Happening. How extensive is the damage, we are going to find out. That is why we are going to walk every trail, stream and swamp we come across to see what is out there. Im an into enintoeninto entomologist. Ill share my findings with a biologist specializing in ecology and evolution and an engineer who has designed everything from bionic eyes to space satellites. Thats our team, now lets do some science. Welcome to tech know, im phil and you guys know i spend a lot of my time in the jungles and do my research in the tropics and usually looking at spiders on butterflys and i went to costarica to look at Something Different and there are scientific issues out there and protecting the rain forest is one of them and maybe its not quite high enough on the list because we are realizing now that rain forests are doing Incredible Services for us in society. They are doing them completely for free and do dot think about rain forests providing fundamental services but they do. As someone who lives in new york and visited costarica it takes so much cokeep new york running and so many systems and the rain forest is so much more complicated and complex. What is amazing is the services you see in the rain forest do not just stop there and are effecting us here in los angeles and that is something that scientists are just now beginning to realize so lets take a look. If you listen closely you can hear the lyrics, the poetry of the rain forest. Among its troops is this guy. Literally you see postcards with this thing. Here is looking at you, kid. Check out these farm hands, working dusk to dawn to cultivate their garden. Stunning beauty, unparallel veracity, the magic that is the rain forest. I traveled to costarica to check out the health of these eco systems and the tall, dense jungles are known for warm climates, lots of rain and sheltering more than half of the worlds plant and animal species. Although rain forests comprise a small percentage of the earth, they do big things, in human terms they are a critical component to how we function. I love to think of the amazon, the rain forest as the lungs of the planet. Reporter they are more like the heart of the biosphere. Reporter our tale of the rain forest brings us to all places here, nasa laboratory in pasadena, california where Scientists Use techniques ranging from boots on the ground to satellites in the sky all to understand our living, breathing, green earth. The resent study by Research Scientists dave and josh says friend. What our study shows is the tropics really dominate the metabolism of our planet and from dominate the fossils from the atmosphere and really cleaning up the planet. Reporter research employed satellite mapping, forestry data and good old fashion jungle gum chewing and these trees are consumers of Carbon Dioxide one of the greenhouse gasses that contributes to Global Warming and their Research Suggests tropical rain forests may absorb reported. If forests were not taking up carbon than the simple answer is there would be 25 more carbon in the atmosphere than there actually is and the rate of warming would be approximately 25 faster. They are helping to regulate our climate. Reporter despite an overall decline in the destruction of rain forests over the past decade its still a story of paradise lost. Farming, construction, pollution, and drought just to name some of the threats to some of these incredibly complex eco systems, understanding and documenting the life this these pulse. So we just got into the bat cave and its absolutely amazing. The length of the antenna are incredibly long which tells you that this thing is specifically adapted to living in the dark. What do we have inside . We have insect soup. Some of these are amazing, look at that, mosquito in there, the best i have seen. Reporter nasa colleague senior scientists sachi spends most of his time in and around global forests. There used to be a term in the 70s and 80s called hamburger effect means the forest are for grazing man and for animals. Effect. Reporter he says we need to the future. You are actually reducing the bio diversity of the world plot. Reporter but the trees appeared to be fighting back and a Global Movement underway for financial incentives to not degrade these rain forests, some places in the world are getting the message. Costarica is kind of a good example and kind of one of the green countries in the world. Reporter we are heading there next to the deep jungle. We heard there may be vampire bats in there. Reporter we want to hear what you think about the stories, join the conversation by following us on twitter at al jazeera. Com tech know. World continue to be diminished there is an unique bright spot in costa rica, this is a 720 acre rain forest that once was partly devastated by pasture use. This is all you plant. Today through pretty impressive environment efforts its a shining example of bio diversity the founder. Most of the cheese we are looking at over here we planted 12 years ago and originally this was pasture. And now with this. Coming back and regenerated. I like your garden, looks nice. Reporter this reserve gave me the Incredible Opportunity to search for new species and to check out how the local wildlife is doing. When the sun goes down a lot of creatures come out and the rain forest comes alive at night and why we are walking every trail, stream or swamp we come across to see what is out there. Lets get started see what we can find. This is one of the iconic animals of costa rica and you see postcards with this thing, take a look. Why. One of the things we are looking for is glass frogs and they are imagine magnificent glass frogs and see through, what are we looking at . Guarding the eggs and the other thing is it gets dry if it doesnt rain for a couple days, he will urinate or water the eggs so they do not dry out. Reporter that is a pretty caring father for you. Species like glass frogs are sensitive to pollution and help us to understand the state of the forest, documenting their presence or absence serves as a time stamp letting us know what is here today so we can compare that to how man has effected this forest in years to come. The next day the search for species continues in the most mysterious of