Expanded algal cultivation can reverse key planetary boundary transgressions.

ABSTRACT: Humanity is degrading multiple ecosystem services, potentially irreversibly. Two of the most important human impacts are excess agricultural nutrient loading in our fresh and estuarine waters and excess carbon dioxide in our oceans and atmosphere. Large-scale global intervention is required to slow, halt, and eventually reverse these stresses. Cultivating attached polyculture algae within controlled open-field photobioreactors is a practical technique for exploiting the ubiquity and high primary productivity of algae to capture and recycle the pollutants driving humanity into unsafe regimes of biogeochemical cycling, ocean acidification, and global warming. Expanded globally and appropriately distributed, algal cultivation is capable of removing excess nutrients from global environments, w

SUBMITTER: Calahan D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5857643 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature