Regenerative Skills12 Jul 2024

Regenerating lakes and ponds with floating islands, with Bruce Kania

I had done one other episode in the past on the topic of floating wetlands that I’d like to revisit today as we continue with this series on regenerative water solutions.

In today’s episode I got to speak with Bruce Kania of Floating Island International which developed their patented Biohaven floating island technology as a solution to algae-ridden and nutrient impaired waterways since 2005. Since then they´ve launched over 9,000 island systems worldwide as solutions to a variety of problems facing contaminated water.

In this interview Bruce breaks down the chemical and biological processes that happen in the water when there’s a heavy nutrient load and how it affects the balance of oxygen and the lifeforms that depend on it. He tells me how the floating islands that he’s helped to develop work to cycle the nutrients of polluted waterways back into the food web that then fosters the beneficial life forms that are emergent elements of healthy water ecosystems and that mature to help the whole system and surrounding ecology to thrive. We also take a look at the case study of Fish Fry Lake in Montana and how it’s gone from a polluted lake with regular algae blooms to become the most productive wild fishery in Montana where people can even swim and snorkel! Be sure to stick around till the end of the interview as Bruce explains just how big the potential of these floating wetland systems is as he’s looking to develop inhabited floating islands that help to filter and clean the great plastic garbage patches in the Pacific ocean and the possibility of creating floating solar farms that function as new real estate as well.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(426)

Small-Scale Processing and Rural Micro-Industry panel

Farm viability depends on much more than what happens in the field. While we often focus on production and farm management, many of the biggest challenges farmers face are shaped by what happens. Aft...

26 Jun 51min

Undervalued biodiversity: Fostering overlooked lifeforms

After the biodiversity panel from the last episode, I got to thinking about how protecting biodiversity is so often reduced to the life forms that humans value. The ones we find beautiful, friendly, o...

15 Jun 1h 19min

Wildlife on farms: Challenges and benefits of coexistence

This month we’re tackling the challenges and benefits of wildlife in all its forms. Wildlife and wild spaces are often spoken about as if they're at odds with the goals of farms. We often talk about b...

30 Mai 54min

Are carbon markets the best way to finance regenerative transition?

It’s been over a year now since Climate Farmers let go of its Carbon credit program, and yet I know that many people who’ve been following our company don’t know the full story about how we got starte...

18 Mai 1h 9min

Farms as learning centers: workshops, research, and students

The only real way to learn and gain experience in farming is to get your hands dirty and put knowledge into practice. For that reason farms play an essential role in training others to get into this s...

5 Mai 53min

Academia and Farming: The disconnect and potential

In today’s deep dive episode we’re taking on the behemoth of a topic that is the broken system and relationship between academic institutions and farmers on the ground. For a long time there was tra...

17 Apr 1h 20min

From Waste to Wealth: Closing Loops on the Farm

In this panel session, we’re exploring one of the most practical and underused opportunities in regenerative farming and rural life: learning to see waste streams as life streams. Across farms and vil...

3 Apr 59min

Measuring Regeneration: Beyond data and metrics

Welcome back everyone to the second of the Deep Dive episodes. In this new format the intention is to bring complexity back into the conversations around regenerative agriculture. Myself and many of m...

20 Mar 1h 1min