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Emilio Moran is a world-renowned social anthropologist who has studied and published in tropical agriculture, social science, ecology, economics, and, most recently, earth observations from satellites.
Show Notes
Moran’s true discipline is asking the right questions and merging human and environmental sciences to get a holistic understanding of some of the world’s most crucial problems—climate change, land use—and a project he pioneered some 30 years ago: determining the potential of the humid tropics for intensive agriculture.
Moran is a John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor with the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, the Environmental Science and Policy Program, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University.
“I've been working for several decades, mostly in the Amazon, and Africa, too. I've worked on agriculture and what is known as land use and demographic change, migration and demography. My work is probably best known for, for the first time, using remote sensing to examine very small fields in farms to understand how people make decisions about how much rain forest to cut and how much to cultivate. And I’ve studied what happens after you deforest the rainforest.”
Moran’s latest work centers around the environmental and economic impact of hydroelectric dams in Brazil.
“We have found there are many dimensions to this work. The turbine is the thing we want to deliver at the end, something very practical and usable that people can be given for their energy use. How can we serve off-grid communities anywhere in the world? I have credibility from working in the Amazon for so many years. People believe me when I say I can do this. Most people can't do it; it's too hard a place to work. But people believe that I can do it because I've done it for a long, long time.
“We're excited about the potential. Now, the challenge ahead is, how can we convince Brazil and the energy sector in Brazil that this is doable, that they should be moving in this direction? And they should, because Brazil is the most dependent country on hydropower. A few years ago, they were 80 percent dependent on hydropower for all their electrical consumption. They got that down to 67 percent, but solar is still less than one percent in Brazil of their energy needs. And wind power is increasing rapidly, and they already out-compete the smaller dams. But smaller dams do as much damage as the big dams. They block the river so the fish still cannot get through. The damage can actually be worse from having 14 or 15 small conventional dams compared to a big dam. And in fact, in another project that I have, we're working on investigating and comparing a string of small hydropower dams with the big ones to see which one actually causes more damage. We'll be doing that for the next three or four years.
“Support science and encourage people to innovate and not to think inside the box. We've been building hydropower dams for a long, long time, since the turn of the other century. In fact, the first dam was built in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we have a history of building dams. We have over 2,000 dams in Michigan at the moment, many provide hydropower. We are possibly starting to look at Michigan as an object of study. We're looking for the right place in which to do it. But we have a big problem in Michigan. Most of those dams were built in the '30s. They're already 20 to 30 years past their expected lifetime. Most of them are, by the evaluation of the people who monitor dams in Michigan, considered to be dangerous. They're considered to be high-risk dams.
“We already had a breach recently in central Michigan, and this is going to happen more and more. And I'm just amazed that so little is being done to address the problem. Everybody somehow is comfortably enjoying the reservoir for their recreational activity and not thinking that a lot of those reservoirs are high-risk dams that are likely to breach unless either we invest a lot of money in fixing them, or we spend a lot of money removing them. But as they stand, it is a high-risk situation for human life and property. Our research offers a solution. If what we want is the sustainable energy source of hydropower, this technology can do it.
“And at some point we even discussed in our group, can we put our turbine in Old Town in Lansing as a demonstration to show people that this is possible? Because there used to be a hydropower dam there in Old Town. It no longer generates power; it's too old. By putting something in the same place to show that we can generate power for Old Town, for example, is something that we might undertake. It would be a good investment for Michigan that will take us in a direction that would be safer for our citizens. And that would put us at the forefront of new technology for the nation.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Moran is a John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor with the Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, the Environmental Science and Policy Program, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University.
“I've been working for several decades, mostly in the Amazon, and Africa, too. I've worked on agriculture and what is known as land use and demographic change, migration and demography. My work is probably best known for, for the first time, using remote sensing to examine very small fields in farms to understand how people make decisions about how much rain forest to cut and how much to cultivate. And I’ve studied what happens after you deforest the rainforest.”
Moran’s latest work centers around the environmental and economic impact of hydroelectric dams in Brazil.
“We have found there are many dimensions to this work. The turbine is the thing we want to deliver at the end, something very practical and usable that people can be given for their energy use. How can we serve off-grid communities anywhere in the world? I have credibility from working in the Amazon for so many years. People believe me when I say I can do this. Most people can't do it; it's too hard a place to work. But people believe that I can do it because I've done it for a long, long time.
