9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The most astounding place I've ever been[br]is the Mosquitia Rain Forest in Honduras.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I've done archaeological fieldwork[br]all over the world,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so I thought I knew what to expect

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
venturing into the jungle,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but I was wrong.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
For the first time[br]in my life, I might add.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
First of all, it's freezing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's 90 degrees, but you're[br]soaking wet from the humidity,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the canopy of trees is so thick[br]that sunlight never reaches the surface.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You can't get dry.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Immediately, I knew that[br]I hadn't brought enough clothing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That first night, I kept feeling things[br]moving underneath my hammock,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
unknown creatures brushing and poking[br]against the thin nylon fabric.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And I could barely sleep[br]through all the noise.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The jungle is loud. It's shockingly loud.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's like being downtown[br]in a bustling city.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As the night wore on,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I became increasingly frustrated[br]with my sleeplessness,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
knowing I had a full day ahead.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I finally got up at dawn,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
my sense of unseen things[br]was all too real.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There were hoof prints, paw prints,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
linear snake tracks everywhere,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and what's even more shocking,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we saw those same animals in the daylight

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they were completely unafraid of us.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They had no experience with people.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They had no reason to be afraid.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As I walked toward the undocumented city,[br]my reason for being there,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I realized that this was the only place[br]that I had ever been

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
where I didn't see[br]a single shred of plastic.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's how remote it was.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Perhaps it's surprising to learn

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that there are still places on our planet

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that are so untouched by people,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but it's true.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
There are still hundreds of places where[br]people haven't stepped for centuries,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or maybe forever.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's an awesome time[br]to be an archaeologist.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We have the tools and the technology

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to understand our planet[br]like never before.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And yet, we're running out of time.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The climate crisis threatens to destroy[br]our ecological and cultural patrimony.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I feel an urgency to my work

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that I didn't feel 20 years ago.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
How can we document everything[br]before it's too late.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was trained as[br]a traditional archaeologist

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
using methodologies that[br]have been around since the '50s.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That all changed in July of 2009

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in Michoacán, Mexico.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I was studying the ancient[br]Purépecha Empire,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is a lesser known[br]but equally important contemporary

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of the Aztec.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Two weeks earlier, my team[br]had documented an unknown settlement,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so we were painstakingly mapping,[br]building foundations by hand,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
hundreds of them.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Basic archaeological protocol[br]is to find the edge of a settlement

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so you know what you're dealing with,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and my graduate students[br]convinced me to do just that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So I grabbed a couple of Clif Bars,[br]some water, a walkie,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I set out alone on foot

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
expecting to encounter the edge[br]in just a few minutes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
A few minutes past, and then an hour.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Finally, I reached[br]the other side of the malpaís.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Oh, there were ancient[br]building foundations all the way across.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a city?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Oh, shit.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a city.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Turns out that this[br]seemingly small settlement

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
was actually an ancient urban megalopolis,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
26 square kilometers in size,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
with as many building foundations[br]as modern day Manhattan,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
an archaeological settlement so large

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that it would take me[br]decades to survey fully,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the entire rest of my career,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which was exactly how I didn't want[br]to spend the entire rest of my career.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Sweating, exhausted,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
placating stressed out graduate students.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Tossing scraps of PB&J sandwiches

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to feral dogs,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is pointless by the way[br]because Mexican dogs

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
really don't like peanut butter.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Just the thought of it bored me to tears.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So I returned home to Colorado

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I poked my head[br]through a colleague's door.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
"Dude, there's gotta be a better way."

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
He asked if I had heard[br]of this new technology called LiDAR --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Light Detection And Ranging.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I looked it up.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
LiDAR involves shooting[br]a dense grid of laser pulses

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from an airplane to the ground's surface.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
What you end up with[br]is a high resolution scan

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
of the earth's surface[br]and everything on it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's not an image,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but instead it's a dense,[br]three-dimensional plot of points.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We had enough money in the scan,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so we did just that.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The company went to Mexico,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they flew the LiDAR,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they sent back the data.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Over the next several months, I learned[br]to practice digital deforestation,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
filtering away trees, brush,[br]and other vegetation

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to reveal the ancient[br]cultural landscape below.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
When I looked at my first visualization,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I began to cry,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which I know comes[br]as quite a shock to you,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
given how manly I must seem.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Laughter)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In just 45 minutes of flying,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the LiDAR had collected[br]the same amount of data

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as what would have taken decades by hand:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
every house foundation,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
building, road, and pyramid,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
incredible detail,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
representing the lives[br]of thousands of people

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who lived and loved and died[br]in these spaces.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And what's more, the quality of the data

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
wasn't comparable to traditional[br]archaeological research.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It was much, much better.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I knew that this technology would change[br]the entire field of archaeology

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
in the coming years,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it did.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Our work came to the attention[br]of a group of filmmakers

