Down To Earth: A podcast for Geoscientists by Geoscientist

Imagine a world where scientists can predict natural disasters before they strike, where we can monitor the health of our planet in real-time, and where we can uncover the secrets of Earth's hidden resources. Welcome to the future of geoscience, where AI is revolutionizing our understanding of the planet! In this season of Down to Earth, we’re exploring the uncharted territories of AI in geoscience, from the groundbreaking capabilities of supercomputing to the revelatory insights of Geospatial Foundation Models. As AI challenges and reshapes our understanding of Earth's systems, it also presents some complex, and sometimes unexpected, cultural and social implications. Through deep conversations with visionaries, innovators, and researchers, we'll explore the promises and pitfalls of this technological revolution and we’ll dare to ask the ultimate question: Will AI unlock the secrets of our planet, or, will it lead us down a precarious rabbit hole, we have yet to imagine? Find out this fall on season 6 of Down to Earth: A Podcast FOR Geoscientists BY Geoscientists!

From its role in sustaining and nurturing our bodies to its cultural and social significance, food is a key component of human life. It’s also in serious jeopardy due to climate change. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Inbal Becker-Reshef about her work in the field of food security. Together, we delve into the critical role of geospatial technologies in monitoring agricultural systems, assessing crop health, and predicting yield fluctuations through programs including the GEOGLAM Crop Monitor for Early Warning initiative. Through our discussion, Dr. Becker-Reshef teaches us how geoscientific approaches can shape the future of food security and sustainability.

According to the UNU Institute for Water, Environment and Health, water-related disasters (WRDs), including floods and droughts, account for 90% of natural disasters. These disasters result in significant loss of life each year, not to mention the billions spent on managing and rebuilding afterwards. As the global water crisis continues to grow, so too does our need for tools, techniques, and policy that will help us more effectively predict, respond to, and prevent WRDs. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Hamid Mehmood, Economic Affairs Officer with United Nations ESCAP to find out how we can address WRDs with technology.

What’s the difference between glaciers and sea ice and why do we need to be studying sea ice to better understand climate change? In this episode, we speak to two experts who study sea ice in the arctic and antarctic respectively. Dr. Anja Frost and Dr. Sven Jacobsen share their concerns about the pressing issue of the Arctic’s vanishing sea ice, the need to understand the relationship between ocean waves and sea ice depletion, and how remote sensing techniques are improving our understanding of Arctic sea ice changes. Together, both Anja and Sven use their expertise to support ships travelling through the arctic. Their research helps to optimise ship navigation, reduce emissions, and improve the technologies and processes for studying sea ice using remote sensing.

As far back as 2014, Dr. Eric Rignot, specialist in glaciology, has been informing us that some of our glaciers are melting faster than we can save them. Yet, this knowledgeable and passionate scientist continues to advocate for hope. In this episode we’ll dive deep into the meltwater to not only understand glacier behaviour, but how we can proactively deal with the results.

Methane is a dangerous gas has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. Methane is a major contributor to global warming. But the good news is, unlike CO2, methane has a very short atmospheric lifespan – around 10 years to be exact. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Ritesh Gautam who is an expert in atmospheric sciences, explores the impact of methane as a potent greenhouse gas and shares news of a new satellite mission that will help us cut methane emissions in half by 2030!

Whenever we think of greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is top of mind. But a more nefarious gas is gaining notoriety: Methane. Not just restricted to agricultural emissions, methane is also found in the Earth’s permafrost, which is melting at an increased rate due to climate change. It’s a vicious cycle that we seriously need to interrupt. So in this episode, we delve into the critical issue of permafrost thaw and its implications for methane release with Dr. Annett Bartsch. Dr. Bartsch, a leading researcher of permafrost, shares the satellite observations and modeling techniques used to track permafrost thaw and highlights the consequences of methane emissions on our climate system.

Wetlands are the Earth’s greatest natural carbon stores, however, since 1900, we have lost 64% of our wetlands due to both human activity and climate change. Coastal wetlands and deltas–wetlands that form as rivers–are particularly vulnerable due to their position at the land-sea interface and many are, in fact, sinking. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Marc Simard about the crucial role of wetlands in climate regulation and adaptation. We also dig into his Delta-X project to look at how he and his team are combining remote sensing and in situ measurements to understand how the Mississippi River Delta is growing and sinking, and how we can apply this research to protecting deltas around the world.

The Global Carbon Cycle refers to the continuous flow of carbon from the land and water, through the atmosphere and living organisms. Within the cycle there are carbon sinks and carbon emitters. As one of the largest reservoirs of carbon on Earth, forests play a huge role in the global carbon cycle. But how do we know? In this episode, we speak to geoscientist Dr. Ralph Dubayah to explore the applications of GEDI and NISAR in assessing carbon capture in Earth's forests. Dr. Dubayah sheds light on the incredible capabilities of GEDI, a lidar-based instrument on the International Space Station, which measures forest structure in three dimensions, providing precise estimates of biomass and carbon content. He also shares insights into NISAR, a forthcoming joint NASA-ISRO mission that uses synthetic aperture radar to track surface deformation and offer a comprehensive understanding of forest biomass changes. Throughout the episode, Dr. Dubayah showcases exciting discoveries made possible by these technologies, highlighting their potential for revolutionizing our understanding of forest carbon capture and its crucial role in mitigating climate change.

