Friday, Mar 11, 2022 • 50min
What Lies Beneath
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From our planet's underwater caves to its ancient soils, there are entire worlds right beneath our feet. This hour, we explore the subterranean forces that shape our lives above the ground. Guests include cave diver Jill Heinerth, death care advocate Katrina Spade, soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, and paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim.
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Katrina Spade
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
Jill Heinerth
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00:21
This is the
TED
Radio Hour
. Each week, groundbreaking TED
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Our job now is to dream big.
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00:46
And even change you.
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00:47
I literally feel like I'm a different person.
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00:49
Yes.
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00:50
Do you feel that way?
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00:52
Ideas worth spreading. From
TED
and NPR
, I'm Manoush Zomorodi
and today on the show What Lies Beneath, starting with someone who spends a lot of her time beneath the Earth's
surface in underwater caves.Share
Jill Heinerth
01:12
You know, most people hear the word "cave diver, "and they picture me, like, jumping off of a cliff into the ocean. It's like, no, that's not it at all. I'm actually swimming through water-filled passages beneath your feet.
Share
01:25
This is cave diver,
Jill Heinerth
.Share
Jill Heinerth
01:28
The best way for me to describe it is to think of the planet as a body, and I am swimming through the veins of mother
Earth
. I've been cave diving all over the planet in underwater caves, in Florida
, the Bahamas,
underneath the Ural Mountains
in Siberia,
inside lava tubes in volcanoes, and even inside icebergs.Share
01:53
Jill has hundreds of stories to tell about magical adventures she's had deep underground. But often these dives are pretty dangerous, like the one she took in January 2011 in northern
Florida
.Share
Jill Heinerth
02:07
I was guiding a scientist into a very small underwater cave. And it was for the purpose of sampling some algal materials that might closely resemble life we would find in outer space.
Share
02:22
The dive was going as expected until it was time to exit the cave, which was really more like a narrow passageway. That's when Jill's diving partner got wedged in the rocks.
Share
Jill Heinerth
02:34
And in the moment she got stuck, her gear became entangled in our safety line, and she became wedged in this space that was about as big as sliding underneath your bed, like literally shoulders pinned to the ceiling and chest scraping along the floor.
Share
02:55
And as she became entangled and unable to swim forward, she panicked. And in that panic, just a couple of errant fin kicks stirred up everything. To the point where I was literally, like, suspended in chocolate milk — I couldn't see anything.
Share
03:14
And I had one hand on the guideline and one hand on her, and she was moving to my left. And I'm stretching out my arms more and more and more until the guideline is being stressed in my right hand, and she's in my left, and I feel like getting tighter and tighter and tighter, like a piano wire. And then suddenly ping — The line separates. And I have the bitter end of a guideline in my hand, and my diving partner in my other hand, and I'm thinking, "Oh boy, we're in trouble now. "
Share
03:53
The guideline is basically a rope leading back to the mouth of the cave.
Share
Jill Heinerth
03:58
Yeah, if you don't have the guideline, the cave is just full of traps. You know, it's not marked by anything other than your guideline. And so you would have to re-explore in complete blackness to find your way out.
Share
04:14
So Jill started to think through all she needed to do to save them.
Share
Jill Heinerth
04:18
I needed to calm down my partner.
Share
04:19
She needed to get them unstuck.
Share
Jill Heinerth
04:21
I needed to patch the guideline and then work our way out of the cave.
Share
04:26
Her thoughts were racing.
Share
Jill Heinerth
04:29
You know, "Oh my gosh I have to get out of this cave. Two women can't die in an underwater cave, that would be international news. "And then you think crazy things like, "Oh my gosh, I have to get home. My husband doesn't know how to do the taxes. "
Share
04:41
But the important thing is just to take that deep breath and center yourself, and just make the best next step towards survival and then keep doing it until you get home safe.
Share
04:56
But how deep were you into the cave? Like, from the mouth of it?
Share
Jill Heinerth
04:60
So, we were over 1000
Ft
back in the cave, and we had to come through several small restrictive spaces in zero visibility. And that could take you a long time. Now, I had to patch the guideline, and that needed two hands. And that's when I lost track of my partner.Share
05:17
Where did she go? I mean, where was there to go if you're all tight and packed in like that?
