Ecological Engineering: Principles and Practice

Patrick Kangas

Sep 2003 · CRC Press

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Less expensive and more environmentally appropriate than conventional engineering approaches, constructed ecosystems are a promising technology for environmental problem solving. Undergraduates, graduate students, and working professionals need an introductory text that details the biology and ecology of this rapidly developing discipline, known as

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Humans stress natural ecosystems through simplification of species and metabolic shifts. Research in emergent ecosystems includes agriculture, urban, and coastal or estuarine. Since prediction is limited, engineering epistemology requires building improvement based on design and test. Future directions include ecological nanotech, terraforming, biosensors, ecosensors, universal pollution treatment, and aquaculture. Technoecosystems maintain a balance between living and hardware systems. Since the laboratory includes the environment, the hacker code of ethics applies to ecological engineering. Treatment reduces costs of pollution. Ecological economics adds measures of emergy or embodied energy, natural capital, sustainability, carrying capacity and many types of ecosystem services to improve life-support value. Sold waste management discusses landfills, composting, and industrial ecology. The energy value of the waste is the same as that used to make the product. Wetlands are used for wastewater treatment by spiraling. An identical decay equation for decomposition evolved in parallel, linking design intuitions for both biodegradation in ecology and wastewater engineering. Restoration ecology connects to succession and is explained for salt marshes, artificial reefs, and educational exhibits. Microcosmology includes living models and replication issues. Soil bioengineering is shown for urban imperviousness, stormwater management bioretention and agricultural erosion control. This realm includes beavers, coastal vegetation and self-building machines. Biodiversity is increased by exotic species. The food web describes feeding interactions. The series of multiple states in catastrophe theory is used to explain invasion. Control theory ranges from machine analogies to biotech. Circuit symbols are used for ecosystem models. H T Odum coined a lot of the names of new ecosystems. Principles include energy signature, self-organization and preadaptation. There are nine chapters