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al jazeera america. >> welcome back to tech know. you and phil had a chance to follow some scientists focusing in on the california drought. >> wetted and they're using some really sophisticated equipment. >> you went that in that special outfitted plane while i got to take a hike in the mountains just outside l.a. i think you got the better part of the deal here.

>> maybe, it was a really fascinating way to see the forest in a way the neighborhood eye just can't. >> this drought is so epic, it's so out of the norm that we actually don't have an answer to what can we expect long term. >> four years into california's epic drought, reservoirs are near empty, farmers hurting and forests under attack by opportunistic pests. >> we are seeing changes all over the landscape. >> in order to understand these changes, scientists must first assess the forest health using field observations and airplanes. >> we have the most add advanced airborne remeet sensing package that i know of on earth today. >> for over a decade, greg has been monitoring forests around the world in the carney air borne observe story.

we joined him on his latest effort to map drought plagued california forests in his tricked out plane. in the back of the aircraft are unique sensors designed to take measurements of the forest canopy while the plane flies over it. >> we are flying over 8 million trees an hour. >> one instrument is known at lidar. >> this is a laser system that images the forest canopy or whatever it is we fly over in 3-d. what the instruments do i go provide us a very accurate, unique way of understanding the amount of carbon stored in california's forests. if you don't keep it in the forests with that it ends up in the atmosphere and that affects climate change. >> it detects the chemical com significance of trees. >> today rear heading out pretty close to the oregon border where

we have a lot of forest join known in terms of its drought stress. >> with that, we were off. from the air, we could see reservoirs and rivers clearly depleted of water. >> that's a lot of water missing, when you see that much brown. >> the forest cap pee looks pretty green. >> the majority of california's forests are under drought stress today. my guess is that most of these forests are in trouble. >> back at the lab, the team got to work analyzing the data. that's where phil torres picks up the story. >> you did the flight, these are the results. >> looking can the cockpit, it looked green. here we see something dramatically different. >> what do you see? >> we see that the forest varies from what we would consider pretty average conditions in the yell lows and the blues up there down to areas that look severely drought stricken in red.

>> next we looked at an area where the drought stress was more acute. >> this is from los padres national forest, this is what it looks like in chemical detail. those tree he is are doing ok, but everything else is showing severe drought stress and that's shown here in red. >> now that we have the draw assume above, we decided to head out for a boots on the ground perspective. >> i'm standing here in the middle of los padres national forest. there's plenty of evidence of the impact of a multi-year drought. >> one of the biggest problems here are water stressed pine trees. >> now we're talking. oh, there's a bunch. >> tom coleman is an entomologist with the forest service. >> this is a lot of dead trees right here. >> this is a nice active spot

for bark beatles. they kill more trees than think other kind of in sect or disease in north america. when you look across the landscape and you see this patch work of dead trees, the mortality is quite dramatic. >> this is full of bark beatles. does that mean the other trees are susceptible. >> it's just basically across the entire landscape. >> have you ever seen it this bad? >> not here in california. >> just 10 minutes away, we were looking at the devastation caused by the pine beatles and now we are here and you can see the damage done by forest fires. >> even though the wildfire has gone through and caused major mortality, we'll see bark beatles come in wards juror scientists studying or forests of concerned about the impact from drought not just in

california but around the world. >> what we are worried about is whether these droughts are interrelated in length on a global scale. a lot of the forests in the world are in trouble, drought is putting pressure on them. we don't know how much of the global forest cover is at risk withing but we're in that process now of finally getting the measurements we need to make those predictions. scientists studying this can say here's the problem, but their hands are tied. all they can do is wait for the el niño toe pass and try to influence policy. >> they need to get the data into the right hands. that's the plan, to get it into the hands of managers and decision makers so they can implement change jeers whether we're talking about manage enamerica's grass lands or american forests, one thing is for certain, that if we have healthy ecosystems, we will eventually have a healthier climate.

>> thank you for stories tonight, guys. from prairie to say forests decimated by beatles, it's a complex ecosystem but there's a lot of scientists working hard on it. that's it for now. we'll see you next time on "tech know." >> pushing the boundaries of science. >> we are on the tipping point. >> we can save species. >> it's the biggest question out there. >> it's a revolutionary approach. >> we are pushing the boundaries. >> techknow is going to blow your mind. >> our experts go inside the innovations, impacting you. >> this is the first time anybody's done this. >> i really feel my life changing. >> techknow, where technology meets humanity.

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