Share
Jill Heinerth
05:22
Well that's the thing, when you can't see, you don't know. And in the end, it took me an extra 73
minutes
to get out of the cave. As I worked out of the cave searching for her all the way out, I stopped and checked side passages, and then finally when I got to the doorway of the cave, there she was, in the entrance and that was the most beautiful sight I've ever seen.Share
05:49
You know, I would have quit cave diving. I just know that would have been my last dive if she hadn't made it out. And there she was. Her mask was full of tears because she was certain that I was dead. You know, she had already called out an emergency and people were racing to the scene probably expecting to recover my body from the cave, not to do a rescue. There are not very many rescues and underwater caves.
Share
06:14
Oh, Jill. That story is terrifying. And it makes me wonder, what compels you to keep diving even after experiences like those?
Share
Jill Heinerth
06:26
Well, in the discussions that I had with my husband Robert after that dive, it forced us both to reflect on why I do this, why go into these places. And I believe we all have a calling, and and this is mine. It's to try to illuminate complex issues about how we are connected to our water environment. It's about sharing climate change information through my adventures.
Share
06:56
Because really everything we do on the surface of the
Earth
gets returned to us to drink. Anything that happens on the surface of the Earth
can soak into the ground and end up in places that I swim through. So I can see the results of humanity's interactions with things on top of the Earth
that they might not feel are really connected with their water systems. But I can assure you I see the connections. I swim through them.Share
07:23
From waterways tunneling below us, to ecosystems that only exist deep in the soil, we rarely give much thought to what's happening Beneath the
Earth's
surface. But there are some amazing mysteries and opportunities waiting to be discovered if we're brave enough to go down and take a look.Share
07:45
So today on the show: Stories and ideas about what lies beneath, and how appreciating underground worlds could change how we live above ground. For
Jill Heinerth,
diving into caves can feel like time travel.Share
Jill Heinerth
08:02
Exploring these voids in the planet is so important because these are like museums of natural history. I mean, we can work with scientists and unravel interesting information about
Earth's
past climate. We can learn about ancient civilizations that have used these as portals to another world.Share
08:26
Here is
Jill Heinerth
on the TED
stage.Share
Jill Heinerth
08:29
It turns out that caves are repositories of amazing life forms. Species that we never knew existed before. Many of these life forms live in unusual ways. They have no pigment and no eyes in many cases. And these animals are also extremely long lived.
Share
08:50
In fact, animals swimming in these caves today are identical in the fossil record that predates the extinction of the dinosaurs. So imagine that: These are like little swimming dinosaurs. What can they teach us about evolution and survival?
Share
09:07
I also get to work with paleontologists and archaeologists in places like
Mexico,
in the Bahamas,
and even in Cuba,
looking at cultural remains and also human remains in caves. And they tell us a lot about some of the earliest inhabitants of these regions.Share
09:24
So when you're looking for a new place to dive, how do you know where to go? Like, is there, I don't know, a secret map for cave divers that has like Xs in the jungle in
Mexico,
or like, or do you ever think like, do you have a hint like you're like, "I think there's going to be a cave here. "And do you ever stumble upon one?Share
Jill Heinerth
09:47
I mean, we still use some pretty crude research methods in order to find places where we might find caves. I mean, I do everything from looking at old archival maps and comparing them to current maps.
Share
09:60
I look at writings. Like, I've read back as far as some of
Alexander The Great's
accounts of traveling through the western desert of Egypt
.Share
10:09
Really?
Share
Jill Heinerth
10:09
But we also look at
Google Maps
and look for sinkholes. And you know, different cave divers will cooperate with others in exploration as well. So we'll sort of tag-team exploration efforts and share our results with each other as we explore something new.Share
10:27
My very favorite project of all was over 15 years ago when I was a part of a team that made the very first accurate three-dimensional map of a subterranean surface. This device was actually creating a three-dimensional model as we drove it. We also used ultra low frequency radio to broadcast back to the surface our exact position within the cave.
Share
10:48
So I swam under houses, and businesses, and bowling alleys, and golf courses, and even under a
Sonny's BBQ Restaurant
. Our water planet is not just rivers, lakes, and oceans, but it's this vast network of groundwater that knits us all together. It's a shared resource from which we all drink.Share
11:11
We don't really talk much about what's going on beneath the ground other than, well, sewer systems. Or in
Florida
, they're starting to understand when it rains and the water doesn't go anywhere because there's so little drainage. That sort of permeability between what's above and what's beneath — Do you think of them as being separate worlds, or do you really see them as interconnected in some ways?Share
Jill Heinerth
11:43
No, I see the whole planet as interconnected. I mean, I've traveled through the plumbing of the planet. I've traveled even through the manmade plumbing of the planet, exploring urban caves in stormwater systems. In fact, I went on one journey where we paddled up the
Wekiva River
, this incredibly beautiful natural resource in Florida,
to find the source of the Wekiva
.Share
12:08
Well, the source of the
Wekiva
is a Best Buy
parking lot and-Share
12:11
Really?
