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Ch. 55 - Ecosystems and Restoration Ecology

Chapter 55, Problem 7

Which of the following would be considered an example of bioremediation? a. adding nitrogen-fixing microorganisms to a degraded ecosystem to increase nitrogen availability b. using a bulldozer to regrade a strip mine c. reconfiguring the channel of a river d. adding seeds of a chromium-accumulating plant to soil contaminated by chromium

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Hello everyone and welcome to today's video stating which of the following is not related to bioremediation. And remember that we're looking for the not statement or the statement that is incorrect among our answer choices. Now before we jump into the problem, let me quickly remind you what bioremediation is and you should also try to recall it from previous lessons. And bioremediation is nothing more than the removal or the degradation of pollutants using living organisms. So the use of bacteria or other living organisms to degrade certain pollutants in the environment is what we call by a remediation. So now that we know this, let us quickly go over our answer choices so we can identify which process is not going to count as by a remediation started with answer choice A. Here we have the degradation of sulfur from coal using bacteria. Remember that bacteria are living organisms and in this case we're degrading software from coal. So this is going to count as bioremediation and we're not going to select it as a final answer. So let's move on to answer choice B The use of bacteria to clean water again here we're using bacteria which are living organisms to clean water to remove these pollutants from the water. So we're actually going to cancel it out as well as it is an example of bioremediation. Moving on, we have answer choice C adding seeds of a chromium accumulating plant to soil contaminated by chromium here. In this case chromium is going to be or pollutant and we're adding seats of a chromium accumulating plants. So it's a living organism so that it can start accumulating that chromium start taking away that chromium from the soil. So it's actually going to be a type of bioremediation as well as we have a living organism, the grating or removing this pollutant from the soil. Finally, we have the use of bacteria to fix nitrogen here. Again, we have a living organism. However, nitrogen fixation is not a process that is polluting really is a transformation of nitrogen or die atomic nitrogen into useful types of nitrogen compounds such as ammonia or nitrate. So this is not going to be a pollutant in this case it is going to be something that is helpful for plans or other organisms. So we're going to highlight this as not being related to bio remediation and will be your final answer. So, thank you very much for sticking around until the end of this video. I really hope it helped you