“We're excited about the potential. Now, the challenge ahead is, how can we convince Brazil and the energy sector in Brazil that this is doable, that they should be moving in this direction? And they should, because Brazil is the most dependent country on hydropower. A few years ago, they were 80 percent dependent on hydropower for all their electrical consumption. They got that down to 67 percent, but solar is still less than one percent in Brazil of their energy needs. And wind power is increasing rapidly, and they already out-compete the smaller dams. But smaller dams do as much damage as the big dams. They block the river so the fish still cannot get through. The damage can actually be worse from having 14 or 15 small conventional dams compared to a big dam. And in fact, in another project that I have, we're working on investigating and comparing a string of small hydropower dams with the big ones to see which one actually causes more damage. We'll be doing that for the next three or four years.
“Support science and encourage people to innovate and not to think inside the box. We've been building hydropower dams for a long, long time, since the turn of the other century. In fact, the first dam was built in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we have a history of building dams. We have over 2,000 dams in Michigan at the moment, many provide hydropower. We are possibly starting to look at Michigan as an object of study. We're looking for the right place in which to do it. But we have a big problem in Michigan. Most of those dams were built in the '30s. They're already 20 to 30 years past their expected lifetime. Most of them are, by the evaluation of the people who monitor dams in Michigan, considered to be dangerous. They're considered to be high-risk dams.
“We already had a breach recently in central Michigan, and this is going to happen more and more. And I'm just amazed that so little is being done to address the problem. Everybody somehow is comfortably enjoying the reservoir for their recreational activity and not thinking that a lot of those reservoirs are high-risk dams that are likely to breach unless either we invest a lot of money in fixing them, or we spend a lot of money removing them. But as they stand, it is a high-risk situation for human life and property. Our research offers a solution. If what we want is the sustainable energy source of hydropower, this technology can do it.
“And at some point we even discussed in our group, can we put our turbine in Old Town in Lansing as a demonstration to show people that this is possible? Because there used to be a hydropower dam there in Old Town. It no longer generates power; it's too old. By putting something in the same place to show that we can generate power for Old Town, for example, is something that we might undertake. It would be a good investment for Michigan that will take us in a direction that would be safer for our citizens. And that would put us at the forefront of new technology for the nation.”
MSU Today airs every Sunday morning at 9:00 on 105.1 FM, AM 870, and however you stream at home. Follow and subscribe at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Creators & Guests
What is MSU Today with Russ White?
MSU Today is a lively look at Michigan State University-related people, places, events and attitudes put into focus by Russ White. The show airs Saturdays at 5 P.M. and Sundays at 5 A.M. on 102.3 FM and AM 870 WKAR, and 8 P.M. on AM 760 WJR.
Russ White 0:00
I'm Russ white. This is MSU today and it's a pleasure to welcome Emilio Moran to the program. He's a john a Hana distinguished professor at Michigan State University. Emilio, welcome to the program.
Emilio Moran 0:12
It's nice to be here.
Russ White 0:13
Could you tell us a little bit about your research interests? What do you like to research? What are you working on?
Emilio Moran 0:19
Well, I've been working for several decades, mostly in the Amazon. But I've also worked in Africa and other countries besides Brazil. I've worked on agriculture, I've worked on what is known as land use link, every change, I've worked on migration and demography. And for my work is probably best known and why I was elected the National Academy of Science for my work, which for the first time you use remote sensing, in order to examine very small fields in farms don't understand how people make decisions about how much rain forests to cut, how much to cultivate. And so that became my focus in my work and also study what happens after you deforest the rain forest I study, what is the rate of secondary growth after you deforest the rain forest as a function of the soils as a function of the kind of use that you made of that area that used to be for us to during the agricultural period. So that consumed my interest. And that was at the time I did it for the new nobody had actually studied root secondary growth from space. Of course, we studied it from with space data from satellite Landsat. But we also studied on the ground, we spent a lot of time in the field. Checking out what's there really, because all you see in satellite data are pixels. And you see, you know, digital data doesn't see that for us, you see just the little dots. So you have to interpret with the dots mean, and so we spent a lot of time on the ground trying to figure out for this particular spot, you know, what's here? Is it a cocoa plantation is corn, is it beings is it, you know, secondary growth. And then we were able, you know, after 10 years to do it, for