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Plant diversity with Pitcher plants / Justin Rohde / License
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Plant diversity with Pitcher plants / Justin Rohde / License
Vegetation in water catchment basins strip nutrients from water by maintaining a diversity of organisms that act in different ways.
| Biomimetic Application Ideas |
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Maintaining systems in agriculture and community water sources that mimic the way that water catchment basins function to remove any excess nutrients. |
[Collapse all sections] Summary
"Water supply authorities operate at the other extreme of the biodiversity scale preferring water catchments that are fully vegetated, whether by native forest, woodland or plantations. In such cases, the expectation is not that the catchment ecosystem will be unchanging, but that water collected in the reservoir will be so low in nutrients that it will not support significant blooms of algae which would impair water quality and thus render it unfit for human consumption without expensive treatment…The present cases differ because of higher nutrient levels and corresponding greater levels of biological production leading to health risks and aesthetic problems. These observations suggest that there is a case for a wider mimicking of nature at a landscape scale. The naturally or artificially vegetated water catchments that retain natural biodiversity in order to obtain pure water are examples of the systems to be mimicked. Tree lots, wind breaks and aquatic vegetation fringing watercourses are all mimics of woodland, swamp, marsh or stream fringing plant communities which may be effective in stripping excess nutrients from drainage lines, streams and waterbodies. In cases involving landscape scales the criterion of enough [referring to biodiversity] is satisfied when the nutrients discharged from one ecosystem are within the assimilative capacity of the receiving system without altering its biodiversity. When biodiversity has been lost then the functional replacements such as the revegetation mentioned above should be designed to satisfy the foregoing criterion, especially as nutrients end up in waterbodies, rivers and estuaries where the resulting algal blooms, loss of biodiversity and pollution from rotting biomass is legendary." (Main 1999:31, 34)
Bioinspired products and application ideas
Application Ideas: Maintaining systems in agriculture and community water sources that mimic the way that water catchment basins function to remove any excess nutrients.
Industrial Sector(s) interested in this strategy: Agriculture, water treatment
Eco-Machine wastewater management - Waterwater treatment system
References
Main, A. R. 1999. How much biodiversity is enough?. Agroforestry Systems. 45(1): 23-41.
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