BEETLE CITY_DESERT

BEETLE CITY

How to survive in the desert?

Problems like big temperature differences between day and night, water supply, energy production and food production would be the biggest challenges for a society in the desert. Studying dung beetles in
different perspectives, from micro to macro concept for a city underneath the ground was designed. The different types of the beetle, like tunnlers, dwellers and rollers were applied to human scale and the structure under the ground.

Rainforest group - The floating community

The floating lily community - Process

This week has been very interesting. We chose to work with the Amazon water lily and focus on the reality of seasonal flooding and the challenges that presents to local communities.

The lily plant holds many interesting solutions, one of them being the intelligent management of material to create a stable structure. The leaf of the plant is actually stable enough to hold a human being standing on top of it without collapsing.

Inspired by this, we looked at the structure of the lily leaf's vein structure to understand how this worked. It shows an amazing handling of loads through a 360 degree branching system that divide the force equally in many parts of the surface, thereby making it stable.

We also looked at the structuring of the plant leaves, and got inspired by the centralized anchor and the surrounding branches of leaves connecting to it.

From this, we got the idea to recreate the leaf in a scale that could construct small communities. The leaf structure in itself would be used to create adaptability to flooding, and be stable horizontally, but able to move vertically with the fluctuating surface.

Here are some of our sketches from learning about the plant's biology and system!

Habitat: Cave

A metaphorical transformation of efficient living of Olm to a healthy sustained human behavior by activating senses in different urban context through the journey of darkness in the form of a Cave Therapy!

FOREST2 - Final Posters

Capturing, filtering, storing, distributing rainfall in Malmö.

Final posters: The Giant Tube Worm and Tube-o-polis

...how to sustain an ecosystem in a highly toxic environment.

Usually, before the emerge of a hydrothermal vents, an underwater vulcanic eruption takes place. It is simply beautiful to watch:

Habitat : Cave

Hej! We’re researching the olm (proteus anguinus) which is a little water salamander that lives in the darkest zones of the caves. It can be found along the subterranean streams in the karst areas of Adriatic coast in Europe, specifically in southern Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, France. The olm is a really cool being and is used in scientific research as a model for the evolution of highly specialized sensory adaptations in dark water environments. Probably it could give leads on research towards eternal youth, which is specifically associated with their low metabolic rate and cold environments it thrives in.

It’s quite interesting to investigate on these blind aquatic salamanders, which thrive their entire life in darkness and live up to 70 years on an average which tags it to the longest lived amphibian in the world. Did you know it can survive without food for up to a decade? Wow! Wish  we humans could lead such a minimalist lifestyle! We start here, our research to dive into the darkness, to look without sight, without light!

FOREST1 - Boreal Forests and resilience

STEP1: RESEARCH

Reading, analysing, processing about Boreal Forests as systems
How do boreal forests collect, manage water?
How can boreal forests can teach us to make cities resilient to floods?



Boreal forests constitue the Earth's largest carbon reservoir in soil below ground and in the permafrost, equal to the amount above ground in tropical forests. The 16,6 million of km² of boreal forests constitute 15% of the Earth's land surface and 1/3 of the Earth's forest cover, in a circumpolar band throughout the northern hemisphere through Russia, northern Europe, Canada, and Alaska. They countain more surface freshwater than any other biome. They are caracterised by long, cold winters, and short, dry and warm summers ; and are composed by both evergreen and deciduous trees. Wetlands and bogs are common, with soils being laden with peat and permafrost.
According to the IPCC, global waming is felt twice stronger in these forests, leading to a shift in ecosystems. Evergreen trees being sensitive to warm climates, they slowly leave space for more deciduous trees, that are expected to be 15% more present by the end of the century.

Boreal forests are very efficient ecosystems in term of water management, that lead to store great quantities of carbon, and be resilient ecosystems to wildfires, rainfall, floods.

With climate change, many cities will have to deal with greater rainfall and floods.

How can boreal forests teach us to make cities resilient to floods?




Draft poster of the research



Boreal forests work as resilient ecosystems where biodiversity is rich. Different strategies work together to thrive despite the harsh environment.