Share
Jill Heinerth
12:12
Yeah, we literally traveled through the storm sewer systems and climbed the ladder and popped up in a
Best Buy
parking lot.Share
12:20
It's like, wow. You know, this incredible natural environment full of beautiful wildlife and birds and fish is being served by, you know, the water that's running off this parking lot, collecting, you know, heavy metals off the brakes of cars and everything else. And when you're walking through that storm water condo and you're seeing the greasy, horrible stuff that will end up in that river.
Share
12:45
So I'm literally in the sustenance, the water that fuels the industries that we rely on. So it's this incredible journey where I get to go inside and see the health of the planet and wonders of places that nobody else has ever taken pictures of before.
Share
13:06
That's
Jill Heinerth
, Her book is called, Into the Planet: my Life as a Cave Diver. You can see her full talk at TED. com
. On the show today: What Lies Beneath. I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and you're listening to the TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
. We'll be right back.Share
Break
14:40
It's the
TED
Radio Hour
from NPR.
I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and on the show today: What Lies Beneath.Share
14:49
As the prayer goes, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "Sometimes it's hard to hear, but eventually we'll all return to the
Earth
, which means one of two default options usually: burial in a casket, or for more and more people, cremation.Share
Katrina Spade
15:08
So cremation is extremely popular and it's rising in popularity very quickly. So I think two years ago it hit 50% of Americans choosing cremation. And it's expected to rise up to, you know, 70, in the next decade or so.
Share
15:25
This is
Katrina
spade. She's a bit of an expert in what is broadly called "death care, "and she says there are a couple reasons why cremation has gotten so popular.Share
Katrina Spade
15:36
Imagine for one, the cemeteries that our families might have been buried in, we probably have moved away from. And so there's less of a place-based desire to be buried in one family plot, for example. The other reason is that cremation is much cheaper than conventional burial.
Share
15:53
By conventional burial,
Katrina
means a body filled with embalming fluid put in a casket that's placed in the ground, surrounded by a concrete liner.Share
Katrina Spade
16:04
And then, I think it's true that folks think that cremation is more environmentally friendly than conventional burial. But put together the manufacture and transport of all of that stuff that goes with the conventional burial, and compare it to cremation which uses fossil gas to burn the body and emits particulates and mercury and
carbon
into the atmosphere. And in fact, they're really on par with each other from a carbon
footprint standpoint.Share
16:33
Katrina
started learning about all these environmental problems while she was an architecture student.Share
Katrina Spade
16:38
And I didn't like the wastefulness of it. That even aside from like the pollution, I thought, you know, I might have something left to give back when I die. Like, whatever is in this husk of a body. And so why burn it up?
Share
16:55
And I knew about natural burial, which is where a body is, like, laid into a grave — usually in just a shroud or a wood or cardboard, sometimes a coffin. And it's really about returning to the
Earth
. And I thought, "That's beautiful. "Share
17:09
And yet, I love living in cities and I hate the idea that if you live in a city, like so many in the world, do you have to leave it after you die in order to choose an environmentally beneficial choice?
Share
17:20
So I was thinking about this and what would the urban equivalent to natural burial be? What would it mean to return to the
Earth
, but stay in my city? So those were the very first inklings of this idea.Share
17:34
Katrina Spade
explains her idea on the TED
stage.Share
Katrina Spade
17:38
Back in architecture school, I was thinking about all this and I set out on a plan to redesign death care. Could I create a system that was beneficial to the
Earth
that used nature as a guide rather than something to be feared? Something that was gentle to the planet. That planet, after all, supports our living bodies our whole lives.Share
18:03
And while I was mulling this all over over the drawing board, the phone rang. It was my friend kate. She was like, "Hey, have you heard about the farmers who are composting whole cows? "
Share
18:20
And I was like, hmm. Turns out that farmers and agricultural institutions have been practicing something called "livestock mortality composting" for decades. Mortality composting is where you take an animal high in
Nitrogen
, and cover it with co-composting materials that are high in carbon
. It's an aerobic process, so it requires Oxygen
, and it requires plenty of moisture as well.Share
18:47
In the most basic setup, a cow is covered with a few feet of wood chips, which are high in
carbon,
and left outside for breezes to provide Oxygen,
and rain to provide moisture. In about nine months, all that remains is a nutrient-rich compost. The flesh has been decomposed entirely, as have the bones.Share
19:12
I know.
