.
40:36 Chuck Nice? True, true, very true.
40:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Remote sense you, you're in Berkeley, over the internet. So you mean satellite sensing?
40:45 Speaker 03 Yes, satellites, satellite sensors, yeah, sensors that are on satellite in space. That's our kind of remote sensing that we're doing. Um, yeah, yeah. So I, 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 LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging. And LiDAR is great because it can penetrate through the forest canopy and can give us good vertical information.
41:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, wait. Jennifer, if L stands for light and you're penetrating the forest canopy, you're not using visible light for this. Because last time I tried to look through a forest canopy, I couldn't. 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?
41:44 Speaker 03 Exactly. Yep, you're exactly right. Yeah, there's these multispectral bands that that we use on a lot of these different sensors that can do everything from visible light to near infrared. 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. So some things that we could detect are proxies for how plants are photosynthesizing and if they're healthy. And yeah, so there are sensors that have these specific spectral bands that are actually associated with chlorophyll
42:25 Speaker 03 content. So they could look at something called solar induced fluorescence, which is when, when the leaves in the vegetation canopy will light up when plants are absorbing white light and when like photosynthetic activity is occurring. So, yeah, yeah, these sensors are very helpful at looking at forest structure, different traits, different variables.
42:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Jennifer, it's, it's, it's pretty clear that in a mining operation 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.
43:04 Speaker 03 Uh huh.
43:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so really then, uh, your LiDAR and other sort of specialized satellites, uh, will help you get through the clouds because I, as, as if I remember my earth maps, rainforests have mostly cloud, we don't put telescopes on the equator because it's mostly cloud cover there.
43:25 Speaker 03 Exactly, yeah.
43:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that right? So half of what you gotta get through is a cloud, before you even get to the canopy, you gotta get through the clouds.
43:30 Speaker 03 Exactly. Yep, 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're a non-cloudy day. So it is challenging.
43:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, there's so much data, uh, when we think of, uh, you know, a, a buzz term, at least the last 10 years, has been crowdsourcing the analysis of data.
43:57 Chuck Nice? Right.
43:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 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?
44:07 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, e- exactly. Yeah, that there's so much more ways to be able to do crowdsourcing 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 a, exciting time to really be able to play with it in different, in different ways.
44:28 Chuck Nice? That's kind of what, uh, you know, uh, SkyeFi is all about, the, the-
44:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, the SkyeFi people, yeah.
44:34 Chuck Nice? Satellite constellation.
44:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Democratize-
44:36 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
44:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Democratize the access to data.
44:38 Chuck Nice? They made it, they made it so that anybody can pretend to be Jennifer, you know?
44:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, there are no substitutes.
44:48 Speaker 03 No, thank you.
44:50 Chuck Nice? And do you ever take, 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 degradative from something we've done?
45:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What he's saying is, what, have you done anything useful?
45:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I just translated what he said. Are you just, you're just analyzing but not helping the situation?
45:22 Speaker 03 We're just looking at really cool images. Yeah. That's so funny.
45:27 Chuck Nice? That was kind of the question, but I didn't mean it like that.
45:31 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, 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 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 threats and as long as we keep them healthy, um, you know, they could keep doing this over time. And, you know, we really need to change the incentives for countries and different commodity
46:14 Speaker 03 sectors to have this large economic incentive to help restore lands and make sure these forests are durable 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,
46:56 Speaker 03 you know, the top four like us and China 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 halt 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. And this means really reducing their emissions by a lot. So, and yeah, the Amazon forest benefits,
47:39 Speaker 03 you know, the entire world and it's really helpful to curb climate change and making sure we're thinking about these large ecological and social biodiversity aspects the Amazon brings.
47:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, Jennifer, thank you for sharing your expertise. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right, this has been StarTalk. You're the grass Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.
Previous Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Time Cloak with Charles Liu Next Debating Pluto's Planethood with Alan Stern Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