SEASONAL STRATEGIES
Evergreen and deciduous trees have different strategies. The latter absorb less than 1% of their volume in water in summer, while in winter, they have a higher transpiration and lower absorption by soil. Deciduous trees can absorb up to 25% of water, and have immediate water transpiration after saturation ; while in winter, when leaves fall, they have a low transpiration and high absorption by soil, leaving to a lower year-round transpiration.
These two families participate in rainfall, through transpiration. Less trees would induce a decline in transpiration, and thus a weakening of rainfall.


LAYERS
Boreal forests have a system of layers that work together. For example during periods of rain, canopies intercept up to 70% of the rainwater, which then evaporates directly from them. The precipitation that falls then either infiltrates the gronud, flows on the surface, or evaporates. This works along with the slow metabolism of the whole ecosystem that benefits from limited daylight and thus requires less water and nutrients.


WETLANDS
Different kinds of wetlands, organic wetlands and mineral wetlands, work together, enriching boreal forests. Organic wetlands (bogs and fens), are made of nutrient poor soil covered with at least 40 centimeters of peat, making the decomposition process slow, leading to a slow release of carbon. They are carbon sinks. Mineral wetlands (swamps, marshes, open water) have nutrient rich soils, and are covered by less than 40 centimeters of peat. They act as sponges that absorb water and release it during drought ; and filter, store and transport large amounts of water.


SAFE NETWORK
Trees of the same species work together : they fuse roots to share water and nutrients, also allowing for a free flow of carbon between trees thanks to mycorrhiza fungi that grow between roots. They are saving points in case of catastrophe such as wildfires which destroy the forest above soil. The trees can later grow from these roots and fungi that saved nutrients.


MANAGING ENVIRONMENT
Different species of lichen and moss coexist and work together in boreal forests, however peat moss (sphagnum) is the most present one, along with feather moss. They both constitute 95% of the ground cover. It can hold up to 20 times its dry weight in water, and forms a 50 centimeters thick mat. It grows from broken pieces of bigger plants, doesn't have a developed root system, and doesn't need light. It adapts to its environment by creating its own habitat, acidifying its surroundings.
Feather moss filters waters, regulates the nutrient uptake and minimises nutrient losses.


PEAT MOSS
Peat moss has particular leaves that expands to collect the most water possible instantly. Their rhizoids are also particularly effective to absorb water, the attraction between the rhizoids and the water molecules being stronger than being the water molecules themselves.


All these are part of the global complex system that boreal forests are, and help it thrive in a harsh climate.




What can we learn from boreal forests to make cities more resilient to heavier rainfall and floods in the future?

Group Desert _ Dung Beetle

Analyzing the desert, in our case focused on the hot desert, there is an efficient animal learned how to deal with this extreme dry environment by using dung from other animals, the dung beetle.
Dung beetles are an essential part of the ecosystem by proceeding the dung by tunneling, burying, and fragmenting it. This whole process not only quickly and efficiently removes dung from the surface, it brings all those important nutrients back down into the soil, making the soil fertile and our pastures productive. 

In its tunnels systems they are also protected from the extreme heat.

To transport the dung with balls the dung beetle is one of the strongest animals in comparison to its own body size. It can lift up 250 times their own weight, they are extreme strong force generator to move their dung bowls.

Also an interesting aspect is how the society of dung beetle lives, they have a reproduction system including to implement the eggs into the dung balls and brought into the end of the tunnel system. They are an efficient society by sharing the taking care part of the offspring.

Amazonian Water Lily blossoming in the dark - video

Marine group focusing on the GIANT TUBE WORM

We decided on having a closer look at the one of the mysterious creatures living deep down below the surface of the high seas: the Giant Tube Worm. At an average depth of around 2000 m below sea level, it survives without sunlight and is only found in the highly toxic environment of hydrothermal vents*, protected by the tube it builds around itself and supported by bacteria living inside of its body. These bacteria feed on the chemicals from the vent fluids and produce sugar which they supply to its host. This way, the Giant Tube Worm can not only stand the extrem conditions that surround but actaully depends on them.























* Hydrothermal vents are the result of vulcanic activity. Cold seawater enters cracks in the seafloor and is heated by hot magma. The vent is formed when the hot fluids reemerge to the sea.