azolla event

[Moontanman]

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

 

The Azolla event occurred in the middle Eocene epoch,[1] around 49 million years ago, when blooms of the freshwater fern Azolla are thought to have happened in the Arctic Ocean. As they sank to the stagnant sea floor, they were incorporated into the sediment; the resulting draw down of carbon dioxide has been speculated to have helped transform the planet from a "greenhouse Earth" state, hot enough for turtles and palm trees to prosper at the poles, to the icehouse Earth it has been since.

 

We keep hearing about ways to remove CO2 from Earth's atmosphere and this is a good idea but this tiny fern has in the past taken the earth from a hothouse earth to an icehouse earth. Can we use it to sequester CO2 now?

 

Azolla has many interesting uses, it can be used as cattle feed, or to feed ducks and geese. I suspect, but I am not sure, that humans can eat it as well.

 

Any body of water it grows across is cleaned by the fern and the fern squashes the reproduction of mosquitos. shallow bodies of water could be used to grow the stuff and harvest it to either feed to animals or even use as a fuel source.

 

Organic material can be turned into hydrocarbons and possibly genetic engineering could cause azolla to make oil like certain species of algae have been GM'd to do.

 

This is impressive, I have used it as potting soil and the nitrogen content makes higher plants grow like crazy.

 

Azolla has been deemed a "super-plant" as it can draw down as much as a tonne of nitrogen per acre per year[5] (0.25 kg/m²/yr); this is matched by 6 tonnes per acre of carbon drawdown (1.5 kg/m²/yr). Its ability to use atmospheric nitrogen for growth means that the main limit to its growth is usually the availability of phosphorus: carbon, nitrogen and sulphur being three of the key elements of proteins, and phosphorus being required for DNA, RNA and in energy metabolism. The plant can grow at great speed in favourable conditions – modest warmth and 20 hours of sunlight, both of which were in evidence at the poles during the early Eocene – and can double its biomass over two to three days in such a climate.[1]

 

With 800,000 years of Azolla bloom episodes and a 4,000,000 km² basin to cover, even by very conservative estimates more than enough carbon could be sequestered by plant burial to account for the observed 80% drop in CO2 by this one phenomenon alone.[9] This drop initiated the switch from a greenhouse to the current icehouse Earth; the Arctic cooled from an average sea-surface temperature of 13 °C to today's −9 °C,[1] and the rest of the globe underwent a similar change. For perhaps the first time in its history,[10] the planet had ice caps at both of its poles. A geologically rapid decrease in temperature between 49 and 47 million years ago, around the Azolla event, is evident: dropstones — which are taken as evidence for the presence of glaciers — are common in Arctic sediments thereafter. This is set against a backdrop of gradual, long-term cooling: It is not until 15 million years ago that evidence for widespread polar freezing is common.[11]

 

At the very least azolla could be used to replace nitrogen fertilizers since the plant fixes atmospheric nitrogen.

 

Any thoughts?

[Phi for All]

Why isn't it more widely used? Does it get you high if you smoke it?

[Moontanman]

Why isn't it more widely used? Does it get you high if you smoke it?

 

 

That is an interesting question, I stumbled on it's value quite accidentally. I started growing it for mosquito cover but it got so thick it was drowning squirrels who thought it was solid ground and one day i was potting a birds nest fern and I decided to use azolla instead of sphagnum ( I was out of sphagnum ) and it proved to be a powerful fertilizer and potting medium. The fern grew into a small tree! koi carp eat it like candy, even turtles like to eat it.

 

I have used it for years as a base or additive to many custom potting mediums I have used for various plants.

 

I never tried to smoke it but that does give me some GM type ideas...

[Phi for All]

I just thought if it was like pot, that might be why it wasn't more widely used. Nobody wants something that's easy to grow that takes the place of several more expensive substances. That would just be... horrible.

[illuusio]

I just thought if it was like pot, that might be why it wasn't more widely used. Nobody wants something that's easy to grow that takes the place of several more expensive substances. That would just be... horrible.

 

Dude... I mean.. dude! What was I saying... ou.. dude!... shoorms are for free