How To Regrow The Rainforest In 10 Minutes Or Less

[Smithsonjohn]

Source: Prescott Blue http://prescottblu.blogspot.com/

 

Aggressive trees, out of control plant growth; these are often supporting or vilified roles in the world of sci-fi or fantasy. Dr. Lago, a Sao Paulo University biogenetic research professor, explains that this fantasy may have come true. Using gene splicing, amplification and second messenger systems, the rainforest advocate has invented a new possibility of plant repopulation.

[Turtle]

Source: Prescott Blue http://prescottblu.blogspot.com/

 

Aggressive trees, out of control plant growth; these are often supporting or vilified roles in the world of sci-fi or fantasy. Dr. Lago, a Sao Paulo University biogenetic research professor, explains that this fantasy may have come true. Using gene splicing, amplification and second messenger systems, the rainforest advocate has invented a new possibility of plant repopulation.

 

where is all the fertilizer going to come from to grow a forest though? if there are not sufficient resources for the mutant trees, such as nutrients & water, then time is of little matter it seems to me. quoting the article:

...Lago says that the confounding factor is resources. He cites a hardwood, with its usual slow growth, will have time to allocate proteins, nutrients. He says that using his modified trees without adequate resources results in a flimsy porous type wood. Lago has successfully grown a Trebol tree with calculations of required resources and subsequent provision allowing for the perfect fast-growing hardwood. "It has reached 50 feet in 2 weeks. I cannot tell it apart from its neighbor that took 10 years to reach that height".

[Castle-RockCannabis-Club]

Energy is abundant in many forms. It is all up to the soil/ substrate.

 

Organic matter can be decomposed via myco/ bacterio/vermi/aerobic compost

 

Innoculate with spores of endo/ecto myccorhyzal fungi for plant root / nutrient relationship to soil.

 

Clay is going to need acid rain, salts, minerals for the acidophiles.

 

Anarobe and fermentation cultures for probiotic phytochemogeno signalling axis.

 

Each Substrate has different startup ecosystem that will evolve keystone species.

 

Understanding the sustainability of those resources and balancing the litho, hydro, atmosphere, etc... in that pocket of space and time.

 

It's just got to get a foothold, populate, mutate and survive in a window of time to become resistant to anual fluxes.

[Castle-RockCannabis-Club]

To regrow the rainforest in the middle of the desert may only need a single good rainy / monsoon/ el nino/ el nina/ etc...

 

The large plots in strategic locations could be temporarily covered with plastic and innoculated with probiotics.

 

Study the native ecosystems of bioreactants.

 

It may be as simple as starting a crust of nitrifying bacteria that will help manage the favorable environmental resources.

 

Study the pioneering species. Understand their decomposers and the effect this has on the cyclic, systemic, penetrattion into the substrate resources.

[Castle-RockCannabis-Club]

Have you heard of Spawn Bags? They're great for mycology.

 

Spawn bags are great to develop breeding programs for raw native litho substrate cultures.

 

These are just plastic bags with dirt in them. But there is a breathable micron filter patch to maintain aerobic respiration.

 

A form of strategic composting and lithospheric probiotic innoculation and breeding program.

 

Bioremediation has many resources to tilt ecosystemic dynamics in favor of a productive route.

 

Finding sustainability is the key!

[Jorge1907]

Agree with turtle. Even if true (and I found no relevant article or report in a lit search) this is not a rainforest but at best a monoculture plantation of a plant whose effects are unknown.

 

Drosophila's comment are silly.

[Qfwfq]

Drosophila's comment are silly.

Could you at least give good enough reasons for voicing an opinion in this style? :blink:

 

We do prefer reasoned argument for ordinary disagreement, where you were given no great reason to be annoyed and react, as far as I can see.

[Jorge1907]

Sure - but it's difficult as the comments are so meaningless and sophomoric. You asked for reasoned argument but there is little to argue against as the comments are so disjointed and science is not an argument. The string addresses rain forest (re)generation and the comments appear to talk around that point - a flow of (un)consciousness laden with contrived, nontechnical terms. Seems to think alien species of bacteria and fungi can simply be aded and they'll flourish and lead by an unknown series of events and environmental progressions to a rain forest. They do not.

 

Spawn bags are plastic bags with mold (mushroom) spores disperse in an organic substrate used in mushroom cultivation. Presume suggestion is that they be distributed in deserts. If conditions were sufficient to allow mushroom growth in deserts - they'd be there now. In any case, mushrooms do not mean rain forest.

