Terraformed Ecosystem Peculiarities

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Of course, even though the tidal variation is only 29 times that of earth (the numbers are all over the place, but a tidal variation of 100 feet shouldn't be any thing special if my research is anywhere near accurate). Not only is the tide at this ridiculous height, it hits less than every two hours. For maximum effect, give the moon a polar orbit to hit all areas of the globe. Your moon may only last a quarter century, but that quarter century is something of a power wash for the planet. Taking the overly simplistic approach of assuming magnitude multiplied by time is a decent measure of the work done, the moon did as much work as 9,000 years of waves pounding away.

What's this for, again? To stir up the algal mats and promote the movement of nutrients and waste through them? Is sending huge tidal bores to scour all the lowlands a good way of doing that? Wouldn't it be a couple billion times more efficient to build a few big turbines and stir the oceans mechanically?

Originally Posted by ericthered

Energy intensive? You bet -- this trick only works for the energy rich.

Yes, and I'm not clear what it accomplishes, either.

How does the energy requirement compare with that of compressing the atmosphere into tanks and hauling it away to be replaced, or with running the entire atmosphere through a hard-tech fusion-powered chemical engineering plant? If the terraformers can do all this extravagant ****, are they going to be bothering with algal mats at all?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

What's this for, again? To stir up the algal mats and promote the movement of nutrients and waste through them? Is sending huge tidal bores to scour all the lowlands a good way of doing that? Wouldn't it be a couple billion times more efficient to build a few big turbines and stir the oceans mechanically?



Yes, and I'm not clear what it accomplishes, either.

How does the energy requirement compare with that of compressing the atmosphere into tanks and hauling it away to be replaced, or with running the entire atmosphere through a hard-tech fusion-powered chemical engineering plant? If the terraformers can do all this extravagant ****, are they going to be bothering with algal mats at all?

The main idea is actually to try and get nutrients dissolved into the ocean at a better rate, at this point, tearing up algal mats is a secondary concern. And I'm trying to make the moon idea work.

But yes, if you have huge energy expenditures, there are lot of things you can do. The iceball trick is frankly probably something you'd do at the beginning if you were working with a planet you just added volatiles by crashing a pervious comet into it.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

What's this for, again? To stir up the algal mats and promote the movement of nutrients and waste through them? Is sending huge tidal bores to scour all the lowlands a good way of doing that? Wouldn't it be a couple billion times more efficient to build a few big turbines and stir the oceans mechanically?

It is to increase tidal weathering to dissolve more phosphate and potassium into the oceans. This provides fertilizer for phytoplankton so you don't need to worry about algal mats at all.

Luke

[Anthony]

Is the volcanic activity those tides will create a desired side effect?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Is the volcanic activity those tides will create a desired side effect?

I believe so -- volcanic ash tends to be stupendously fertile. The 'heavy organics' tend to be a major component of eruptions

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

How does the energy requirement compare with that of compressing the atmosphere into tanks and hauling it away to be replaced, or with running the entire atmosphere through a hard-tech fusion-powered chemical engineering plant? If the terraformers can do all this extravagant ****, are they going to be bothering with algal mats at all?

Good question.

I actually suspect that a real terraforming operation will involve both mechanical and biological approaches, in tandem. Biology offers replication, if you aren't able to build von Neumann microbots and nanobots as small as algae cells, then the reproductive ability of algae and biological systems offers leverage. They can also do a lot with on-site materials.

But at the same time there's no reason you wouldn't use brute-force and subtle machine approaches at the same time.

If your long-term goal is a self-sustaining habitable world, one that maintains itself that way on an open-ended basis, there might be advantages to going more biological earlier, to give the system time to evolve itself, to make the tweaks you need to make, to let the various elements adjust to each other and take up their places in the system.

You wouldn't want to have a world that looks ready, but have the whole ecosystem collapse when you turn off the big air factory or whatever machines because you overlooked some tiny but important detail of the biological side.