Share
19:14
So I would definitely call myself a decomposition nerd. But I am far, far from a scientist. And one way you can tell this is true is that I have often called the process of composting "magic". So basically, all we humans need to do is create the right environment for nature to do its job.
Share
19:40
It's like the opposite of antibacterial soap. Instead of fighting them, we welcome microbes and bacteria in with open arms. These tiny, amazing creatures break down molecules into smaller molecules and atoms which are then incorporated into new molecules. In other words, that cow is transformed. It's no longer a cow. It's been cycled back into nature.
Share
20:08
See? Magic. You can probably imagine the light bulb that went off in my head after I received that phone call. I began designing a system based on the principles of livestock mortality composting that would take human beings that transformed them into soil.
Share
20:29
Turning humans into soil. This notion came to you back in grad school and you were like, "I'm going to do this. I am going to figure out how to compost bodies. "
Share
20:40
And over several years you did research, you recruited advisors, and then you tested your idea?
Share
Katrina Spade
20:47
Yeah. So there was no question in my mind that we could compost humans. We had done- We partnered with
Washington State University
and the soil science department there to do a pilot project where we composted six humans who had donated their bodies to that work. And that was to prove it was safe and effective. We couldn't just say, "Oh, you know, we do this with cows. "Share
21:11
We had to prove it worked with humans.
Share
21:13
And so after that pilot program, you launched a company called
Recompose
. What does it offer?Share
Katrina Spade
21:20
What we do at
Recompose
is place each individual body into a vessel — a stainless steel container — that's about eight feet long and four feet tall. And it's housed in a hexagonal array. So if you look at this vessel system from the front, it looks a little bit like a beehive.Share
21:41
And inside of each vessel is one human body laid into a bed of wood chips, alfalfa, and straw, and cover it with more of the same. And then over the course of a month we provide
Oxygen
to the vessel via a fan system. We're kind of constantly aerating that plant material which is what provides the perfect environment for microbial activity.Share
22:06
And those microbes, by the way, they're on us right now as we speak, and they're in the air and they're on the wood chips. So we don't have to inoculate them into the vessel. They just exist naturally and they'll break the body down — and wood chips and straw — in about 30 days.
Share
22:20
What does it turn into, like, does it look like soil?
Share
Katrina Spade
22:23
It looks a lot like soil. Or maybe a little more like a compost that you would buy at a nursery.
Share
22:32
In 30 days? That fast?
Share
Katrina Spade
22:34
Well, I should- No. Not quite. So it's about six weeks total. After 30 days, we remove the soil and then all of the material goes into what we call a "cure bin". And so curing is a fancy way of saying compost is drying out and finishing its process. So for another 2-4 weeks, the soil is cured. And then it's ready to go back to families. And if families would rather, they can donate it to conservation efforts.
Share
22:60
I'm still pretty flabbergasted by your process here — your system to compost humans. But like, once the process is finished, like how much soil is there?
Share
Katrina Spade
23:14
Well, because we use so much plant material to cocoon the body in, the final result is a cubic yard of soil. That's 3
Ft
by 3 Ft
by 3 Ft
.Share
23:26
That's a lot!
Share
Katrina Spade
23:27
Oh yeah. It fills a pickup truck. And it's really interesting because over the years, I've noticed this, like, push and pull between the ritual, and the meaning, and the sort of natural side of things, and then the industrial side — like when we have families, when they want the soil, we say, "Okay, well, you're gonna need a pickup truck or you're going to need a trailer of this size. "
Share
23:50
And so then they, you know, pull up with their trailer and we forklift the soil in and there's this kind of moment of — sometimes it's of levity a little bit — because it's like, oh this was my person once and now it's a huge amount of soil that I can go use and start that orchard if I want.
Share
24:09
What is human compost like? Are you going to grow super crunchy apples if you use our soil? Like what are we like as soil?
Share
Katrina Spade
24:20
I was certain that human compost must be special. And it turns out, in fact, the compost we make is pretty good. But we shy against calling it. like, spectacular. It's just really good compost.
Share
24:34
I don't know why that makes us sad. But, I don't know, maybe I thought our big brains to make it particularly nutritious or something.
Share
Katrina Spade
24:41
Nope. But it is worth noting that when you look at the avoidance of pollution from cremation and conventional burial, and then you couple that with the sequestration of
carbon
that happens when you compost wood chips, alfalfa and the body, we're saving about a Metric Ton
of carbon
per person.Share
25:03
I mean it's very different than lowering a casket into the ground, and everybody wearing black, and then throwing dirt over it, and then leaving that person behind.
