ArcologyX’s Bio Night

Hi all!

ArcologyX’s next bio-night is this coming Thursday, the 12th, at 6pm est 3pm pacific.

Topic:

1) Brandon from Grow Trees Organic on YouTube will be filling us in on his permaculture farm he and his partner are building in the high scrub desert regions of Arizona.  Rain water harvest has been a major factor in growing the forest and orchards they are planting.  We’ll pick his brain a bit on nutrients, building in a desert environment, and how we can support his projects.

2) MDRS refits and upgrades: Colin (me) will be going out to the mars desert research station work party in the beginning of October to help with some hab remodeling and getting a sense of the flux and flow of nutrients and water.  James Burke has asked me (but ArcologyX as a team effort) to get a design and cost sheet for installing a septic wetland and maybe a cistern.  Nutes from the aerobic wetland will be cycled back to the greenhouse for studies and used to grow an orchard in place of a leach field, if appropriate.  Those decisions are the Society’s, but that’s what we at ArcX would like to do and just “pretend” we’re under a dome.  It also matches closely with the Spring Institute’s goals.

3) We had a conversation last week about “CRISPR’ing” a wetland back to life.  If a certain keystone microbial species is lost or degraded due to some circumstance, it would be necessary to reconstitute that microbe from scratch, thereby restabilizing the wetland niche it keystones.  Its a topic I’ve kicked around in my head for a while and would be fun to workshop.  Might be a hypothetical publication.

There will also be the standard bs session and topic of opportunity if we get through all of that.

Hope to see you all there!

Colin    

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Colin Lennox

Director, Ecologist

EcoIslands LLC