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who were searching for a legendary[br]lost city in Honduras.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They failed in their quest

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but they instead documented[br]an unknown culture,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
now buried under a pristine[br]wilderness rainforest,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
using LiDAR.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I agreed to help interpret their data,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
which is how I found myself deep[br]in that Mosquitia jungle,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
plastic-free and filled[br]with curious animals.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Our goal was to verify[br]that the archaeological features

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we identified in our LiDAR[br]were actually there on the ground,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and they were.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Eleven months later, I returned[br]with a crack team of archaeologists

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sponsored by the[br]National Geographic Society

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the Honduran government.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In a month, we excavated over 400 objects

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
from what we now call[br]the City of the Jaguar.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We felt a moral and ethical responsibility[br]to protect this site as it was,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but in the short time that we were there,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
things inevitably changed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The tiny gravel bar where we first[br]landed our helicopter was gone.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The brush had been cleared away[br]and the trees removed

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to create a large landing zone[br]for several helicopters at once.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Without it,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
after just one rainy season,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
the ancient canals that we[br]had seen in our LiDAR scan

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
were damaged or destroyed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And the eden I described

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
soon had a large clearing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
central camp,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
lights

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and an outdoor chapel.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
In other words, despite our best efforts[br]to protect the site as it was,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
things changed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Our initial LiDAR scan[br]of this City of the Jaguar

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is the only record of this place[br]as it existed just a few years ago.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And broadly speaking,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
this is a problem for archaeologists.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We can't study an area[br]without changing it somehow,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and regardless, the earth is changing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Archaeological sites are destroyed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
History is lost.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Just this year, we watched in horror

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as the Notre Dame cathedral[br]went up in flames.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The iconic spire collapsed,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the roof was all but destroyed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Miraculously, the art historian[br]Andrew Tallon and colleagues

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
scanned the cathedral in 2010 using LiDAR.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
At the time, their goal was to understand[br]how the building was constructed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Now, their LiDAR scan is the most[br]comprehensive record of the cathedral,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and it'll prove invaluable[br]in the reconstruction.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They couldn't have anticipated the fire,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or how their scan would be used,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but we're lucky to have it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We take for granted that our cultural[br]and ecological patrimony

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
will be around forever.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It won't.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Organizations like SCI-Arc[br]and Virtual Wonders

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
are doing incredible work

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to record the world's historic monuments,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but nothing similar exists[br]for the earth's landscapes.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We've lost 50 percent of our rainforests.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
We lose 18 million acres[br]of forest every year.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
And rising sea levels will make cities,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
countries and continents[br]completely unrecognizable.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Unless we have a record of these places,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
no one in the future[br]will know they existed.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
If the earth is the Titanic,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
we've struck the iceberg,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
everyone's on deck,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and the orchestra is playing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The climate crisis threatens to destroy[br]our cultural and ecological patrimony

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
within decades,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but sitting on our hands and doing nothing

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
is not an option.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Shouldn't we save everything[br]we can on the lifeboats?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Applause)

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Looking at my scans[br]from Honduras and Mexico,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's clear that we need[br]to scan, scan, scan

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
now as much as possible

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
while we still can.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's what inspired the Earth Archive,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
an unprecedented scientific effort

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to LiDAR scan the entire planet,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
starting with areas[br]that are most threatened.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Its purpose is threefold.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Number one: create a baseline record[br]of the earth as it exists today

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to more effectively mitigate[br]the climate crisis.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
To measure change, you need[br]two sets of data:

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
a before and an after.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Right now, we don't have[br]a high-resolution before data set

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for much of the planet,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so we can't measure change,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we can't evaluate[br]which of our current efforts

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to combat the climate crisis[br]are making a positive impact.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Number two: create a virtual planet

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so that any number of scientists[br]can study our earth today.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Archaeologists like me[br]can look for undocumented settlements.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Ecologists can study tree size,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
forests composition and age.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Geologists can study hydrology,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
faults, disturbance.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The possibilities are endless.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Number three: preserve[br]a record of the planet

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
for our grandchildren's grandchildren

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
so they can reconstruct and study

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
lost cultural patrimony in the future.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As science and technology advance,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
they'll apply new tools, algorithms,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
even AI to LiDAR scans done today

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and ask questions that we[br]can't currently conceive of.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Like Notre Dame, we can't imagine

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
how these records will be used,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but we know that they'll[br]be critically important.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Earth Archive is the ultimate gift[br]to future generations,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because the truth be told,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I won't live long enough[br]to see its full impact,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and neither will you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That's exactly why it's worth doing.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The Earth Archive is a bet[br]on the future of humanity.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a bet that together,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
collectively,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
as people and as scientists,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that we'll face the climate crisis

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that we'll choose[br]to do the right thing,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
not just for us today

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but to honor those who came before us

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and to pay it forward

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to future generations

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
who will carry on our legacy.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thank you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Applause)