2001 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| The COLORS OF LIFE: SEAWIFS CAPTURES THREE YEARS OF THE CARBON CYCLE | G01-023 | 03/29/01 | 00:32:00 | Everything about life on Earth depends on life in the ocean. After all, this is a blue planet, with about 70 percent of the total surface awash with one of the most common molecular compounds known: water. The oceans regulate the planet's biological wellbeing. But water alone is not enough. Life in its most common forms demands a ready supply of a particular element if it's to thrive: carbon. It's the same stuff that composes lowly coal, and it's the core of proud tree trunks. Carbon is the root of all life on Earth, and as it's complex dance carries it through the biosphere, the Earth's state of health responds.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Cycle of Life (Reporters Package) - This is what we know: the Earth is a water planet, with more than 70 percent of its surface covered by it. Carbon is the stuff of life, the fundamental chemical that builds tree trunks and bird wings and human hearts. Water and carbon dance to a seasonal rhythm, pulsing to a beat of growth and death, propelled by forces tied to a tilted planet flying around the sun.
After that, it gets complicated. Here's what we don't know: by what means does carbon move through the biosphere--where does it go, how does it get there, and what keeps the cycle moving? What's the future of life on Earth in a post-industrial age? Welcome to the beginning of the answer. After three years of constant data collection, NASA's SeaWiFS program is announcing a major step in understanding the Earth's carbon cycle.
SOT (FELDMAN 2:20:00/ 2:20:45)
The waters of the ocean contain more than 50 times as much carbon as the atmosphere and land combined. Considering that almost every living thing is made of carbon, a detailed study of how it moves and interacts is vital. With SeaWiFS, NASA literally mapped the direct result of carbon uptake in the natural world, namely growth in plant life. It turns out that the world's star botanical performer is little larger than a single bacteria...vast, drifting fields of the stuff...called phytoplankton.
SOT (Behrenfeld 2:00:39)
By watching changes in phytoplankton growth around the world, Behrenfeld and his colleagues actually monitored the carbon cycle.
Experts say this research has profound implications for long term monitoring of planetary health, from broad biosphere issues to climate change. It's a baseline, they say, against which future measurements will be compared.
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| ITEM (2): Earth's Check-Up - If the Earth had a heartbeat, itÕs pulse has just been taken. Using three years of continual data from an orbiting instrument called SeaWiFS, NASA scientists have amassed a first look at how carbon moves through the biosphere. Carbon is one of the most essential elements for life, and experts say that this research is a major step in the effort to monitor overall planetary health, from climate change to the rhythms of life in oceans and on land.
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| ITEM (3): Think Small: Phytoplankton And The Carbon Cycle's Foundation - The ocean is filled with life. One of the most important varieties found there is the most humble: phytoplankton. They're tiny, single celled plant organisms that form the root of the oceanic food chain.
For years, researchers have only been able to study phytoplankton in discrete areas and synthesize a variety of suppositions about how it interacts with the natural world But a global look at these miniscule plants has not been possible. Until now.
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| ITEM (4): Colorful Shadows: Inferring Carbon's Cycle - Following three years of continual data collected by the SeaWiFS instrument, NASA has gathered the first record of photosynthetic productivity in the oceans. A measurement of photosynthesis is essentially a measurement of successful growth, and growth means successful use of ambient carbon. The process begins with a measurement of surface chlorophyll concentration.
Chlorophyll is the material that allows plant cells to convert sunlight into energy, thus enabling them to grow. Healthy color signatures indicate the successful use of carbon, the fundamental building block for life. In other words, lots of green indicates lots of chlorophyll; lots of chlorophyll implies healthy photosynthesis; strong photosynthesis indicates growth, and growth indicates successful use of carbon.
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| ITEM (5): THE COLORS OF LIFE, THE COLORS OF THE WORLD
Water Planet: Living Planet - NASA designed SeaWiFS to study ocean processes. But the mission has
surpassed its initial design goals. By carefully calibrating the sensor, experts have been able to use SeaWiFS data to monitor life on land, too.
The project has noticed an increase in plant productivity on land in the past three years. Scientists believe the increased productivity is tied to increased rainfall averages connected to the most recent El Nino phenomena.
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| ITEM (6): The Carbon Record, Past And Present - Here we see a graph showing ambient atmospheric carbon going back
roughly a thousand years. Since 1958, researchers working at a field station near the Mauna Loa caldera in Hawaii have collected data about ambient carbon dioxide levels once an hour. Their findings, daily averages
constituting the longest continuous record of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the world, are powerful.
Since they began tracking it, the record of ambient atmospheric carbon dioxide shows a steady increase, year after year. The data shows an annual pulse with respect to the presence of carbon, coinciding with seasonal variations. That pulse not only marks the heartbeat of the cycle, but also gives researchers a point of reference for future study into how the cycle may be changing.
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ITEM (7): THE CARBON CYCLE
Carbon And The Land -- The Fast Cycle - During the spring and summer, terrestrial plant life drinks carbon dioxide in from the atmosphere and, combined with water and nutrients from the soil, grows. This is called carbon sequestration. But in the fall and winter, significant parts of that growth die off, and that carbon goes back into system..
Another way that carbon recycles following the terrestrial growth process begins when the natural life of a plant ends. When a tree, for example, ultimately dies and begins to decompose, all of the carbon sequestered in its body begins the cyclic process of passing back into the environment.
Fire can accelerate this, sending plumes of carbon-laden aerosols into the atmosphere, as well as leaving carbon-rich ash deposits on the ground for further decomposition and recycling.
Carbon And The Ocean -- The Slow Cycle - The oceans are vast, and their processes as complex as their waters are deep.
Phytoplankton absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and nutrient rich waters and grows in wide colonies called blooms. These blooms are highly dependent on surrounding environmental conditions.
As phytoplankton grows, it forms the foundation for the food chain, thus passing carbon up to higher life forms. But just as on land, links in the ocean's chain of life also break, and stored carbon settles out of the top layers of water. A portion of it gets swept back to the surface as upwellings, only to begin again, but a major portion sinks to the bottom, becoming what oceanographers call "marine snow." This decomposing biological matter literally precipitates through the water and builds up on the ocean bottom, essentially sequestered from the rest of the Earth for geologically long periods of time.
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| ITEM (8): Deep Water Feast: Upwellings Bring Nutrients To The Surface - Large phytoplankton blooms tend to coincide with natural phenomena that drive that nutrient rich water to the surface. The process is called upwelling. Here's what's happening: winds coming off principal land masses push surface layers of water away from the shore. Into the resulting wind-driven void deeper water underneath the surface layers rushes in toward the coast, bringing with it nutrients for life to bloom.
ItÕs different on the equator. There, water currents on either side of the hemispheric dividing line are generally moving in opposite directionsÜagain due to planetary rotation and the Coriolis effect. As those currents rush past each other they ostensibly "peel back" the surface of the ocean, creating a void for deeper water to rush in and take its place.
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| ITEM (9): Spring Bloom In The North Atlantic - The annual bloom of phytoplankton in the North Atlantic is one of the biggest regular blooms in the world. The area covered is larger than the territory covered by the Amazon rainforest in South America. In the open waters of North Atlantic, it's believed that lots of carbon initially taken up by phytoplankton ultimately settles to the ocean floor, as the region is not densely populated by zooplankyton, the next logical rung on the food chain.
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| ITEM (10): Western Central America - Along the West Coast of Central America we see extraordinary levels of phytoplankton growth, due largely to cold water upwellings along the eastern basin of the Pacific Ocean. This area rich in life supports a healthy and vibrant diversity of species, each with unique strategies for survival, but all ultimately dependent on the first link in the food chain. In human terms this has direct relevance to fishermen in the region, as the area is world famous for its significant tuna stocks.
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| ITEM (11): Equatorial Atlantic --
River Outlets Support Life - South America presents two excellent examples of river outlets where phytoplankton tend to thrive. Along the northern part of the continent the mouth of the Orinoco River opens into the Caribbean. Along the Eastern side of South America, the mighty Amazon exits its thousand mile journey. At the end of each, notice the bright red tails waving against the largely blue-green background of surrounding Atlantic ocean. That's the signature of intense photosynthesis happening...billions of phytoplankton making their home in those currents, feeding off carbon saturated foodstuffs and turning sunlight into energy for life.
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| ITEM (12): A Splash Of Color In The Pacific - The bloom associated with the 1997 to 1998 El Nino to La Nina transition event splashed across the Pacific Ocean like pigment thrown across empty canvas. Jetting from west to east, the explosive, yet short lived growth spurt there coincided with significant upwellings of cold water corresponding with the onset of La Nina. During the powerful 1997 El Nino event, SeaWiFS recorded little or no significant growth of phytoplankton in the equatorial Pacific.
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| ITEM (13): Pulse Of The Planet - Explosion In The Galapagos - SeaWiFS images documented the rapid demise of El Nino in the waters around the Galapagos Islands. The images show a explosion in plankton growth as the warm El Nino waters blamed for choking off essential ocean nutrients are replaced by deep, cold waters. The false color images, which document plankton concentrations a period from May 9 - 24 1998, show that life in the region to the west archipelago returned in remarkable abundance. High concentrations are shown red. Areas blocked by clouds are shown in white.
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| ITEM (14): SeaWiFS Around The Nation - Throughout the duration of the SeaWiFS project, affiliated researchers have produced a series of high-resolution images to help them better understand seasonal changes in ocean and land-based plant life in regions around the U.S. Each sequence begins with true color images from selected dates and transitions to computer-enhanced images which highlight plankton and sediment concentrations. The images focus on seventeen coastal regions around the U.S. including:
Charleston area
Miami region
New Orleans and Gulf Coast
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| ITEM (15): A Unique Vantage For Tempests - SeaWiFS provided a unique perspective to a variety of natural disasters, including fires in Florida, Mexico, and Indonesia, floods in China and the
progress of Hurricanes such as Bonnie and Danielle.
Florida Fires - June 1998
Mexico Fires - May 1998
Indonesian Fires - October 1997
Flooding on the Yangtze River - August 1998
Hurricane Bonnie - September, 1998
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| ITEM (16): Fires Send Smoke East
-While fires tormented authorities and residents across the western United
States in late summer of 2000, evidence of the disaster's immense scale floated across the country. In this SeaWiFS image taken August 15, 2000, heavy smoke and aerosols can be seen travelling as far East as the Great Lakes. The patches of amber that fade onto the screen show information collected by the space agency's TOMS (Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer) instrument. The TOMS data shows that heavy smoke from the western blazes significantly raised ambient particulate concentrations more than a thousand miles from the fires themselves.
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| ITEM (17): Dust In The Wind
- A massive sandstorm blowing off the desert in northwest Africa blanketed hundreds of thousands of square miles over the eastern Atlantic Ocean with a dense cloud of particles. The nature of this particular storm was first seen by SeaWiFS on Saturday, February 26, 2000 when it had stretched more than 1000 miles out to sea.
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| ITEM (18): Floods In Mozambique
- Following weeks of heavy rains in late winter 2000, massive flooding inundated wide tracts of eastern and southern Africa, displacing more than 200,000 people. Torrential rain fell over immense areas. Vastly overflowing rivers sent much of that water rushing towards Mozambique. In the following SeaWiFS image of Cyclone Leon-Eline, taken February 23, notice the wide expanse of territory affected by the storm system.
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| ITEM (19): SeaWiFS at The Olympic Games - During the Olympic Games in September, 2000, the SeaWiFS team captured a dramatic mosaic of Australian images. Stitched together, the pictures depict the Australian continent in vibrant color. It was across much of the land shown here that 11,000 runners carried the Olympic torch more than 17,000 miles, on a route that ultimately led to the lighting of the flame in Sydney's new stadium. This tour of Australia captures both inland features as well as dramatic oceanic hues from the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef.
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| ITEM (20): Coloring The Future: The MODIS Instrument
- The past three years of carbon cycle data stand as a starting point from which newer, more advanced instruments can take the lead and continue the work.
One of those instruments is called MODIS (the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer). It's currently on orbit on the spacecraft called Terra, and a second, similar instrument is being readied for launch on Terra's sibling satellite called Aqua.
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| ITEM (21): SeaWiFS: Big Returns From A Small Package - SeaWiFS (Sea-Viewing Wide Field of View Sensor) is the scientific portion of the OrbView-2 satellite, orbiting The Earth at an altitude of 423 miles (705 kilometers). By providing a regular picture of the planet's color, SeaWiFS helps researchers learn about the state of the world's interconnected ecosystems. OrbView-2 blasted into space on August 1, 1997 lifted by an extended Pegasus rocket. SeaWiFS is considered a low cost mission, many orders of magnitude less expensive than other Earth observing instruments. In scientific terms, however, this little instrument has proved to be one of the space agency's star performers, it's highly focused mission parameters netting huge scientific returns for researchers studying a wide variety of questions.
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