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I’m Alex Kekesi. I’m the data visualizer with

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the NASA Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio.

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I’m Compton Tucker and my responsibility in this is the interpretation

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of what’s happening on land.

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And I’m Gene Feldman, I’m an oceanographer at NASA Goddard

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and I'm responsible for everything wet.

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And I'm Lauren Ward. I'm a video producer here at Goddard Space Flight Center

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and will be moderating the conversation.

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So with that, let's jump right into it - what exactly are we looking at?

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[Feldman] What we're looking at is the abundance of plants on land and in the ocean.

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In the ocean, we're looking at microscopic plants called phytoplankton.

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On the land, it's sort of an aggregate of all vegetation.

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But they breathe.

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They respire and they follow the sun in terms of their seasons.

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[Ward] Can you describe the changes that have happened in twenty years since this data set first began?

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[Feldman] Yeah, as crazy as it sounds, even though we have twenty years of data,

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we're still at a point of - in my mind - just the wonder of it.

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I could just sit and watch this for hours.

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And for me, I've got look at it two different ways.

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One is just to take a big step back, and look at the world as whole.

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Don't focus on anything in particular, but just - what am I seeing?

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What are the patterns that I'm seeing?

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And the main thing is that there's this seasonal cycle moving north and south.

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The land and the ocean they both bloom with the rising sun.

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If you just step back and watch it, you'll see this wave of green move north and south with the sun.

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[Tucker] Back and forth, and you see that so dramatically in this visualization.

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And Gene and I have been studying this for a long time using satellite data.

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But what's really cool for us, is that you see it for the oceans as well as the land.

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[Feldman] Yeah, which we never saw before the satellites. [Tucker] Yes.

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[Ward] Is that what makes this viz so special?

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[Feldman] What's so critical about this,

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this is the only data set that we have that really shows the biological response to environmental change.

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We have we all these other instruments that measure how the Earth changes:

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what the temperature, the winds, the currents, rainfall - things like that. We have all of that.

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But this data set shows what does the Earth's biology do in response to that environmental change.

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[Ward] And I think that's one of the strengths of the SVS,

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is being able to show that data in a way that a normal, average person can really respond to.

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[Feldman] And we you've been able to do, Alex, is you make it beautiful.

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[Tucker] It is very attractive.

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[Feldman] We're looking at the Living Earth.

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We're looking at our home planet change day in and day out.

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And...there's a visceral connection that we have to this home of ours.

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[Tucker]Yes....

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There's only planet we know which has an active biosphere, or a biosphere, and that's our planet.

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We know from the Hubble Space Telescope there are one to two trillion galaxies in the universe - galaxies.

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And this is the only planet we know which has life, and its very special and its very dear

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and this representation, to me, captures that.

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[Kekesi] Yeah, I mean, on my part,

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I mean really the challenge here was just kinda wrangling all this--twenty years worth of data.

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So I mean, you guys did an amazing job at collecting it all,

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and creating data sets that can be easily be used together.

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I mean with the biosphere, it's primarily SeaWIFS, VIIRS, Aqua/MODIS.

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[Feldman] You look at this image and there's so much here that we still don't understand.

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[Tucker] I agree with Gene.

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We're looking at the consequence of instruments on satellites not looking away from Earth,

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but looking at Earth, through time, how things change, how things vary or don't.

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It's just fascinating to look at and it's so dynamic and this is what's great about time series.

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[Ward] Well, that's one of the thoughts I had was that,

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the people in this room right now,

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if you ask yourself the question, "What have I done to make sure that the Earth is a healthier and safer place?",

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I think the people in this room can fairly say that they've done quite a lot in collecting the data

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and then creating the data in a way people can understand it.

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[Feldman] What I love about this is there are no country boundaries.

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There's no distinction between land science and ocean science.

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It's one world, one planet, one home.

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[Tucker] This is our Living Planet.

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[Feldman] Exactly, and the more we, as humans on this planet, inhabitants of the planet,

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look at this as one entity that we are all responsible for,

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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.

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We have to look at this as one planet

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where what happens in place effects what happens in another place.

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One planet, one climate, one people.

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We're all in this together.

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[music]