In a world grappling with the pressing challenges of climate change, I bring you stories of optimism, resilience, and scientific insight: Welcome to Season five of Down to Earth: A podcast for geoscientists, by geoscientists! This season is being sponsored by The Remote Sensing Environment, Analysis and Climate Technologies technical committee of the I-Triple-E Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. Together, we'll be speaking with some amazing geoscientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding the intricate workings of our planet's climate system. From uncovering the secrets behind the stunning rate of glacier melt in our polar regions, to unraveling the climate impacts on our food systems, their work provides us with the knowledge and insight to change our current trajectory towards a much brighter future. I also gather tips from these brilliant minds for how we can each contribute, one change at a time, to our survival in the face of global warming! So, get ready to be inspired, enlightened, and empowered as we bridge the gap between scientific research and the urgent action needed to protect our home. Tune in this fall to the Down to Earth podcast and be part of the global movement to create a sustainable and resilient future for generations to come.

The open science movement is an experiment, but it’s an experiment that has a lot of merit when it comes to its vision of equitable transparency, accessibility and collaboration for better science, and a better world. So how do we begin to transition our own practices towards those of open science? In this episode, we speak with Julia Stewart Lowndes, Founding Director of Openscapes, and her collaborator, Erin Robinson, CEO and Co-Founder of Metadata Game Changers, about Openscapes, an organization that engages, empowers, and amplifies researchers with open habits and mindsets for data-intensive science.

Open science has been an almost exclusively voluntary endeavor for the past two decades, with passionate individuals piecing together collaboratives, nonprofits, grants, and donations to support their work of ensuring science is open and accessible. A relief to these dedicated individuals, as the concept of open science has gained in popularity, so too has new funding started to emerge. However, alongside the boon of no longer having to do open science as a side hustle, there are also unanticipated consequences to funding what was originally a voluntary endeavor. In this episode, we speak to Kaitlin Thaney, Executive Director of the nonprofit initiative, Invest in Open Infrastructure about the exciting opportunities and potential pitfalls of building financial capacity for open science.

Part of the thinking behind the open science movement is that, if science is open, more people will trust the scientific process. But, as previous guests have pointed out, opening up science requires more than just the act of making it open. It also requires letting people know the science is out there, and ensuring it is findable, accessible, and reproducible! In today's episode, we speak with Professor Christopher Jackson, Director of Sustainable Geoscience at Jacobs, Visiting Professor of Basin Analysis at Imperial College, and regular face on the BBC, about how we can use science communication to increase the general public's understanding of science. We also talk to Dr. Sara El-Gebali, Project leader at SciLifeLab-Data Centre and co-founder of FAIRPoints, about applying the FAIR principles to ensure that the science we communicate about is ethical and findable!

There’s a technological revolution happening right now that is having a massive impact on our interactions with each other, and the world around us. That revolution? Artificial Intelligence. Touted as a tool that will enable the average individual to generate groundbreaking developments for the betterment of humanity, AI is being seen as a panacea for many of our challenges in healthcare, education, agriculture, and transport. But as the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility”. What are the ethical implications of AI and what are we doing to address these? Further, how does AI fit into the Open Science movement? In this episode, we chat with Dr. Sasha Luccioni, Research Scientist, Hugging Face an organization focused on democratizing AI through open methods, to get some answers.

It’s all well and good to have open source software, but if end-users have no clue how to operate it, open data becomes useless. That’s why Open Education is another important component of open science. In this episode, we speak with Dr. Leah Wasser, Executive Director of pyOpenSci, who developed a publicly accessible curriculum to teach python and R to anyone who wants to learn!

How can we ensure open source is open to everyone? In this episode we speak to Demetris Cheatham, Senior Director of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at GitHub, about how she’s building “open opportunities” and equity into a diversity, inclusion, and belonging strategy to ensure GitHub’s infrastructure is just.

Open science and open data easily go hand-in-hand, but one area of open science that’s often forgotten is open source. What is open source and how does it allow us to actually use open data? In this episode, we speak to Yuvi Panda, Co-Founder of 2i2C – a nonprofit devoted to developing, operating, and supporting infrastructure for interactive computing – about how we can make tools work for the open science movement.

Every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is being created. This is an unfathomable number, but the reality is, we are constantly generating data with every app we use on or phone, every purchase we make, even every time we see a doctor. As the creators of data, what rights do we have to governing it? And with the push to make data more open, how we can ensure our science continues to uphold the values of ethics, justice, and equity? In this episode, we speak to Sativa Cruz, Applied Scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Reseach Institute at NASA Ames Research Center and member of the NASA Indigenous Peoples Initiative, to explore the data sovereignty considerations that must be addressed when embracing open science.

Data is EVERYWHERE. In fact, there’s so much of it, we now have the term “Big Data” to describe the increased volume and velocity at which we’re accruing data. With such a large quantity and assortment of data available, it begs the question: How the heck are we going to organize it and make it open? In this episode, we bring this question to two open data experts: Dr. Monica Granados, Open Climate Campaign Manager at Creative Commons and Dr. Gracielle Higino, Open Science mentor and consultant at the University of British Columbia.

Climate change. Poverty. Inequality. Violence. These days, we are facing an unprecedented number of global challenges that require collaboration across countries to resolve. That’s why some scientists in particular are pushing for a move towards open science – namely, science that is more transparent, accessible and inclusive. But what exactly is open science, and what does it entail? In this episode, we speak with Yo Yehudi, Executive Director of Open Life Science to examine exactly what’s involved in this movement to make science more accessible!