Share
25:13
I remember one of the first funerals I went to, there was something incredibly sad about leaving the person. It felt like, "But now he has to stay there in the ground, away from us. "
Share
25:25
I can't explain it. You know, I was a child but there was something. It just didn't feel kind. But I don't know if you've heard that from other people.
Share
Katrina Spade
25:36
Well there's a couple of things that, that feel to me a little bit different than that experience, which sounds hard by the way. One is that we do mark the moment where we lay the body into the vessel because it's the minute that this transformation is going to begin. And so our staff will do what we call a "laying in ceremony" where the body is on a cradle in front of the vessel.
Share
26:04
We lay plant material on the body. We then load the body into the vessel and, you know, the closing of that vessel door isn't totally unlike the burial, I guess, in a lot of ways. I think the difference for me is that we have, like, a dozen staff people working in this facility. We have this array of hexagonal vessels. They're white and inside of most of them is a body decomposing.
Share
26:31
And there's this kind of liveliness about the place in a way. I mean we like to on the day when we're laying someone and we often play the music their families said they loved. So sometimes we'll have, like,
Bob Marley
going in the background. And so I think there's something about this place where this is happening and knowing that the transformation does end, and a new person "joins the hive, "— if you will, that is a little bit more lively than your typical cemetery, perhaps.Share
27:02
I have to imagine that while there are people who are very supportive of your work, there must also be people who are not,
Katrina
. I mean, I have to say when I have mentioned this to people — human composting — they take a beat and they kind of look at me like, "What are you even talking about? "Share
27:23
And I wonder for some people like, you know, not only is it may be shocking, but also perhaps disrespectful?
Share
Katrina Spade
27:30
You know, the first thing is that I have certainly had folks take a beat when I mentioned what I do. And then a lot of the time, if you went back to those people like, a few days later, you'd be surprised after giving it some thought, thinking about the current options, a lot of people are like, "Actually this isn't- this is actually pretty nice. "
Share
27:52
You know, it's not for everybody. There's no question and I really think everyone should have the option they want as long as they're being intentional about it. I don't think there's really a wrong way, you know? Yes, it's more polluting to go with cremation. But also, I drive a car.
Share
28:10
So it's like a little hypocritical to say that you shouldn't have whatever option you want, I think. But the problem is that people choose their death care or they- I should say, they don't choose their death care. They just go with the default a lot of the time. It's not a meaningful choice. It's just, "Well, I guess I'll cremate grandma. "
Share
28:28
So I assume you want to be composted right?
Share
Katrina Spade
28:32
Wouldn't it be weird if I said no?
Share
28:34
That would be really weird. I mean, but I have to ask just to make sure.
Share
Katrina Spade
28:36
Yes, I do want to be composted. But mostly what I want is for my kids and partner to do something every year. Like, mark my my death in any way, every year.
Share
28:48
So what do you mean by that? Like, play a song, or go to a place, because that is what we do now, right? Like, we go to pay our respects in a graveyard. We go to a stone, if the person is cremated. Like what you're kind of suggesting is that we pay our respects to the dead in a very different way. It's not about going somewhere, it's about the ground beneath our feet and knowing that they are there with us in some way.
Share
Katrina Spade
29:17
I mean think about what happens during the composting processes. Our molecules are rearranged and we cease to be human, and that is pretty powerful, I think. To just think about truly going back to the
Earth
and then kind of dissipating like the entire planet is supported by the process of decomposition.Share
29:41
That is how soil is created in what all of life is based on. So if you can just get into that mode and think, "OK, I'm going to just be jumping into the stream of creation. "
Share
29:55
Yeah, I think it can feel pretty joyous.
Share
29:59
That's
Katrina Spade
, she's the founder of Recompose
, a company that composts human remains. You can see her full talk at TED. com.
Share
30:13
As we just heard,
Katrina
wants to make burials more eco-friendly by harnessing soil's power to decompose a body, and then hold onto the carbon
that gets released, keep that carbon
underground. This process is called carbon
sequestration, and our next speaker says it could be used to solve the biggest problem that our planet faces.Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
30:36
The health of the soil system is an extremely important part of addressing the climate crisis.
Share
30:43
This is
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
.Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
30:45
Hey, I'm a professor of soil biogeochemistry at the
University Of California Merced
.Share
30:52
Asmeret has been studying dirt for decades.
Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
30:55
The hook for me happened when I realized how important soil is in regulating life as we know it in the
Earth's
system.Share
31:04
And the more Asmeret learned about soil, the more she realized that we humans were squandering its superpowers. Here she is on the
TED
stage.Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
31:13
Climate change is happening because of increasing amount of greenhouse gasses we keep releasing to the atmosphere. You all know that, but what I assume you might not have heard is that one of the most important things our human society could do to address climate change lies right there in the soil.
Share
31:37
Human actions are now releasing 9.4 billion metric tons of
carbon
to the atmosphere, but the concentration of carbon
dioxide that stays in the atmosphere is only increasing by about half of that. And that's because half of the carbon
we keep releasing into the atmosphere is currently being taken up through a process we know as carbon
sequestration.Share
32:03
So in essence, whatever consequence you think we're facing from climate change right now, We're only experiencing the consequence of 50% of our pollution. But don't get too comfortable. The ability of these natural ecosystems to take up
carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in the natural habitats is currently getting compromised as they're experiencing serious degradation because of human actions.Share
32:35
We treat soil literally like dirt. We haven't been taking care of the soil, even though soil has actually been making our lives possible.
Share
32:47
In a moment, more from
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
on the climate change solution that's right beneath our feet. I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and you're listening to the TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
. Be right back!Share
Break
34:56
It's the
TED
Radio Hour
from NPR.
I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today: What Lies Beneath? We were just talking to Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
, a soil scientist at the University Of California
.Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
35:11
I love soil in all forms. I think soil is just beautiful.
Share
35:14
Asmeret says that soil is one of our best tools for fighting climate change because it can store vast amounts of
carbon
. Here she is again on the TED
stage.Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
35:26
There is about 3000 billion metric tons of
carbon
in the soil. That's roughly about 315 times the amount of carbon
that we've released into the atmosphere currently. And there's twice more carbon
in soil than there is in vegetation and air. Think about that for a second.Share
35:45
There's more
carbon
and soil than there is in all of the world's vegetation — including the lush tropical rainforests, and the giant sequoias, the expansive grasslands, all of the cultivated systems, and every kind of flora you can imagine on the face of the Earth
— plus all the carbon
that's currently up in the atmosphere combined, and then twice over.Share
36:15
Hence a very small change in the amount of carbon stored in soil can make a big difference in maintenance of the
Earth's
atmosphere.Share
36:26
But soil is not just simply a storage box for
carbon
though, it operates more like a bank account. And the amount of carbon
that's in soil at any given time is a function of the amount of carbon
coming in and out of the soil.Share
36:40
Carbon
comes into the soil through the process of photosynthesis: When green plants take carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere and upon death, their bodies enter the soil. And carbon
leaves the soil and goes right back up into the atmosphere when the bodies of those formerly living organisms decay in soil by activity of microbes.Share
37:02
One of the things that make soil such a fundamental component of any climate change mitigation strategy is because it represents a long term storage of
carbon. Carbon
that would have lasted maybe a year or two if it was left on the surface, can stay in soil for hundreds of years, even thousands and more.Share
37:24
So soil has this amazing capacity to store
carbon
. But we humans have been messing with the soil and in your talk, you say that half of the world's soils are considered degraded. Is that one of the reasons why we have a warming planet, because we've damaged the soil so it can't take in as much carbon
as it used to and as much as we need it to.Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
37:50
Yes. So human actions in particular — the way we've changed land use and land cover globally, including through deforestation and intensive cultivation practices, they typically contribute about 15% of the CO2 that we keep releasing to the atmosphere every year. So it's a big portion of the CO2 we keep releasing to the atmosphere.
Share
38:15
Carbon
that would have stayed in the soil system is not staying, is rather going back into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gasses, because we keep cutting down the trees. We keep over-tilling the soil and disturbing the soil to a point where its ability to hold on to that carbon
is diminishing.Share
38:32
And since the human community started engaging in agriculture in a large scale manner, we've released on the order of about 120 billion metric tons of
carbon
that was in soil, into the atmosphere. Yeah.Share
38:49
So and this is the fastest rate of loss has been happening in the last 200 years, since the
Industrial Revolution
. So, remember that the most important ways we use soil as human community is for supporting plant productivities, but we also build the infrastructure, right?Share
39:08
It's where we build our roads and bridges and everything. And those are the part of the processes that are responsible for the large-scale degradation of soil globally. Close to half of the soils in the world right now are considered degraded, meaning their ability to support plant production, and to support life, is compromised.
Share
39:27
So that that means like, all the rainforests that have been cut down, and all the millions of heads of cattle that are grazing on plains, all of that means that the soil underneath is not as rich as it once was.
Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
39:47
Yeah. And all of this intensive deforestation and grazing practices in particular, overgrazing beyond the capacity that the land can support — all of that compromises the physical stability of soil, the chemical nature of soil, including provision of the nutrients, that are needed to support the microbial communities. So this is why it becomes really important to think about managing soils in a climate-smart way.
Share
40:17
Fortunately, I can also tell you that there is a solution for these two wicked problems of soil degradation and climate change. And the solution lies in simultaneously working to address these two things together through what we call "climate-smart land management practices".
Share
40:38
And we can accomplish this by putting in place deep-rooted perennial plants, putting back forests whenever possible, reducing tillage and other disturbances from agricultural practices, including optimizing the use of agricultural chemicals and grazing, and even adding
carbon
to soil whenever possible from recycled resources such as compost and even human waste. This kind of land stewardship is not a radical idea. It's what made it possible for fertile soils to be able to support human civilization since time immemorial.Share
41:18
In fact, some are doing it just right now, there's a global effort underway to accomplish exactly this goal. This effort that started in
France
is known as the 4-Per-1000 effort, and it sets an aspirational goal to increase the amount of carbon
stored in soil by 0.4% annually using the same kind of climate-smart land management practices I mentioned earlier. And if this effort is fully successful, it can offset a third of the global emissions of fossil fuel derived carbon
to the atmosphere.Share
41:58
But even if this effort is not fully successful, but we just start heading in that direction, we still end up with soils that are healthier, more fertile, are able to produce all the food and resources that we need for human populations and more. And also soils that are better capable of sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and helping with climate change mitigation.
Share
42:26
I'm pretty sure that's what politicians call a win-win solution.
Share
42:30
Wow, okay, so if we could reduce our CO2 build up by a third, just by focusing on soil, Asmeret, why aren't we talking about that in the same breath as how we're going to save our oceans or making sure that the polar ice caps don't melt away?
Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
42:48
I think in some ways it's because we had grown so accustomed to take soil for granted. And part of this is because the group of people that are affected, and the group of people who have been addressing it have been two distinct groups, right?
Share
43:06
And I personally feel it's important to highlight the human element of this discussion, because in many ways, a lot of the impacts of climate change are going to be felt by —economically speaking — the least fortunate amongst us. The folks who live in poor nations, you know, small island nations near the equator in coastal margins. But their voices and especially until recently, had not been part of our climate conversation. And the fact that climate change has become a threat multiplier, i. e. it's actually exacerbating the problem of food and nutritional insecurity, water insecurity, in many parts of the world, had not gotten enough attention in our discourse.
Share
43:53
So you're saying that, you know, if there was more diversity in the people who are calling attention to all these climate change problems we have, and the potential solutions, that if more people might understand the role that soil plays, which would in turn help us all.
Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
44:13
Exactly, yeah. In many cases, it's like, whenever we have more diversity in science, we end up addressing societally relevant questions. Right?
Share
44:22
Yes, that is correct. You know, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking about how rarely I actually touch soil. I live in a city, I go to the park all the time, but when was the last time I actually felt the dirt? Not recently.
Share
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
44:43
Yeah, I think that's true, right? Human communities evolved in agricultural societies where they were intimately aware of the land around them, its properties, and they knew what it could support and what it couldn't. And they worked the land, literally speaking, to support their livelihood. Many of us in modern times don't have that connection. And in many ways we've lost the connection to a point where soil is just the stuff beneath the asphalt, or the concrete that we step on every day, right? It's not even the thing we experience unless we're out hiking in the trail somewhere or in a park. And so that connection is lost.
Share
45:26
We all can have a role to play here. We can start by treating the soil with the respect that it deserves. Respect for its ability as the basis of all life on
Earth
, respect for its ability to serve as a carbon
bank, and respect for its ability to control our climate.Share
45:50
And if we do so, we can then simultaneously address two of the most pressing global challenge of our time, climate change and soil degradation. And in the process, we would be able to provide food and nutritional security to our growing human family. Thank you.
Share
46:15
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe
is a soil scientist at the University Of California Merced
. She's also President Biden's
pick to lead the Department Of Energy's Office Of Science. You can find her full talk at TED
. com.Share
46:32
We want to wrap up our show about what lies beneath with a paleontologist. Recently, researchers reported that they believe the
Spinosaurus
may be the largest ever carnivore in history and that finding builds on the work of paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim
, who in 2014, found the fossils that proved the Spinosaurus
hunted its prey in rivers 97 million years ago. Here he is on the TED
stage.Share
Speaker 7
47:03
These dragons from deep time are incredible creatures. They're bizarre, they're beautiful, and there's very little we know about them.
