If well-distributed throughout agricultural areas, algal turf scrubbing facilities can recapture the nutrients that run off of farms before they accumulate downstream and cause unwanted blooms. The algal biomass can be recycled locally as a slow release fertilizer, reducing the amount of mineral fertilizer that needs to be imported or manufactured and returning organic carbon to the soil, reversing centuries of damage. It can be used as a feed in agriculture and aquaculture, and as a source of biofuel.
About 20 million hectares (47 million acres) are needed worldwide to completely recycle agricultural nutrient pollution. This is no small task. One percent of the global economy would need to be diverted to algae farming. In exchange, algae farmers would restore ecological balance, basin by basin, reversing damage to their soils and reducing the use of mined and petroleum-based nutrients, rescuing fish stocks by reducing or eliminating algae blooms and dead zones. In the process, 10% of excess atmospheric carbon would be captured in the algal biomass.
https://sciencetrends.com/algal-turf-scrubbing-creating-helpful-not-harmful-algal-blooms/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Due to a small but consistent influx of spam, comments will now be checked before publishing. Only egregious spam/illegal/racist crap will be disapproved, everything else will be published.