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- Pine trees, bumblebees,
and Swiss cheese?

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What do these all
have in common?

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It's carbon!

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Carbon can be found
almost everywhere.

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Find out just how important
carbon is to life on Earth

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next on "Real World."

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[exciting music]

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♪ ♪

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Carbon is not only the fourth
most-abundant element

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in the universe,
it's also one of the essential

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building blocks of life.

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It's in our bodies
and in our food,

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but what is carbon, anyway?

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- Carbon is one of the basic
building blocks

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of life on Earth.

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It's found all over the place,

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like in animals,
plants,

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and it's also found
in nonliving material

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like rocks and the atmosphere.

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- Carbon is important
for many reasons,

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including providing
lots of the power that we use.

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It's found in coal.

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It's found in fossil fuels.

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It's found, really, in all of
our main sources of energy.

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We can find carbon in many
different types of source pools.

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There's a lot of carbon
in the ocean.

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That's actually one of our main
carbon pools on our planet.

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You can find carbon
in the atmosphere

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as different gases,

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such as carbon dioxide,

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and you find lots of carbon
in the terrestrial areas.

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So in plants, in trees,
or in soils.

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- So what else do we know
about this carbon cycle?

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- So the carbon cycle is
the cycle of where carbon goes,

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and also how carbon moves from
one pool into a different one.

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- Carbon cycle is a system,

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this Earth process,

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that transfers carbon

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from the plant material

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to the atmosphere

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back to the plant material;

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from the oceans to the
atmosphere, back to the oceans;

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and from far below ground,

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from fossilized carbon pools
to the atmosphere.

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- So fast-moving carbon,
for example,

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is what gets stored in plants.

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You have photosynthesis
that happens,

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which is essentially,
really, a mechanism

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by which plants are able
to absorb carbon

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from the atmosphere

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and they essentially
use the carbon to make sugar,

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which is the basis

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of all carbohydrates.

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And that carbon that's fixed
there in these plants

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is fast carbon.

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- Slower carbon will refer to,
over time,

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sort of the integration of,
perhaps, atmospheric carbon

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into the ocean and down into
the depths of the ocean.

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One manner in which
it's transferred

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from the atmosphere
to the oceans might be

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through photosynthesis that's
done by plankton in the ocean,

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and then the consumption
of that plankton

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by higher level species.

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And then the eventual decay of
some of that organic material,

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those species will,
to some extent,

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decay and be transferred
to the bottom of the ocean

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where the carbon that used to be
part of those species

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gets locked away
in ocean sediments.

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- Humans have a huge impact
on the carbon cycle

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because, essentially,
we are changing how it is.

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We are taking a lot of these
pools of slow carbon

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and burning it

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and putting it
into the atmosphere.

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So we're really changing
where the carbon is

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and that has
some big implications.

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So we're not really changing
how much carbon is there.

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The amount of carbon
is always the same,

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but what we're changing
is where it is

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and what form it's in.

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So if you put the carbon--
take the slow carbon,

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you burn it, then you put it
into the atmosphere,

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it gets expanded,
and the atmosphere

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is a much smaller pool

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than the ocean is, for example,

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or our terrestrial reservoirs
are.

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- Humans have a really important
role in the carbon cycle.

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But how does NASA
measure carbon as it moves?

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- We have different ways
of measuring carbon.

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For example, we work on
measuring the carbon

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that's stored in trees.

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And to do that, we use different
types of instruments.

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We do field work,
and we also use satellite data.

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For example,
data from some new satellites

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like ICESat-2 and GEDI.

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- One way we do
those measurements

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is with satellite imagery

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or satellite estimates.

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We use LIDAR instruments

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that are in space

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that are pointed
down at the Earth

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that shoot LIDAR pulses
towards the Earth

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and measure the time
that it takes

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for those pulses
to return

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to the satellite
sensor.

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From those pieces
of information,

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we can learn about
the height of forests

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and other structural
characteristics

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of the forest canopy.

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- In addition to using
the satellite data,

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we also have to do field work.

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We go in the field and we
measure what species it is.

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We get the biometry of the tree,
which is--

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a biometry is measuring
of the living things.

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We take a tape and
we put it around the tree

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and we measure
the circumference,

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measure the height of a tree,

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and then we compare that
to what we're getting

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from the satellite.

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- We would like to get
a better understanding

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of where carbon exists
on the landscape.

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- Carbon really is essential
to all life as we know it,

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and we can see the carbon cycle
in motion

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thanks to NASA's eyes
in the sky,

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on the ground,
and in space.

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"C" ya next time
on "Real World."