 

 

To regrow the rainforest in the middle of the desert may only need a single good rainy / monsoon/ el nino/ el nina/ etc... - Comment: and it doesn't - episodic tho infrequent, heavy seasonal rains occur in many deserts now - they're still deserts

 

The large plots in strategic locations could be temporarily covered with plastic and innoculated with probiotics. Comment: it's hard to even know what this one intends - strategic? alien microbes, probiotic or not will not survive, and the word is "inoculate" and what is it with a plastic sheet? Probiotic to what end and for what organism? Shall we spread yogurt?

 

Study the native ecosystems of bioreactants. Comment: so what and what is are "ecosystems of bioreactants"?

 

It may be as simple as starting a crust of nitrifying bacteria that will help manage the favorable environmental resources. Comment: and it may not - whatever is meant here - nitrifying bacteria (presume meant nitrogen fixing) are present now - more will not survive and desert are not necessarily the result of nitrogen limitation

 

Study the pioneering species. Understand their decomposers and the effect this has on the cyclic, systemic, penetrattion into the substrate resources. Comment:a collection of vague disjointed concepts - pioneering species? they get decomposed? cyckic systemic penetration ? substrate resoruces?

 

Energy is abundant in many forms. It is all up to the soil/ substrate. Comment: abundant is subjective as is energy in this context - true to some extent but so what? Up to soil/substrate? Just ask them to "step up" and generate a rain forest?

 

Organic matter can be decomposed via myco/ bacterio/vermi/aerobic compost Comment: so what

 

Innoculate with spores of endo/ecto myccorhyzal fungi for plant root / nutrient relationship to soil. Comment: the word is inoculate and this is "silly" and pedantic and another so what - "mycorrhizal" fungi are usually plant specific and are prob present already for resident plants.

 

Clay is going to need acid rain, salts, minerals for the acidophiles. Comment: this is again "silly" and disjointed. What acidophiles and why would one want them. Clay?

 

Anarobe and fermentation cultures for probiotic phytochemogeno signalling axis. Comment: the word is anaerobe and this phrase makes no sense at all

 

Each Substrate has different startup ecosystem that will evolve keystone species. Comment: more disjointed thinking with cute but subjective, undefined and nonscientific terms - startup ecosystem, keystone species

 

Understanding the sustainability of those resources and balancing the litho, hydro, atmosphere, etc... in that pocket of space and time. Comment: what resources? balancing what and to what end? "space and time" - sounds like Cpt Kirk.

 

It's just got to get a foothold, populate, mutate and survive in a window of time to become resistant to anual fluxes. Comment: sure - it's easy

[Coley]

Regenerating large tracts of tree growth in rain forests after they are stripped away is difficult primarily because the nutrients needed are rather quickly leached from the soil when inadequate detritus is present. The extremely high rainfall has the effect of drawing both organic and inorganic nutrients down through the soil in a leaching process, with the exception of those that are tied up in living organisms. The level of growth seen in undisturbed rainforest tracts is due in large part to the constant addition of plant detritus from leaf fall, plant death, animal and insect activity, etc etc, from which nutrients are released and taken up again fairly quickly. When you remove this cover you remove the source of nutrients. The soil can become depleted in short order. That is why traditional farming in these ecosystems involved relatively small cleared areas which were moved every few years as production fell off. Then the forest regrew from the margins inward. Large-scale deforestation in these ecosystems is an entirely different matter. It's a pretty complicated problem.

 

As for deserts, if the desert in question is like that around Carlsbad, NM, or Grand Mesa, CO, or the Sonoran in Arizona, they are zerophytic environments, what plant life there is is adapted to dry, arid conditions and it is sparse. The input of rain does cause an explosion of growth in these places. Then plants die back and contribute their matter to the production of soil, but initially, and for eons, there are just so few of them. The soil profile in turn effects water balance and a host of other things. In places in the desert it could take 5oo yrs or more to deposit an inch of soil, could be a hundred yrs in others, or it could be a thousand or ten thousand. In any case, it takes a long time to build dirt and it takes materials. Add to that the fact that the run-off carries soil with it, what soaks in can draw nutrients downward, and these deserts are right up there at the top of the most delicately balanced ecosystems. It's a pretty complicated problem.

 

On a lighter note, there is someplace where they have found a way to speed the process up. Every day 100 tons of 'dry cake' are shipped by rail from New York City to Paris, TX. Dry cake is de-watered sewage and you have to put it somewhere. NYC has evidently run out of places to put it. When it gets to Paris it is taken out in the desert and spread around. It has greatly accelerated soil formation. And, they get paid to do it. Pretty creative. Is this a case of having your cake and eating it too? That was bad.

 

As for sounding silly, I dare say any number of us did in the first years of our quest for knowledge. I for one have not forgotten just how silly I still am on occassion. I'm betting the plastic was intended to hold the moisture close to the soil. If I remember correctly, in the dim recesses of time, when I was a sophomore, I think, I threw the word micro-climate around a lot for about 2 months. I am pretty sure that I didn't sound silly, I sounded like an idiot. But, I grew out of it. Keep thinking.

 

One quick question. A friend of mine who is a mycologist who specializes in wood decaying fungi, and has a theory that the micchorizal associations in forests may actually be responsible for the transport of inorganic nutrients from areas where they are plentiful, to areas where they are not. She has done some work using radioactively tagged phosphorus and calcium that indicates this could be a valid premise. But, forests are large and trees grow slow, and there are other considerations, too. Anyone heard of someone else attempting the same thing? Of course, I mean outside of published work. If you have let me know and I will pass it on.

 

Something to think about, plants are pretty, but, it is estimated that as much as 60% of our oxygen comes from single cell organisms. Yep...algae and cyanobacteria. It boggles the mind. You gotta love science.

[JMJones0424]

On a lighter note, there is someplace where they have found a way to speed the process up. Every day 100 tons of 'dry cake' are shipped by rail from New York City to Paris, TX. Dry cake is de-watered sewage and you have to put it somewhere. NYC has evidently run out of places to put it. When it gets to Paris it is taken out in the desert and spread around. It has greatly accelerated soil formation. And, they get paid to do it.

 

Do you have more information on this? With an average rainfall of over 100cm a year Paris, TX is far from a desert, but half a day's drive to the west brings you into the desert. I do not know if you might be referring to the waste site run by Merco at Sierra Blanca, but this was a long way from Paris, and to my knowledge, shipments of sewage sludge have ceased (due to economic reasons). The problem with the practice was that because the sewage stream is not segregated between residential and industrial sources, because the sewage was not always properly treated to prevent the spread of pathogens, and because of the volume of sludge being spread over a limited area, there was some concern about toxins and disease in the surrounding area. Perhaps a better approach would be to turn the sewage sludge into biochar first before application to pastures.

 

One quick question. A friend of mine who is a mycologist who specializes in wood decaying fungi, and has a theory that the micchorizal associations in forests may actually be responsible for the transport of inorganic nutrients from areas where they are plentiful, to areas where they are not. She has done some work using radioactively tagged phosphorus and calcium that indicates this could be a valid premise. But, forests are large and trees grow slow, and there are other considerations, too. Anyone heard of someone else attempting the same thing? Of course, I mean outside of published work. If you have let me know and I will pass it on.

 

A quick google scholar search led to many promising abstracts that your friend may be able to access through a university library. Here is a link to one that deals specifically with Ca and P: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1934943

[Coley]

Hey Mr Jones. From Paris it was shunted on a smaller line. I am slowly unpacking. I did not unload the truck, so a lot of my research material is buried at the back of several rows. If I remember correctly I first came across this in the NY times and the Boston Globe. There were several subsequent publications. I was unaware that this had ceased, but I have a friend who is heavily involved waste and drinking water treatment, so I'll ask him if he knows where it's going if not there. It has to go somewhere else. If you find out, let me know will you? I'm dead curious.

 

I've have heard varying opinions as to the contamination factors. Most regions, pretty much across the board,in the manufacturing processes or energy production facilities wastewater treatment is the responsibility of the industries involved. Those waste streams are treated (that's a whole nother can of worms), and those that miss treatment, all go through a separate system which eventually is released into a body of water somewhere. Kind of like a storm drain system in the city, or like the aerobic series of sequential overflow ponds in refineries pretty much goes straight into the rivers. The domestic treatment facilities, even those present in industrial settings, toilets et al. are routed separately to a waste-water treatment facility, again a matter of economics. However, maybe they are doing what Boston, MA is doing. They ship the effluent to Deer Island, where it's treated, and have built a tunnel which is supposed to eventually be something like 9.5 miles long out into the ocean, on the theory that it will be far enough away that the ocean will clean it and it will then pose no threat to man. The biggest problem with that is that we have no idea what the response to that level of organic loading will cause even at that depth. Lot of models, but we don't have a clue. If you want to read the whole thing,go to Chap. IV-Mass Gov. Then again there are different classes of sludge, who knew, Class a for example is held a high temperature for a specified time until the # is less than 100 per gram, and there is UV treatment.

