You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Many of us remember the butterfly effect, which asks the question,

can the flap of a butterfly's wings cause a storm elsewhere in the world?

It's a beautiful thought experiment, but for ecosystem scientists, Yadvindar Mali, it's much more

than a question. It underpins life on Earth. In his talk, he shares how he and fellow

scientists map and calculate the flow of energy that runs the natural world.

He reminds us that the world isn't a series of disconnected parts, but rather one whole living

biosphere.

I'd like to start with a picture of a forest.

And what do you think of when you see this forest? Maybe you think of ways the forest could be

useful to us, maybe as a source of timber or a fuel wood, or maybe as a store of carbon with which we can tackle climate change.

And all of these are useful and sometimes necessary ways

of thinking about a forest or any ecosystem.

Or maybe, just maybe, you feel something more mysterious and wondrous.

Maybe you have an inkling of a world far more ancient than our young species. A world full of beings that communicate in languages of sound

and chemistry and light that we barely understand. A world that needs to be approached with humility.

In this world, plants perform the everyday miracle

of turning light and air into life.

And that energy that captured sunshine

then cascades from plant to animal to fungus to bacterium.

And on the way, it carries great currents of carbon, nitrogen,

and other essential nutrients that together build the web of life,

...