LIFE FROM ABOVE

By Jennifer Robinson / Web Producer

Published October 17, 2019 at 1:51 PM PDT

Lake St. Claire on the U.S./Canada border appears heart-shaped from space.

“Moving Planet” Encore Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at 9:30 p.m. on KPBS TV / Watch the series now with KPBS Passport!

Behold Earth as it’s never been seen before. Cameras in space tell stories of life on our planet from a brand-new perspective, revealing its incredible movements, colors, patterns and just how fast it’s changing.This extraordinary viewpoint reveals amazing events happening every day in both the natural and human worlds. From the intimate to the epic, the surprising to the familiar, LIFE FROM ABOVE offers a rare look at Earth, its landscapes and its inhabitants that goes beyond what we thought we knew.

EPISODE GUIDE:

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Shaolin Kung-Fu students put on a display of strength and coordination in Dengfeng, China.

Episode 1: “Moving Planet” Encore Wednesday, Aug. 16 at 9:30 p.m. on KPBS TV - See new footage of the greatest, most beautiful and powerful movements on our planet. Cameras in space capture events like an elephant family's struggle through drought, and thousands of Shaolin Kung-Fu students performing in perfect synchronicity.

Drought has forced a family of elephants from the safety of Samburu National Reserve to look for food dangerously close to a busy main road. One of the females has a calf, just a week old, but with so little food available she’s struggling to provide enough milk for her baby. The family desperately need the rains to arrive and the view from space shows that they are just days away.

Episode 2: “Colorful Planet” Stream now with KPBS Passport - View Earth's kaleidoscope of colors as seen from space. Swirls of turquoise phytoplankton trigger an oceanic feeding frenzy, China turns yellow as millions of flowers bloom, and at night the waters near Argentina are spotted with green lights.

Thousands of rapeseed flowers bloom en masse transforming the landscape on a scale that can only truly be appreciated from above. Nomadic beekeepers arrive in time for the bloom to make honey but their window of opportunity is short. The fields will be sprayed with pesticides in just two weeks.

Episode 3: “Patterned Planet” Stream now with KPBS Passport - Discover the weird and wonderful shapes that cover Earth's surface as seen from space. The Australian outback is covered in pale spots thanks to digging wombats, and hundreds of elephants tear into the endless green of the Congo forest canopy.

A paninga turtle heads deep into the burning desert for an extraordinary weather event. Rain fill the dunes, creating hundreds of pools. Only from space can we appreciate the scale of the transformation.

Episode 4: “Changing Planet” Stream now with KPBS Passport - Take a fresh look at our fragile planet and see just how much it's changing. Cameras in space show growing cities, disappearing forests and melting glaciers, but one country regenerated a landscape and helped save a chimpanzee family.

Cameras in space show mines sprawl and irrigation circles appear in the desert. We have found ingenious ways to use earth’s natural resources but we have also left our trash behind.

Watch On Your Schedule:

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All four episodes are available to stream on demand with KPBS Passport, a benefit for members supporting KPBS at $60 or more yearly, using your computer, smartphone, tablet, Roku, AppleTV, Amazon Fire or Chromecast. Learn how to activate your benefit now.

In Bangladesh, fisherman use otters to corral fish into nets.

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