Termites Foretell Climate Change in Africa's Savannas

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2010/09/07/termites_foretell_climate_change_in_africas_savannas.html

Scientists have been able to map out the landscape and vegetation of Africa in relationship with the termite mounds. The Termite mounds are built on high elevation that has seeplines from water flow below the ground. Higher elevations with well drained water contain woody trees and the lower, wetter grounds grow grass. Scientists can predict climate change using these graphs because the termite mounds can tell where different vegetation will grow. The tool used to make 3-D maps of vegetation and termite mounds is called CAO and uses a waveform LiDAR system. With this, scientists and researchers can predict how warming will affect the vegetation growth in Africa.
In my opinion, I think that this is awesome. Using other tools in nature to figure out environmental issues is fascinating to me. We could never understand everything about nature, the wonders of nature are endless. The technology that allows us to map out geology and vegetation is useful in many ways. For the CAO they used the same idea as a medical scanner, but they just made it larger and put in the neccessary components to map out land. I am so amazed at what is new in science because it is always changing and finding solutions to problems.