 

I know for a fact that farmers in Montana used dry-cake as fertilizer for 70 years and it seemed to work fine. I also have a friend who has received mass funding for research, on the premise that viruses could be taken up by plant roots. No evidence that something that large can be taken up, never been found to occur, but there's money in the research, and there have been a lot of labs involved in the work. I am pretty sure that routine tilling, a lack of significant moisture, but not to say none, oxidation by sunlight and oxygen, and heat will take care of most pathogens. That is why you can't graze animals on land which has been treated with sludge for 30 days, or farm it for 18 months after application. These EPA regulations were formulated after extensive testing in which pathogen levels were monitored over a wide variety of climates, and sampled before use. The contamination by the things flushed down toilets and poured down sinks is another matter. But, there are very few chemical compounds that do not degrade with time, and the factors listed above kind of speed up the process. It is a different proposition than dumping the stuff in a landfill and covering it up, thereby creating a hot,humid, primarily anaerobic, culture chamber.

 

Biochar is essentially a kind of charcoal, as I'm sure you know, and the main area of interest appears to be concentrated on tying up the COsub2 in the ground rather than allowing it to return to the atmosphere through decay or combustion. It is indeed being used to build the carbon content of soils. In the carbonization process many organic carbon containing compounds are destroyed, and elements such as nitrogen are driven off. In places where it is used for farming it is supplemented with organic compounds such as manure. Plants obtain their carbon from the atmosphere, with the exception of some algaes and cyanobacteria which can be induced to utilize other carbon sources. But, the carbon sources and organic compounds are necessary for the health of the microbes, worms and other critters found in good soil.

 

I am really interested in water, a fact I suppose that is obvious. If you want to find out about something really spooky, look up Sitka, AK and the sale of water from Blue Lake. It's stunning. This has been in the works for 14-15 years. At first, the companies involved were going to contract with places in Canada. But, parliment was on top of it and slapped a moratorium on the sale of freshwater resources back in 1998-99, I think. They have 20% or so of all the world's fresh water, but only about 10% or so is renewable. They were smart. It's scary. We're literally talking oil sized tankers transporting billions of gallons to other countries.

 

Nice talking to you. Share whatever you find out. I'll pass the link on to Fungi-woman, thanks. Ciao.

[Coley]

Hey Mr Jones. From Paris it was shunted on a smaller line. I am slowly unpacking. I did not unload the truck, so a lot of my research material is buried at the back of several rows. If I remember correctly I first came across this in the NY times and the Boston Globe. There were several subsequent publications. I was unaware that this had ceased, but I have a friend who is heavily involved waste and drinking water treatment, so I'll ask him if he knows where it's going if not there. It has to go somewhere else. If you find out, let me know will you? I'm dead curious.

 

I've have heard varying opinions as to the contamination factors. Most regions, pretty much across the board,in the manufacturing processes or energy production facilities wastewater treatment is the responsibility of the industries involved. Those waste streams are treated (that's a whole nother can of worms), and those that miss treatment, all go through a separate system which eventually is released into a body of water somewhere. Kind of like a storm drain system in the city, or like the aerobic series of sequential overflow ponds in refineries pretty much goes straight into the rivers. The domestic treatment facilities, even those present in industrial settings, toilets et al. are routed separately to a waste-water treatment facility, again a matter of economics. However, maybe they are doing what Boston, MA is doing. They ship the effluent to Deer Island, where it's treated, and have built a tunnel which is supposed to eventually be something like 9.5 miles long out into the ocean, on the theory that it will be far enough away that the ocean will clean it and it will then pose no threat to man. The biggest problem with that is that we have no idea what the response to that level of organic loading will cause even at that depth. Lot of models, but we don't have a clue. If you want to read the whole thing,go to Chap. IV-Mass Gov. Then again there are different classes of sludge, who knew, Class a for example is held a high temperature for a specified time until the # is less than 100 per gram, and there is UV treatment.

