Status Updates From Phyto: Principles and Resou...

I get the idea here, but the notion that green walls and roofs can just be implemented anywhere is rather short sighted. Por ejemplo, green roofs don’t work well here in yeehaw country; our climate simply roasts everything alive. Green roof PV systems are ,, better but still not super great at the higher elevations. Need a manual of Phytoremediation PER particular climate regions (with ideas for microclimates).

did I miss it somehow? Why are we striving for trapping inorganics in gravel media? Isn’t that just,, tucking the contaminants under the rug? That’s not true remediation; that’s out of sight of our mind philosophy. Is that where we’re at in ecology now? Sweep it away from our view and let someone else deal with it down the line? Do we even know what that does to the rhizosphere?? To the soil??

“lead extraction with plants is not considered feasible for field-scale remediation” okay wow that sucks but fine. How about we conduct analyses of lead brownfield colonizers without the restrictions of phyto-exclusivity? Fungi? Bacteria? The trouble with this text is that it keeps running into phyto-walls and stopping there. Shift gears, man. Welcome to the age of multidisciplinary environmental problem-solving

Cannae get this one out of my head. We, as a generation, are SO screwed from SO many different angles. To those who call me unduly negative: go ahead and read this one and then anything by McDonough & Braungart or Kolbert and tell me that you disagree with my assessment. Go on. Can you do it? Can you look the Anthropocene in the eye and tell me you still have an unwavering confidence in humanity’s resilience?

okay, so metals are tricky. Got it. But consider! If we know pH directly impacts phyto-uptake, how about we just squeeze a WHOLE bunch of lemons on the soil to enhance remediation efforts? Better yet, plant a bunch of citrus and pine on site, let the fruit and needles drop on the soil and the acid contribute to pH decline, then plant metal uptake species, ideally ones compatible with climate and pines/citrus

This is written by STEM majors, and it does show a little bit. Ambiguous word choices: “[nitrogen] applied as both irrigated effluent and biosolids to mature poplar trees.” I’m assuming the application is on trees that are mature BUT could it mean applications IN ORDER TO mature trees? Is mature used as a descriptor of the trees which receive application or is it a part of the expected outcome of application?

Rewiring my brain chemistry for sure