the first time, be able to follow that rate of regrowth and that I think that's why I was elected to National Academy. And that was worked on in the 90s and early 2000s. And then what I'm going to be talking about the trustees, on next Friday, is new work that I've done. Really since I came to Michigan State in the same region where had been working for several decades on issues of land use and deforestation and demographic change. They started building the biggest dam in hydroelectric dam in in Brazil, the third largest in the world. And so right in the backyard where I was doing my agricultural on environmental work, so to me was just irresistible when I first went to the Amazon, because it were building the first highway across the Amazon Basin, you know, a big infrastructure project. I didn't call it that back then. But I realized now that's what he was a huge, you know, 3000 mile highway cutting for the first time the Amazon open to migration and development. And that's what I studied for, you know, for the last three decades. And then I realized that dam building had been going on in Brazil for some time, about 30 years. But he had just really begun to be a big thing in the Amazon, I hear is the biggest one of all being built right in my backyard in that sense, because that was my second home. And so I felt I just had to study it. And that led me to all kinds of new things. And then the earlier work took me to agronomy, ecology, you know, deforestation, agriculture. This new work is taking me to engineering. And so I began to look for engineers here at Michigan State that might help me with this new project that I conceived. And I applied and got funding from the National Science Foundation to study well the social and environmental impacts of the construction of this largest of the dams in in Brazil and the Amazon. So I was successful in getting funding. I brought in not only the engineers a turbine engineer and environmental engineers to help me with that I brought into the team, people from hydrogeology, because we want to understand the whole hydrology of the Amazon Basin, because that's what they're trying to tap into. They're trying to tap into the water as a source of energy. So we want to understand, I know what's not involved.
And the other thing is we were trying to we began by questioning, in fact, the title of that proposal to NSF that was successful $2.5 million dollar grant was rethinking their apps. You know, how can we have sustainable power for communities in the region. And the reason for rethinking is that I've worked there for a long time. And I realized that the only other previous dams in the region, or the energy didn't go to the people who were most profoundly affected by that those people were resettled. Those people would lost their homes, through flooding and the reservoir. They they never got land of comparable quality to what they had before. They often became impoverished they lost their fishing livelihoods because they lived by the river. And how is it possible that you build these big structures to produce energy? And then you forget the people who are most profoundly affected? So I began to say, Okay, let's let's rethink this, which is why, which is why I, I brought in the engineer, a turban engineer into it, and my charge to the engineer was, let's work on something else. I had read about some experimental in stream turbines in Oregon. Not commercialized yet at that point, when I first read about it. And I said, Well, why can't we do something like that for the Amazon where we can, you know, develop some kind of generator that goes in the water doesn't require damming up the river, that will produce energy for the nearby community, not for the National Grid just for the local people who don't have the energy? That will be a revolutionary. And then, and then can we do it without killing the fish? eye. Every time we met every month, during our project, we had my first I was trying to the engineers and say, remember, we don't want to make sushi. And that's, that's what made it exciting is a new kind of what I call reverse engineering. In other words, we're not trying to have the most efficient turbine in the world, we're trying to find the one that's most fish friendly, and still produces enough energy for people. So that's what we've been working on for the last five years. And that's mostly what I will be talking about. In the trustees meeting next Friday. We just got funded in October for a new project, that kind of piggybacks on that one. But again, we just getting started, we just had one or two meetings, to get to know each other. And that's going to basically try to develop the prototype to put on the communities and work with the community to modify the technology to meet their needs. It's actually the other ones designing the technology. This one is to implement, you know, the, the actual technology on the ground. I can't talk about it. Because I mean, other than, you know, it's well, I know what I want to do for the next five year grant for 3.2 million. I know where we want to do, but we just got it. I'll be talking about what we have done in the last four years.
Russ White 8:54
I'm talking with Emilia Moran on MSU. Today, he's a giant, a Hana distinguished professor at Michigan State University, and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. And you started to talk about some of it, Dr. Moran. But a little bit more on what you found so far, what questions you still hope to answer with this research?
Emilio Moran 9:17
Well, we found but there are many dimensions of this work, I mean, that the turbine is the you know, the thing we want to deliver at the end, something very practical, usable, that people can can be given energy for, you know, how can we serve off grid communities, anywhere in the world? We just, you know, again, because I have credibility of working in the atmosphere for so many, many years. You know, people believe me when I say I can, I can do this. Most people can't can't do it. I mean, still harder place to work. But people believe that I can do it. I've done it for a long, long time. I've published a great deal and everybody has to go. Refer to my work if you're going to work in the Amazon pretty much And but we found, you know, a lot of things, we found that some of the things that I mentioned the, you know, just how much the people who were building the dams betray the populations that they are supposed to be serving. In other words they are, they're promised energy, they're promised jobs. They're promised, you know, a better quality of life, better water, better sanitation, all those things are promises made to get people to not fight against the dam coming. And the people generally, you know, believe that this very powerful people can deliver that. So, but we found that, in fact, in this dam is one of the biggest nightmares of all the damage, in fact, because it is so big. You know, there were 22,000 people who had to be resettled or resettle, you know, far away from the river. So all those people who are living off the river, fishing and other activities suddenly get put in a community that's built for them and nice, nice houses, sure, but too far away from where they can make a living. At the beginning, for the first two years didn't even have bus service to the community. So they had to pay taxes, if they want to get out to the bank or to a grocery store. They didn't have to school in the community. It's a big community. They needed school in there for Eddie's primary level, they have a school that people had to walk a long, long way, if they wanted to go to school. They had a, you know, underserved medical post where they can go and get looked at if they had a problem. There was no retraining of people for a new job that they could have. So the social part of the project got into all this social impacts. And then we got into the environmental impacts, we look at the fisheries, we hire postdoc was a fishery ecologist. And then we found again, how the decline in a radical decline, not only in fish amounts, but in fish diversity, because some of the first fish would disappear when you build them are the big ones. This, you know, the big catfish, I'm talking about, you know, six feet long. catfishes. And that was the lifeblood of, of the fishermen because they're easy to catch, they're big. And they bring a lot of money to the fishermen, suddenly those but those are migrating species, you put it down, and they can migrate anymore, and you break their spawning behavior like you're doing with salmon. You know, this has happened a lot of rivers in North America. With salmon, you block their migration, so they need your salmon population collapses. Well, here you have, you know, hundreds of species, you know, you know, we cry about salmon, but, you know, they got hundreds of species in the Amazon, that suddenly are start disappearing. I mean, there's one river that we have been studying in this project, that before the dam was built, they documented 1047 species of fish is the most biodiverse river in the world, by far, twice as much as even the Mekong, for example, or the Congo in Africa. And they put up two dams in it. Well, now you no longer have any of the catfish. You don't have that famous Peter to cool fish, which is two and a half meters long. And, you know, you can go and look at it at the Washington zoo, but is disappearing. And if you find any, they're tiny. And only in some small affluent, where has survived. But the big ones, we stick advantage of the big river and all the big sediment and rich nutrients on the big channel, the river disappear.
So I mean, their oldest dimensions, you know, fissures collapses, that people's lives are made worse. They promised them clean water and sanitation. Well, on fourth, I had a student doing her doctorate on water and sanitation. And she shows how the building company violated the law. For they're supposed to improve the water and sanitation whenever they built a big infrastructure when they didn't. They kept trying not to fulfill the promises made on something that basic for the community. And so there are these other social environmental impacts that we were studying as well. And of course, we made recommendations about what could be done better. I mean, they need to prepare communities for that like that. I mean, they you know, you need to give them two years. Have the governments of state, local, state, federal get ready to provide all that is needed to soften the shock of social big infrastructure project coming to your community? You can't just arrive and do it afterwards. It's too late. Well, Dr. Moran, let
Russ White 15:18
me ask you as the projects move forward in your research, what are sort of some challenges and some opportunities may be on the horizon?