 

I know for a fact that farmers in Montana used dry-cake as fertilizer for 70 years and it seemed to work fine. I also have a friend who has received mass funding for research, on the premise that viruses could be taken up by plant roots. No evidence that something that large can be taken up, never been found to occur, but there's money in the research, and there have been a lot of labs involved in the work. I am pretty sure that routine tilling, a lack of significant moisture, but not to say none, oxidation by sunlight and oxygen, and heat will take care of most pathogens. That is why you can't graze animals on land which has been treated with sludge for 30 days, or farm it for 18 months after application. These EPA regulations were formulated after extensive testing in which pathogen levels were monitored over a wide variety of climates, and sampled before use. The contamination by the things flushed down toilets and poured down sinks is another matter. But, there are very few chemical compounds that do not degrade with time, and the factors listed above kind of speed up the process. It is a different proposition than dumping the stuff in a landfill and covering it up, thereby creating a hot,humid, primarily anaerobic, culture chamber.

 

Biochar is essentially a kind of charcoal, as I'm sure you know, and the main area of interest appears to be concentrated on tying up the COsub2 in the ground rather than allowing it to return to the atmosphere through decay or combustion. It is indeed being used to build the carbon content of soils. In the carbonization process many organic carbon containing compounds are destroyed, and elements such as nitrogen are driven off. In places where it is used for farming it is supplemented with organic compounds such as manure. Plants obtain their carbon from the atmosphere, with the exception of some algaes and cyanobacteria which can be induced to utilize other carbon sources. But, the carbon sources and organic compounds are necessary for the health of the microbes, worms and other critters found in good soil.

 

I am really interested in water, a fact I suppose that is obvious. If you want to find out about something really spooky, look up Sitka, AK and the sale of water from Blue Lake. It's stunning. This has been in the works for 14-15 years. At first, the companies involved were going to contract with places in Canada. But, parliment was on top of it and slapped a moratorium on the sale of freshwater resources back in 1998-99, I think. They have 20% or so of all the world's fresh water, but only about 10% or so is renewable. They were smart. It's scary. We're literally talking oil sized tankers transporting billions of gallons to other countries.

 

Nice talking to you. Share whatever you find out. I'll pass the link on to Fungi-woman, thanks. Ciao.

[Coley]

Hey Mr Jones. From Paris it was shunted on a smaller line. I am slowly unpacking. I did not unload the truck, so a lot of my research material is buried at the back of several rows. If I remember correctly I first came across this in the NY times and the Boston Globe. There were several subsequent publications. I was unaware that this had ceased, but I have a friend who is heavily involved waste and drinking water treatment, so I'll ask him if he knows where it's going if not there. It has to go somewhere else. If you find out, let me know will you? I'm dead curious.

 

I've have heard varying opinions as to the contamination factors. Most regions, pretty much across the board,in the manufacturing processes or energy production facilities wastewater treatment is the responsibility of the industries involved. Those waste streams are treated (that's a whole nother can of worms), and those that miss treatment, all go through a separate system which eventually is released into a body of water somewhere. Kind of like a storm drain system in the city, or like the aerobic series of sequential overflow ponds in refineries pretty much goes straight into the rivers. The domestic treatment facilities, even those present in industrial settings, toilets et al. are routed separately to a waste-water treatment facility, again a matter of economics. However, maybe they are doing what Boston, MA is doing. They ship the effluent to Deer Island, where it's treated, and have built a tunnel which is supposed to eventually be something like 9.5 miles long out into the ocean, on the theory that it will be far enough away that the ocean will clean it and it will then pose no threat to man. The biggest problem with that is that we have no idea what the response to that level of organic loading will cause even at that depth. Lot of models, but we don't have a clue. If you want to read the whole thing,go to Chap. IV-Mass Gov. Then again there are different classes of sludge, who knew, Class a for example is held a high temperature for a specified time until the # is less than 100 per gram, and there is UV treatment.

 

I know for a fact that farmers in Montana used dry-cake as fertilizer for 70 years and it seemed to work fine. I also have a friend who has received mass funding for research, on the premise that viruses could be taken up by plant roots. No evidence that something that large can be taken up, never been found to occur, but there's money in the research, and there have been a lot of labs involved in the work. I am pretty sure that routine tilling, a lack of significant moisture, but not to say none, oxidation by sunlight and oxygen, and heat will take care of most pathogens. That is why you can't graze animals on land which has been treated with sludge for 30 days, or farm it for 18 months after application. These EPA regulations were formulated after extensive testing in which pathogen levels were monitored over a wide variety of climates, and sampled before use. The contamination by the things flushed down toilets and poured down sinks is another matter. But, there are very few chemical compounds that do not degrade with time, and the factors listed above kind of speed up the process. It is a different proposition than dumping the stuff in a landfill and covering it up, thereby creating a hot,humid, primarily anaerobic, culture chamber.

