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Tracking elusive penguins from space
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Description
Satellite census shows larger number of iconic birds than scientists originally thought
- Duration 3:32
- Date Apr 16, 2012
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Transcript
This transcript is automatically generated
In Antarctica.
Where millions of square miles of ice blend into -- wilderness of white.
Only penguins are truly at home.
Much of this shifting snow escape.
Is as uncharted is the date explorers first cited it almost 200 years ago.
Now Paul Morin and his colleagues are filling in the blank spots at the bottom of the world.
They're making digital maps of Antarctica.
Using unclassified.
Imagery supplied by the US intelligence community.
This is an extraordinary opportunity for us because.
We can now see.
One of the most inaccessible places on her.
-- man.
The imagery comes from the US national geospatial intelligence agency.
Which handles national security mapping data for the CIA and the Defense Department.
Every month -- agency buys commercial satellite data to supplement material from the government's own secret surveillance systems.
He chairs the unclassified.
Imagery with government funded scholars after first blurring as required by law.
Searchers are using that satellite data to track penguins -- seals have crossed the coldest regions on -- Without disturbing them and without leaving home.
The -- -- possibilities.
Using the satellite imagery.
Seemed to be almost endless and we're learning more war.
Last year.
Biologists at the British Antarctic Survey discovered that older satellites could see penguin guano from orbit 423.
Miles in space.
Telltale stains on the ice revealed ten previously unknown emperor penguin colonies home to thousands of birds.
The new imagery is 900 times better and for the first time matters like mr.
-- contract changes in Antarctica from one day to the next.
If we hear that there is a and I shall breaking up only have to do is an email or phone call.
And if the weather permits we can have pictures of ice shelves breaking -- volcanoes erupting.
Penguins moving around.
Funded by the US National Science Foundation mr.
-- and his colleagues also are merging the latest data with archives of old aerial photos vintage charts.
And new precision ground surveys into dynamic digital maps that document and Arctic -- changing landscape.
So you conceive.
Lake levels go up and down you can see glaciers search and received.
All from imagery that was never intended.
To mr.
that.
On the track.
-- ice -- Antarctica.
And distances often are deceptive and -- can't be trusted.
The -- itself is always on the move.
Who is these satellites.
-- -- can see it all with a new lines.
At McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
And the Wall Street Journal.
On science columnist Robert Lee but.