places. Right now paul has taken me to a cave in the middle of the rain forest and heard there may be vampire bats in there. I can hear the bats. There she is. You are up. All right. You are on first . Sure. Oh, good. Yeah, pretty low in here. Bats mostly get a bad wrap but in real life they are an important part of our eco system and calil of university of river side is a real life batman who studies the winged mammals. They eat a bunch of bugs and drink nectar and eat pollen and bats. Reporter i never worried about being attacked by a bat but the thought of entering this cave was still a bit daunting and i keep telling myself its all for science. We just got in the bat cave and it is absolutely amazing. Im drenched already covered in mud and there are about 50100 bats. Its a little muddy in there but saw some good stuff. There is a stream down there and lets maybe cleanup a bit. Back in the rain forest a critical part to understanding its condition is knowing whats living in there, take a close example. They are coming out at night and can find butterflys sleeping and i will wake it up a bit so i can show you guys. And to us it looks like an owl but to a predator when you see it on the side it actually looks more like a lizard or a snakes head and the idea is when this butterfly is resting it will tag the back end and try to get the neck of the lizard and you can tell looking at these parts in here its a male and they smell really distinctly and smell kind of like burnt ketchup which is kind of weird. Reporter with all the Data Collected over days in the field its time to hit the books to found. You can actually see the color of the bones. Oh, yeah. Green bones. There it is. And it tells us. Wow. Some frogs have green bones, who would have known . What does it mean to you every time you can add a new species to your species list . Process of discovery and process of linking all of the organisms that live here together and learning more about their connections and interactions with each other. Studying and documenting life in the rain forest is so extremely important for science, it is strenuous work and the conditions at times hazardous but often the rewards are phenomenal. So when you discover a new shee sheepecies. It was found here and when so we know the condition of the rain forest at this time, its a relatively new reserve and others nearby in costa rica and this is wellknown documenting species for decades and using the data center and seeing the effects of Global Warming. If you look at species through the optic of Climate Change the idea that species have quote, unquote natural ranges but now its changing and temperatures are warming say that is going to affect where these species occur and where they live and go and in a place like where you were in costa rica with a lot of mountains eco systems they are moving up the mountain and when happens when mountain. That is in a complex eco systems in the rain forest and in the u. S. And species in the Rocky Mountains and butterflys moving further up. Coming up, next we are go doing meet a scientist who is recycling pollution into works of art. Being a musician, theres no demand. World renowned artist lang lang the moment youre on stage, its timeless american schools falling flat. There are no music class in public schools. And his plan to bring music back. Music makes people happier. Every sunday night. I lived that character. Go one on one with americas movers and shakers. We will be able to see change. Gripping. Inspiring. Entertaining. Talk to al jazeera. Only on Al Jazeera America. Welcome back to tech know and im phil from the force of costa rica i take you to the forest of ohio where i met this incredible tag team of scientists and artists and taking pollution to something we consider quite ugly and making something quite beautiful out of it. Getting used to seeing Recycled Materials in art but idea of recycling pollution totally new. Art is always challenging the way we view our outside world, who knew chemical pollution could do that too. What i love about these guys is they are not taking pollution to make art, they are taking pollution out of the system and cleaning up an entire landscape. Lets take a look. It may not look like it but this is the first step in making paint, artist paint, and not the readymade kind from a tube but the kind professional artists whip up on their own with a little pig pigment and oil. How did you get the idea of making paint . Everybody in this area comes home clothes. Reporter Southeast Ohio where millions of gallons of tainted water from abandon mines ripple through streams and creeks like here in the once pros mining, town. 130 square miles. Reporter the watersheds wash dog michelle who monitors the acid coal mine runoff that began gushing out back in 1968. It is still discharging anywhere from 8001,000 gallons a minute and have acid mine drainage and has metals and a high concentration of iron and alluminum and magnoeze. A Civil Engineer from Ohio University saw pigment for paint and home grown in ohio and not factories. Huge industry and go through a Million Metric Tons a year in the united states, a lot of that is imported from china and we are hoping with this process we can displace some of that. Carefully getting in here, its pretty slippery. I always lose a graduate student or two. Cold water. You can really see where the orange has settled on the bottom, its amazing when you look along the edge it looks like really healthy habitat but look in the water what happens . Should be lots of great fish here, all kinds of insects but those have all been killed because of this. There is nothing in here. So is this the entrance . That is it, yeah, so right here six square miles of under ground mine empties out right in this single spot. Oh, wow. So this is where they drill that hole, what, 50, 60 years ago. That is right. And water is still pouring out to collect some water. Collect some toxic water. So i know there is a lot of bad stuff in the water but being in it now is it like toxic to us . That is one of the reasons i think it hasnt been cleaned up yet is because human exposure is not really a risk. Its low ph but no worse than lemon juice and it has iron but nontoxic at this