thewallgrows

Mushrooms to clean up dioxin in Fort Bragg California

I am a huge proponent of myco-remediation and I often incorporate a bio-remediation stage in site development proposals. That's why I was just tickled pink to read this article in the NYTIMES today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/us/27bragg.html

The legacy of the large timber industry that once owned northern California is large tracts of contaminated land where their mills once stood. In the case of Fort Bragg the municipality was given rights to a 420 acre strip of seashore land that came with a typical toxic-soils caveat... they could have the land only if they dealt with the contamination, specifically five hot-spots that had high levels of dioxin. the options tabled to deal with the soil were either to haul the dirt away, or bury it in a lined landfill on site.

but then they contacted Paul Stamets, mushroom-guru cum-savvy eco-business warrior, and he suggested turkey tail & oyster mushrooms (medicinal tea & stir-frys, respectively). Dioxin (C₄H₄O₂) is an organic molecule with no heavy metals or radioactive isotopes, and as such it's ripe fodder for the tenacious mushroom mycelium that can break apart the chemical bonds and convert the basic atomic building blocks of carbon and hydrogen into rich mushroom proteins & sugars.

The Fort Bragg community voiced their support and were given a few yards of dioxin contaminated soil & facilities to conduct a myco-remediation experiment. It might be some years before we know for sure how well this works, but it's hopeful to see otherwise dangerous contaminants being turned not only into benign substances but straight into medicine and food.

For those who missed it, the recent San Francisco oil spill, resulting from an inebriated bar pilot slamming a tanker into the footing of the Bay Bridge, was cleaned up using mats made of human hair donated by the city's stylists and barbers. The mats were then hauled off and DIGESTED... oil & all, by oyster mushrooms, also provided by Paul Stamets.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/14/MNPQTBLE4.DTL

and finally here's the first board from my final project last year where I proposed deconstructing the 101 Freeway in the Presidio and digesting the asphalt using mushrooms.

saturday afternoon.

working in studio on a rhino model of a wall.
listening to the Shu Show... www.takilmafm.com most saturdays 4ish-8ish best show on the net.
or your money back
this wall is crashing my computer.

The Portland Bike Ensemble - Live at Riverside Art Museum 04-18-2008

thank you to everyone who made this reality.

poll analysis

wow wow wow
what an exciting poll we had. and as it turns out...

40% of you believe that there is more good in the world. weird.
60% of you believe that it's a circle, duh. whatever that means.
and none of you believe that there is more bad in the world. good.
so thanks to everyone for providing me with yet more data i can sell to advertisers.
and remember... NEW POLL SOON!
and here is a full blown simulation of how a neandrathal would have pronounced the letter e in a glorious wave format for all of us to hear and ponder the deep time out of which this voice comes floating, echoing in the heart of our language cortex. computers connecting us to our ancestors by one simple vowel... provided courtesy of Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

site plan oak to 9th tentative

some old work

concert event coming up!

big news
i'll be playing my electric log april 18th at this event as part of the portland bicycle ensemble. it's in riverside california which i hear from my friend david is a pretty weird place! come if you can.
love nathan

this blog is now officially HUGE

new poll... WHAT!
new post... WHAT!
all with MORE TOOTH

fungus among us

As the planet continues to experience rapid climate change due to human actions, the potential impact on the microbiotic community is little understood. Despite the overwhelming diversity, biomass, and ecological importance of bacteria, archaebacteria, and fungus we spend very little time worrying about their long-term stability... except when they start killing bigger things.

two cases in particular. the frogs of central & south america, and the oaks of northern california. both are being laid low by a fungus. in the case of the frogs it is a chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, the oaks Phytothphora ramorum, an oomycete.



P. ramorum (oak killer) was first reported in 1995 along the hills of the northern California coast, where it rapidly began infecting large populations of the coastal live oak and black oak, once infected mortality is assured. Oozing black cankerous sores, wilting leaves, beetle infestations, and then death mark the disease. In Europe a similar afflication was identified as being P. ramorum shortly after it was found in the U.S. The fungus also infects many different host tree species, such as rhododendrons, but does not cause mortality, using the host instead as a spore factory that can spread the fungus via water or wind to new oaks. The origin of P. ramorum is not understood.

B. dendrobatidis (frog killer), on the other hand is a well known disease of amphibians but usually only effects a small percentage of any given community. However, during the 1980's and 1990's two thirds of the 110 harlequin frog species vanished, even those in remote mountainous areas, driven extinct by the fungus. The scientists were stumped until long-term climate data was analyzed for the cloudy rainforests where the frogs live. They realized that due to global warming the forests weren't getting as cold during the night, but were getting cooler during the day, constricting the temperature range. Without the extreme temperatures to limit it, B. dendrobatidis flourished, the infection rates in the frogs bounded upward, and species began dying off.

I believe that a similar process is at work in the oak death, a climate threshold was crossed and the California coast became a more suitable habitat for P. ramorum, perhaps latent in host species it proliferated and began attacking the oaks. As global climate changes we would expect to see corresponding shifts in the microbiota as the new conditions favor a different set of species that come into the population forefront while others step back or go extinct.

Temperatures continue to creep higher, and there is no telling what kind of organism may begin multiplying into the warm, moist air or water. The frogs and the oaks are obvious examples, but other inexplicable die-offs may be related. the Colony Collapse Disorder afflicted honeybees were full of fungus, bacteria, and viruses. More recently the sudden decimation of the bat populations in the eastern U.S. was marked by a white fungus that grew on the bat's noses just before death.

Two points make a line, three a plane, and a pattern emerges. While the polar bears stuck on ice flows get the press the real consequences of climate change may be more subtle, yet much deadlier. if you're interested in purchasing a fungal spore-proof respirator visit the merchandise area of my blog-world. best of luck buddies!

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8569

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0112_060112_frog_climate.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_oak_death

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/science/25bats.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder