Economic Impacts

Adapt, Reuse, Reclaim

Landscape Architects transform areas that contain industrial and toxic waste, infrastructure no longer in use, or land affected by war, natural disaster or disuse. These neglected places, while often having a negative impact on the environment and surrounding community, are simultaneously part of our cultural heritage. These projects showcase the creative approaches global city governments, preservationists, developers and the design community have taken to transform marginalized places into healthy and meaningful environments, using studies from biotechnology. (8.1)

These projects includes a variety of situations where our world has been impacted by bioremediation: Cleaning oil spills, turning abandoned industrial sites into a habitat which in turn gives back to the environment, using a newly discovered plant to absorb high amounts of nickel, and more.

Oil Spill Seeding (8.2) Almost two weeks after the disaster started, the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico is still gushing up to 10,000 barrels of oil into the ocean every day. With no progress from the government, it turns out one of the keys to cleanup might already exist in the now oil-infested waters. Natural microbes present in every ocean are superb cleaners, and with the addition of a bit of fertilizer they could prove successful in removing oil from the Gulf.	Abandoned Industrial Site, WA (8.1) Managing the corrupted soil involved several strategies: removing the most toxic soil, capping and collecting the mildly contaminated soil, and then finding a way to reuse it as part of the landscape.	Metal Eating Violet (8.3) Rinorea Niccolifer, discovered in 2013, cleans up industrial sites contaminated with nickel, but also as a non-invasive, “green” mining technique. Rinorea absorbs up to 1,000 times as much nickel as most other plants, making it theoretically possible to plant fields of it in nickel-rich soils and then extract the metal from the harvested crop. Rinorea was just discovered in a remote area last year and is now undergoing testing for it metal-eating abilities.
Urban Bamboo Biofilter (8.4) Bamboo forests are beautiful things — especially when they are cleaning urban air, soil, and water AND shielding communities from industry and heavily trafficked areas. Urban Biofilter creates bamboo forests on brownfields that are fed with wastewater. The harvested Bamboo then creates income in areas that are otherwise neglected through sustainable bamboo harvesting and timber production.	Restore the Tijuana River Watershed The proposed project would create an elegant solution to current wastewater issues by channeling and redirecting it to a system of bamboo biofilters at NOAA’s outreach office. The plantings would be done as workshops. This would minimize cost, give skills to the public, and act as a catalyst for a wastewater paradigm shift in an area that needs it. (8.4)	Oyster Mushroom Eats Petroleum (8.3) Oyster mushrooms enjoy eating diesel fuel and other petroleum products for breakfast. In one study, soil contaminated with diesel oil was inoculated with oyster mushroom mycelia, resulting in a 95% reduction of toxic compounds such as petrochemicals after a one-month period.
From Sewage into Electricity (8.5) Ohio-based Pilus Energy has engineered a new, multi pronged approach to these problems of limited renewable energy using a specific group of bacteria, or “BactoBots” that remediate human and animal waste by turning the sewage into electricity, biogas, and water.	Brownfield into Greenfield, MA (8.1) Gas Works Park was built on the location of a former coal gasification plant in 1965. This groundbreaking project has been celebrated for its ability to garner local support and shift public perceptions of post-industrial landscapes. It is considered revolutionary for its reclamation of polluted soils using the natural processes of bioremediation.	Sugar Cane and Gulf Shrimp (8.3) The sugar cane and gulf shrimp, together, can be combined to help dissolve petrochemicals in water and soil.
Sea the Oil Spill? (8.2) The microorganisms, even without fertilizers, will begin to chow down on the oil when it enters their natural habitat. So, with the addition of sulfate or nitrate fertilizers the microorganism multiply beyond their natural state and eat up the toxic metals invading their home at up to five times the rate that they would without assistance.	Pollution Eaters (8.2) Bioremediation can refer to the use of microbes, fungi or plants that have the ability to remove pollutants from the environment. Microbes and fungi generally accomplish this through breaking down toxic substances into benign byproducts, which is highly effective with things like petroleum products, chlorinated solvents and even radioactive substances.