Page 29 - ACTL Journal_Sum24

The scene below is from a water reservoir at Floating Island’s research facility. The bottom image shows the algae and silent bacteria which without treatment will convert to sludge, the sludge from which methane will emit if allowed to happen.
The sludge is not nature’s model. Quite the opposite, it is solely due to humans and the incred- ible surge of nutrients through agriculture that we humans have been putting into our water.
The sludge forms and is converted to biogenic methane under anerobic conditions -- meaning that oxygen is lacking. But we have learned, through nature, that by providing just a little bit of oxygen to the water, we can sustain a population of another form of microbe called methano- troph, which eliminates methane. Again, nature’s model is showing us what needs to be done.
SUMMER 2024 JOURNAL 28