 

Biochar is essentially a kind of charcoal, as I'm sure you know, and the main area of interest appears to be concentrated on tying up the COsub2 in the ground rather than allowing it to return to the atmosphere through decay or combustion. It is indeed being used to build the carbon content of soils. In the carbonization process many organic carbon containing compounds are destroyed, and elements such as nitrogen are driven off. In places where it is used for farming it is supplemented with organic compounds such as manure. Plants obtain their carbon from the atmosphere, with the exception of some algaes and cyanobacteria which can be induced to utilize other carbon sources. But, the carbon sources and organic compounds are necessary for the health of the microbes, worms and other critters found in good soil.

 

I am really interested in water, a fact I suppose that is obvious. If you want to find out about something really spooky, look up Sitka, AK and the sale of water from Blue Lake. It's stunning. This has been in the works for 14-15 years. At first, the companies involved were going to contract with places in Canada. But, parliment was on top of it and slapped a moratorium on the sale of freshwater resources back in 1998-99, I think. They have 20% or so of all the world's fresh water, but only about 10% or so is renewable. They were smart. It's scary. We're literally talking oil sized tankers transporting billions of gallons to other countries.

 

Nice talking to you. Share whatever you find out. I'll pass the link on to Fungi-woman, thanks. Ciao.

[JMJones0424]

I did not mean to give the impression that the application of waste bio-solids to soil is never beneficial. In fact, I would argue that when done properly, it is an important method for recycling of nutrients from high population areas back to farmland or rangeland that needs to replace the lost nutrients. This, however, was not the case at the Sierra Blanca site. A desert environment does not have sufficient rainfall throughout the year to allow soil bacteria to deal with the increased biological load of the waste at the rates that were being applied there, and there is insufficient irrigation water available in the area to do this in a sustainable manner over the long term. However, the economics of shipping the waste half-way across the country have thankfully ended the issue.

 

On biochar, while sequestration of CO₂ is a nice side benefit, I did not offer it as a solution with carbon sequestration in mind. If you are interested in biochar's many benefits to building healthy soil, Hypography offers one of the most comprehensive forums on the subject available. Generally speaking, biochar acts like a substitute for stable humus that can be applied to a soil far faster than normal processes generate humus. For the disposal of sewage sludge in areas with relatively slow biological activity like deserts, converting the biosolids to biochar could alleviate most of the environmental concerns that the Sierra Blanca site posed (pathogen contamination, heavy metal and other toxic contamination, and biological overload of the soil).

 

Here is a link to a New York Times article on the closing of the operation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/27/us/new-york-s-sewage-was-a-texas-town-s-gold.html

 

ETA: After a fruitless search for studies done on the Sierra Blanca site now ten years after its closure, I did come across this study done for a similar site in another area of the Chihuahuan Desert.

http://www.lacalandria.net/documents/Walton%20Publication.pdf

The biosolids were applied in 1979 and were still present in substantial amounts when soil samples were taken in 1997. An estimated 32% of the applied biosolids persisted as fragments greater than 2 mm in diameter for almost 20 years. There were no apparent benefits of biosolid application at this site in terms of vegetation establishment within the first four years, and there was no correlation between vegetation patterns and the concentration of biosolids remaining in the soil in 1997. It is hypothesized that much of the applied sludge remains in the soil because of the recalcitrant nature of digested biosolids combined with the environmental conditions of soil in arid systems. Longterm results from biosolid addition experiments in arid and semiarid rangelands should be considered before the practice is widely used for reclamation of degraded rangeland sites.

 

I don't know how Boston is currently dealing with municipal sewage, but from what I understand, the same law that prompted New York to look for alternatives to ocean dumping applies there as well. Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988

 

In respect to plants taking up complex molecular contaminants (such as viruses) introduced to the soil through bio-solids, I would be absolutely shocked to find out that this were possible. Admittedly, I am far from an expert, but everything I have read and encountered leads me to believe that plants take up nutrients as ions dissolved in water, and without the plant acting as a vector by becoming infected itself, I don't see how it could accumulate in the plant. I would be far more concerned about a buildup of these contaminants in a desert soil that is incapable of dealing with them due to excessive aridity rather than plant uptake.