level. Off . I hope not. We have our 20 gallons of future paint. All right, lets see if we can get out without falling in. Out of 20 gallons how much paint do you get . About 40 grams which is a pretty small amount but we are just making it for testing purposes right now. I assume when you scale it up you will not have people collecting jugs. Longterm solution is to build a Treatment Plant on site here so it will be like a small water Treatment Plant and it will treat all the water and continuously produce pigment and sales for pigment will pay for the plant. Tough being a scientist. In goes the dirty water and outcomes the pigment. All right, so this is where the magic happens. This is it. This is where we turn the amd into pigment. So the water is going to go in and we are going to precipitate out the iron and happens naturally in the stream but we want to do it in a very controlled manner in the lab so we get the right kind of color. Par precipitate out is out of see. We heat it up, can you turn that on over there . Next im going to add a little seed, so this is pigment we made earlier and basically it will help the other iron become more like that . Exactly. I dont know if you made rock candy from sugar water you always start with a grain, a crystal of sugar, right. Basically you put in a little bit of the blueprint for all the other molecules that fall into. Exactly. That looks nice. Then air is bubbled in, oxidizing, literally rusting and dissolving the iron. Next the acid in the water is neutralized. So what are you adding now . Sodium hydroxide and add enough to raise the ph up to 7 1 2. So i saw it turn blue but only briefly as the reaction continues the oxidized iron turns into an orange that painters call gertite. Then it takes about five days for the gertite to separate from the water. This is after it has settled and you can see down on the yellow. This down here is the gertite. Once it dries you have pigment. How much can you sell this for . About 50 cents a pound and doesnt sound like much but from the single site we are working at we can generate over 2000 pounds of dry gertite a day and that water is good to into back into the stream and be good. Take to take the pigment across campus and bringing the pigment in the lab to the art studio and turning the toxins from the creek into art. Hi, john. Hi, phil, good to meet you. Thanks for having me and i brought you the tiniest dry sludge in ohio and i understand you have a use for it. I do and we do make a fine sludge in ohio, ill tell you that much and we make paints out of it and its the same kind of paint used for centuries and its an easy process. This is a glass muller and you can feel the weight and a big piece of glass and what we do, very, very simple, we take a pile of this sludge pigment and take this lin seed oil and make a ring around it like this and we work from the center out. Its going to feel like its hard but you got to put some muscle and pressure into it. Work it. Work it. Work it harder. Nicely done, phil. So how does this stack up to store . Pretty much you wouldnt know the difference. What was it like the first time you painted with this pigment . It was a disaster. It all broke up. The binder wasnt right. Crystals were too big so it kind of ended up in a nice big dirt pile with chunks here and there and couldnt control it and just like that you have to respond to it just like a scientist. It helped refine the pigment making process and inspired a painting called the chromo paintings and priced at thousands each and priceless in the message they send. So you have an unusual way of painting, its quite organic and as you showed me its quite uncontrolled, how would you describe it . I think its controlled chaos and i will push the pigments and at the point you are done with that nature takes over and you have no control. How do you find art and science combined . Scientists and artists share two things, curiosity and failure. Scientists and artists are endlessly curious. And we fail most of the time. And that drives us forward. That sense of curiosity and the willing to get up from failures that leads us to our roles and i think its critical that we function that way and we do this for the betterment of the world. Talking a lot like a scientist there. I know and i feel like a scientist, dont tell them that but i feel like a scientist. I brought you back a little gift from ohio, this is the actual powder that they are using to make the art. So this was once this rusty orange pollutant in the stream and now looks like this. Real beautiful color, do they they there is going to be a produce . Absolutely there is a market and the more we can find conservation programs that are actually funding themselves the better. Its pretty innovative. I thought that was the coolest part of the story, the idea the funds generated from the program would then go back into restoring a wet land system. That is really cool. So phil we saw you do some painting painting yourself, does your personal touch add any value to a work of art . If anything i took away a few dollars in value and the paintings are pretty expensive and hopefully no harm done and check us out next time on tech know as we bring you more science. Go behind the scenes at al jazeera. Com tech know and follow our contributors on twitter, facebook, instagram, google plus and more. Criminal gangs risking lives its for this. 3 grams of gold killing our planet where its blood red. Thats where the mercury is most intense now, fighting back with science. We fire a Laser Imaging system out of the bottom of the plane revealing the deadly human threat because the mercury is dumped into the rivers and lakes, it then gets into the food chain. Thats hitting home it ends up on the dinner plate of people. Techknow only on Al Jazeera America part of Al Jazeera Americas special month long evironmental focus fragile planet inside these walls teenage thieves and arsonists, gangbangers, drug abusers even kids who kill. My anger was pretty bad. But, this once notorious juvenile lockup is trying something new. What does playing the piano do for you . Its therapy, a hobby an interest. Education, counseling offering a second chance. Put gas on his car. Lit it on fire. Set it on fire