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More ecological restoration?

yes   5 votes - 100 %
no   0 votes - 0 %
not yes   0 votes - 0 %
not no   0 votes - 0 %
neither yes nor no   0 votes - 0 %
both yes and no   0 votes - 0 %
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5 Total Votes
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My initial response to such technology is highly positive.  It reminds me of an article in Salon.com last month which discussed how Los Angeles was specifically creating wetlands on old waste land sites, and using them as natural sewage treatment systems.

However, I do wonder - where does the fuel oil end up?  Is it concentrated in some end biological organism?  Does it end up as sludge at the bottom of the restoration tanks?  Is it digested and broken up by the process?  What exactly happens to it?

by Zwackus on Tue Jul 24th, 2012 at 09:43:18 AM EST
Fuel oil is mostly hydrocarbons, I presume they are being oxidised to CO2 and water.
by njh on Thu Jul 26th, 2012 at 12:42:59 PM EST
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I couldn't follow how you went from 500 gallons a day to 100,000 a day.

I think I missed something somewhere

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Tue Jul 24th, 2012 at 11:14:09 AM EST
I couldn't quite follow that either, my best guess is that the 500gal returned to the stream puts the appropriate organisms into the water, and by now it has reached a steady state where the introduced organisms over the last x days are also consuming fuel oil in an equivalent of 100000gal of water.
by njh on Thu Jul 26th, 2012 at 12:45:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]
500 gallons per day is filtered through the greenhouse and then applied to the restorer in the canal.  The restorer itself floats on top of the canal and the roots of the plants in the restorer filter an estimated 100,000 gallons of water in the canal per day.


Solar IS Civil Defense
by gmoke on Thu Jul 26th, 2012 at 03:53:00 PM EST
[ Parent ]
European Tribune - Ecological Restoration: Cleaning the Fisherville Mill Canal
Periodic and random pulsed exchanges improve performance.  Just as random perturbations foster resilience in nature, in living technologies altering water flow creates self-organization in the system.

very tidily put...

this sentence rang all the bells.

thanks for a great diary, the Todds and Stamets are heroes, you are lucky to work with them.

if we take one step towards nature, she will take ten towards us.

The power of knowledge is in mortal combat with the knowledge of power. It really is that simple... That's the Edenic apple we are all munching on.

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Jul 25th, 2012 at 12:13:50 PM EST
I don't work with the Todds or Stamets.  Don't have the background or experience.  Have known John and Nancy Todd since the early 1970s and they used to call me their Boston representative for New Alchemy Institute, undeservedly.  

Solar IS Civil Defense
by gmoke on Fri Jul 27th, 2012 at 04:31:24 PM EST
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