(simplistic electronic beats)
-: Picture yourself living
in one of those paintings by Bob Ross.
You remember the guy with the big hair?
There's a log cabin and crystal clear, happy little stream
that flow into a quiet lake
secluded from the noise and pollution of the big city.
This seems like a great place
to settle down and start a family,
and that day comes that your family multiplies,
but it's obvious that something just isn't right.
Unbeknownst to you,
the food you've eaten and the water you drank
was slowly poisoning you,
and the results have manifested in your offspring.
Devastated and outraged,
certainly you would demand reparations
and insist that those responsible
for tainting your Bob Ross picturesque habitat
take the necessary measures to prevent this
from ever happening again.
But you're a fish or a duck,
and as it turns out,
humans are at the root of the problem.
See, miles away, run off of areas associated
with activities that improve human quality of life,
agricultural production, fossil fuel combustion,
and other industrialized processes
has accumulated and transported harmful trace elements,
in this case, selenium,
into surrounding watersheds
and degraded the environmental quality of your ecosystem.
Even at ultra low concentrations,
we're talkin' parts per billion,
selenium can biomagnify up trophic levels
seen here on the left,
resulting in deformed or, even worse, still born offspring.
So what measures can we take to prevent this?
Well, the EPA has set water quality criteria for selenium
at 3.1 parts per billion.
It's our responsibility to meet that standard.
My research focuses on the strategic use
of constructed wet lands
to fight or remediate selenium impacted run off.
Phytoremediation is a green technology
that is sustainable and relatively inexpensive
compared to other water treatment options.
Phytoremediation capitalizes on plant metabolic processes
to remove a myriad of contaminates,
not just selenium,
through three primary elimination pathways.
Rhizofiltration concentrates selenium
all in the roots or near the root zone.
Because selenium is the chemical analog to sulfur,
plants can phytoaccumulate it into their tissues
through sulfur assimilation.
And here's the interesting part.
Some plants have the ability to phytovolatilize,
or transform inorganic selenium
into lightweight organic compounds
that can be released into the atmosphere.
But don't worry,
these organoselenides are 600 times safer
than their inorganic counterparts
and essential to completing the selenium cycle.
The great Leonardo Da Vinci observed
that water is the driving force of all nature.
Using the resources that mother nature provides,
we can assure that we're driving in the right direction
by using plants to improve water quality.
Thank you.
(simplistic electronic beats)