Channel: TDC

Category: Science & Technology

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Description: Incredible before-and-after satellite images of our dynamic planet. Watch Part 1 in this series: youtube.com/watch?v=Unyu4JpzXJ4 Subscribe to TDC: youtube.com/TheDailyConversation Source: NASA's Images of Change: go.nasa.gov/2iQG005 Music: "Impact Prelude" by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100617 Artist: incompetech.com Video by Bryce Plank and Robin West Script: These impressive images showing the passing of time, help us to better understand the dramatic changes constantly happening all over our planet. In just two days, a mile long block of ice split from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier and dropped into the sea. This is the fastest melting glacier in Antarctica. These so-called calving events are increasing as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s slide into the ocean accelerates. Infrared sensors make the forests of China red in this image showing the Yangtze River before and after the completion of the Three Gorges Dam in 2012. Construction of the Dam — which you can see in the bottom righthand corner — forced over one million people to relocate, and triggered 3,400 earthquakes. The effects of thirty years of coal mining in Wyoming’s Power River Basin are seen here. This area produced 22 percent of the U.S. coal supply in 2014, but USGS officials estimate that these mines have less than 20 years of recoverable coal remaining. Looking North to Greenland’s ice sheet, we see the exceptionally early melting that is now taking place. Melting encourages more melting when ponds develop by darkening the surface, absorbing more sunlight than ice does. That meltwater also creates and flows through crevasses to the base of the glacier, speeding up ice flow. In Kamchatka, an unusually warm, dry winter contributed to a massive wildfire that burned nearly 600,000 acres in a matter of weeks. Not only is the fire glowing orange in the 2016 image, but you can also see where the blaze was naturally contained by rivers to the east and west. In the 25 years between when these two images of India’s sprawling capital were taken, its population nearly tripled from 9.4 to 25 million and is now second only to Tokyo. Delhi is expected to have 37 million residents by 2030. On a plateau 18,670 feet in the Peruvian Andes we find Qori Kalis, the largest glacier in the world’s largest tropical ice cap. In 1978 it was still advancing, but 41 years later it had retreated dramatically, leaving behind a 60 meter deep lake. Switching gears, we see the explosion of the shrimp farm industry on the western shoreline of Sonora, Mexico. While it has created profits and jobs in this arid region, concerns have arisen about its effect on the ecosystem and over property rights to communal coastal lands. A continuous drought has taken its toll on the American southwest. Texas’ Lake Meredith is just a fraction of what it was in 1990, causing much of what little vegetation there was in the region to continue dying off. And in Iowa we see the effects of near-record flooding along parts of the Missouri River. After a winter of heavy snow and rain, dams in Montana and Dakota were forced to send record amounts of water into the floodplain, causing levees downstream to fail, inundating communities like Hamburg. I hope you found this tour of our beautiful, ever-changing earth interesting. Until next time, for TDC, I’m Bryce Plank.