I’m Alex Kekesi. I’m the data visualizer with
the NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio.
I’m Compton Tucker and my responsibility in this is the interpretation
of what’s happening on land.
And I’m Gene Feldman, I’m an oceanographer at NASA Goddard
and I'm responsible for everything wet. And I'm Lauren
Ward. I'm a video producer here at Goddard Space Flight Center
and will be moderating the conversation. So with that, let's jump
right into it - what exactly are we looking at?
What we're looking at is the abundance of plants on land and in the ocean
and in the ocean we're looking at microscopic plants called phytoplankton
on the land its sort of an aggregate of all vegetation.
But they breathe, they
they respire and the follow the sun in terms of their seasons
Can you describe the changes that happened in twenty years since this data
set first began?
Yeah, as crazy as it sounds, even though we have twenty of data
we're still at a point of - in my mind - just the wonder
of it. I could just sit and watch this for hours.
And for me, I've got look at it two different ways. One is just to take
a big step back, and look at the world as whole
Don't focus on anything in particular, but just - what am I seeing?
What are the patterns that I'm seeing? And the main thing
is that there's this seasonal cycle moving north
and south. The land and the ocean
the both bloom with the rising sun.
If you just set back and watch it you'll see this wave of green
move north and south with the sun.
Back and forth, and you see that
so dramatically in this visualization.
And Gene and I have been studying this for a long time using satellite data
But what's really cool for us is that you see it for the oceans as well as the land
Yeah, which we never saw before the satellites
Is that what makes this viz so special?
What's so critical about this, this is the only data set
that we have that really shows the biological response
to environmental change. We have we all these other instruments
that measure how the Earth changes, what the temperature,
the winds, the currents, rainfall - things like that. We have
all of that. But this data set shows what does the Earth's
biology do in response to that environmental change
And think that's one strengths of the SVS is being able to show that data
in a way that a normal, average person can respond to.
And we you've been able to do, Alex, is you make it beautiful.
It is very attractive.
We're looking at the Living Earth, we're looking at our home planet
change day in and day out
and there's a visceral connection that we have to this
home of ours.
We know, there's only planet we know that has
and active biosphere, or a biosphere, and that's our
planet. We know from the Hubble Space Telescope there are one to two trillion
galaxies in the universe - galaxies - and this
only planet that we know which as life, and its very special and its very
dear and this representation to me, captures that.
I mean, on my part, I mean really the challenge here was kinda
wrangling all this twenty years worth of data
so I mean, you guys did an amazing job at collecting
it all, and creating
data sets that can be easily be used together. I mean with the biosphere
its primarily SeaWIFS, VIIRS
Aqua, is it Aqua? Modis - yeah
You look at this image and there's so much here that
we still don't understand.
I agree with Gene. We're looking at the consequence
of instruments on satellites not looking away from Earth, but
looking at Earth through time, how thing change, how things
vary or don't. It's just fascinating to look at
and its so dynamic and this is what's great about time series
Well that's one of the thoughts I had was that the people in this room right now
if you ask yourself the question, "What have I done to make sure
that the Earth is a healthier and safer place?", I think the people in this room
can fairly say that they've done quite a lot in collecting
the data and then creating the data a in a way people can understand it
What I love about this is there are no country boundries
there's no distinction between land science and ocean science
It's one world, one planet, one home
This is our Living Planet.
Exactly, and the more we as humans
on this planet, inhabitants of the planet, look as this as
one entity that we are all responsible for, I think
I think the sooner we will be able to come up with solutions to a lot of the problems
that we're facing right now. We have to look at this as one planet
where what happens in place effects what happens in another place
One planet, one climate, one people
we're all in this together.