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There are a lot of dots to connect here but ultimately, when you blend surface area with circulation, you can cycle nutrients through and into the food web four or five times faster than if the water’s left to become eu- trophic and is essentially devoid or very low in oxygen.
His parameters are nature as a partner, and nature as a model. The Floating Island International facility near Billings, Mon- tana, has a research reservoir, Fry Fish Lake, that is a testa- ment to the remarkable transition that can occur by mechan- ically re-creating the same natural process that he observed in
the Upper Peninsula of Wisconsin:
Notice the green hue to the water pictured below, which has already been treated by the artificial floating islands. When Bruce started the project, water clarity was less than two feet. In this picture, the water clarity is about 19 feet. And that water clarity means that nature is essentially tying up the particulates in the water that would otherwise make it turbid.
And, at the same time, those particulates and the carbon and the nutrients in those particulates are being cycled into the food web. In fact, on the very bottom of this island you can see a whiteish, bulbous material, which is a native form of freshwater sponge. It is reflective of nature as a model that those nutrients and that carbon can be cycled into appropri- ate biota instead of harmful algae blooms.
To reemphasize the point, nature’s wetland effect is essential- ly a way to trigger nature’s food web. It’s one of two phenom- ena that will clear and clarify our water. When you combine solar energy with nature’s wetland effect, you get what nature has intended. You get that beautiful, pristine, incredibly pro- ductive water that we all love.
The before and the after is evidenced here.
This is a landfill site on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand and, ultimately, the photo of the two jars of water -- before and after filtration by an artificial floating island -- is a graphic look at how nature works and how in- credibly effective nature can be -- all without the need or use of any chemicals.
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