Emilio Moran 15:27
Well, the opportunity is that we have in this project that we're in the final year of what the engineers have done some very good estimation of this technology's potential, we found that just putting solar panels floating on the reservoirs that already exists on existing dams in the Amazon, are just 10% of the of the reservoir governing panels could generate 30 gigawatts of power, which is more than twice the amount of power that is planned to be produced with dams in the next 10 years. So there is a solution that doesn't require them. So that's really what we're doing what we're trying to get done. In our project. Here is solution floating panels. You know, we did not invent that idea. I mean, there are, there are Japanese floating panels. Now for several years. There's some of the UK there are some in Brazil, in small areas as experimental, experimental, floating panels, it does work. People are just not thinking big enough that this could actually replace dams, without any of those damn damaging things that are associated with daps. I mean, just floating on already existing that you'll have to build anything new, in order to get the 30 gigawatts of energy, which is a lot. I know the solution is if we only think of the in stream turbines that we have developed, that we can generate 63% of the total energy that's planned to be generated by conventional hydropower. And the next 1015 years, using history to revise. So again, a combination actually, we're promoting actually a combination of photovoltaics and installing turbines. And we can generate as much or more power than he's plan with conventional hydropower. So these are ways that we can prevent any future damages. So the Amazon rivers and biodiversity and we can still meet the needs of Brazil to have energy for economic development. And even better, some of these energy can be given to local people, which currently they are overlooked by the conventional hydropower. So and we see this as a solution, not just for Brazil on the Amazon. But this is a solution for all people who are off the grid, who are near some kind of water body and who are near stream, because you don't require that much current to generate sufficient power to do this. And so I think we can address the needs of 650 million people across the world that are currently off the grid. And we're currently not serve, except by some very expensive energy sources, like diesel generators, which is if they have power, that's what they tend to have, which is dirty, as if it's a very dirty fossil fuel. And it's very expensive. Usually, people only get power for three to four hours a day. From those sources, because it's so expensive. We could generate 24 hour a day power with this solutions that we're proposing. So we're excited about the potential. Now, the challenge ahead is how can we convince Brazil and the energy sector in Brazil, that this is doable, that they should be moving in this direction? And they should because Brazil is the most dependent country on hydropower. I mean, they A few years ago, there were 80% dependent on hydropower for all their electrical consumption. They got that down to 67%. But solar is still less than 1%. In Brazil, of their energy needs, and wind power is increasing rapidly. But they're still and they already outcompete small hydropower, conventional hydropower, which is a favorite thing I browse the world just smaller, smaller dams. But smaller than, you know, do as much damage is a big dams. I mean, they bought the river so the fish still cannot get through. And so the damage can actually be worse for having 1415 small Conventional dams compared to a big, and in fact, that's in our in another project that I have, we're working on investigating, comparing a stream of, of small hydropower dams with, with the big ones to see which one actually has more damage. I'm sure, we'll be doing that for the next three or four years.
Russ White 20:22
When you present to a group like the board of trustees are there a couple of messages you hope they take away or that you want to get across to people about this project in your work? support science,
Emilio Moran 20:33
I mean, and let people that people, you know, encourage them to innovate. Not to think inside the box. I mean, it's so easy. I mean, we've been building hydropower dams for a long, long time since since the turn of the century. In fact, the first the first dam was built in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So we have a history of building dams, we have over 2000 times in Michigan at the moment. Many of them hydropower and all of them. And in fact, we are, we are starting to look at Michigan as an object of study, possibly we're looking for the right place in which to do it. But you know, we have a big problem in Michigan, we most of those dams were built in the 30s. They already 20 to 30 years past their expected lifetime. Most of them are by the evaluation that people who monitor dams in Michigan, they're considered to be dangerous. Because here's the B high risk dams, we already had a breach recently in Central Michigan, and, you know, communities that were flooded near Sanford. And this is going to happen more and more. And I'm just amazed that so little is being done to address the problem. Everybody somehow is comfortably enjoying the reservoir for their recreational activity, not thinking that all those a lot of those reservoirs are high risk dams that are likely to breach always, either we invest a lot of money in fixing them, or we spend a lot of money removing them. But as they stand, it is a high risk situation for human life for human property. And I think our researches offers a solution again, it does solve the problem having a pretty liking wish to bolt on. But if what we want is pot hydro power, sustainable energy source, we have this, this technology can do it. And at some point we need to discuss in our group, can we put our our turbine in Old Town in Lansing, as a demonstration to show people that this is possible, because there used to be a hydropower dam that I hold down, you no longer generates power is installed. But even putting something in the same place to show that we can generate power for Old Town, for example, is something that we might we might undertake, if we had the resources to undertake it, I would hope that maybe maybe as trustees, or somebody else might decide that this will be a good investment for for Michigan that will take us in the direction that would be safer for our citizens. And that will put us at the forefront of new technology for the nation.
Russ White 23:42
Oh Dr. Moran, it's comforting to know you're working on this problem though I can sense your passion and really appreciate all your great Spartans will work and telling us about it today.
Emilio Moran 23:52
Yeah, I think I think MST was a good fit for me. I am, whatever I do, I'm very passionate about. And so I have jumped with both feet into this hydro power debate and solutions. And I think it's something that can apply over most of the United States. And which, still, we're mostly thinking of small dams, as opposed to having some other way to get that power. Well, that's
Russ White 24:23
Amelia Moran. He's a john aid Hana distinguished professor at Michigan State University and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. And I'm Russ white, this is MSU today
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