Share
47:14
I've been on a quest to uncover new remains of a giant predatory dinosaur called
Spinosaurus
.Share
47:23
A few bones of this animal have been found in the deserts of
Egypt
and were described about 100 years ago by a German paleontologist.Share
47:33
Unfortunately all his
Spinosaurus
bones were destroyed in World War Two
. So all we're left with are just a few drawings and notes. From these drawings, we know that this creature —which lived about 100 million years ago — was very big. It had tall spines on its back forming a magnificent sail, and it had long, slender jaws a bit like a crocodile. But that was pretty much all we knew about this animal for the next 100 years.Share
48:03
My fieldwork took me to the border region between
Morocco
and Algeria,
a place called the camp camp. It's a difficult place to work in. You have to deal with sandstorms and snakes and scorpions, and it's very difficult to find good fossils there.Share
48:19
But our hard work paid off. We discovered many incredible specimens, the largest dinosaur bone that had ever been found in this part of the
Sahara
. We found remains of giant predatory dinosaurs, medium sized predatory dinosaurs, and 7 or 8 different kinds of crocodile-like hunters.Share
48:41
These fossils were deposited in the river system. The river system was also home to a giant car-sized
Coelacanth
, a monster sawfish. And the skies over the river system were filled with Pterosaurs
, flying reptiles. It was a pretty dangerous place, not the kind of place where you'd want to travel to if you had a time machine.Share
49:02
So we're finding all these incredible fossils of animals that lived alongside
Spinosaurus
. But Spinosaurus
itself proved to be very elusive. We're just finding bits and pieces, and I was hoping that we'd find a partial skeleton at some point.Share
49:16
Finally, very recently, we were able to track down a dig site where a local fossil hunter found several bones of
Spinosaurus
. We returned to the site, we collected more bones. And so after 100 years we finally had another partial skeleton of this bizarre creature and were able to reconstruct it.Share
49:38
We now know that
Spinosaurus
had a head a little bit like a crocodile. Very different from other predatory dinosaurs. Very different from T. Rex. But the really interesting information came from the rest of the scallop. We had long spines, the spines forming the big sail. We had leg bones. We had skull bones. We had paddle-shaped feet. Wide feet. Very unusual. No other dinosaur has feet like this. And we think there may have been used to walk on soft sediment or maybe for paddling in the water.Share
50:08
We also looked at the fine microstructure of the bone, the inside structure of
Spinosaurus
bones. And turns out that they're very dense and compact, so that's useful for buoyancy control in the water.Share
50:20
We CT-scanned all of our bones and build a digital
Spinosaurus
skeleton. And when we looked at the digital skeleton, we realized that yes, this was a dinosaur unlike any other.Share
50:32
It's bigger than T. Rex. And yes, the head has "fish-eating" written all over it but really the entire skeleton has water loving written all over it. Dense bone, paddle-like feet, and the hind limbs are reduced in size. And again, this is something we see in animals that spend a substantial amount of time in the water.
Share
50:51
So as we fleshed out our
Spinosaurus
, I'm looking at muscle attachments and wrapping our dinosaur in skin. We realized that we are dealing with a river monster. A predatory dinosaur bigger than T. Rex — the ruler of this ancient river of giants — feeding on the many aquatic animals. So that's really what makes this an incredible discovery. It's a dinosaur like no other. And some people told me wow, this is a once in a lifetime discovery. There are not many things left to discover in the world, right? Well, I think nothing could be further from the truth.Share
51:26
I think the
Sahara
still full of treasures. And when people tell me there are no places left to explore, I like to quote a famous dinosaur hunter, Roy Chapman Andrews.
And he said, "Always, there has been an adventure just around the corner, and the world is still full of corners. "Share
51:43
That was true many decades ago when
Roy Chapman Andrews
wrote these lines and it is still true today. Thank you.Share
51:52
That's paleontologist
Nizar Ibrahim
, you can find both his talks at TED. com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week about what lies beneath. This episode was produced by Katie Monteleone, James Delahoussaye, Fiona Gearan, Sylvie Douglis, and Matthew Cloutier.Share
52:11
It was edited by Katie Simon, Rachel Faulkner, and James Delahoussaye. Our
TED
radio production staff also includes Deba Moti Shem, and Margaret Sereno. Our audio engineer is Brian Jarboe. Many thanks to Catherine Cipher for her help with this episode, too. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED
are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Phelan, Michelle Quint, Sammy Case, and Daniella Bell Arezzo. Manoush Zomorodi, and you've been listening to the TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
.Share
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