BRITE Pivot: Growing Biological Methods to Improve Soil Behavior for Infrastructure Protection

BRITE 支点：不断发展生物方法来改善土壤行为以保护基础设施

• 批准号: 2227491
• 负责人: Brina Montoya
• 金额: $ 52.52万
• 依托单位: North Carolina State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-01 至 2026-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2227491&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: BRITE; Pivot; Growing; Biological; Methods

This Boosting Research Ideas for Transformative and Equitable Advances in Engineering (BRITE) Pivot project will focus on exploring natural soil microbes that can be harnessed to improve soil supporting civil infrastructure. The performance of civil infrastructure is often limited by soft, loose, and/or collapsible soil conditions. These issues are exacerbated by global climate changes as additional stresses are imposed on our infrastructure. Therefore, innovative methods are needed to support new or rehabilitated civil infrastructure, and soil microbes may help address this issue. Microbes naturally alter the subsurface, changing sand to sandstone over geologic time; they also have the potential to create these changes over engineering time frames. In order to use microbes as a natural, sustainable method to improve soft soil, better understanding of the complex microbial communities in the soil is needed. The outcomes of this work will advance the field of bio-mediated soil improvement by characterizing soil microbial communities and exploring methods to harness their natural processes to enhance soil behavior. The microbial processes may also provide insight on mechanisms to capture carbon dioxide into the soil. This may lead to the development of a soil improvement method that can support infrastructure and sequester carbon dioxide, which would provide a substantial benefit to society by simultaneously addressing climate change and our aging infrastructure.The overarching research question is, “Can we understand processes in existing microbial communities well enough to harness them for soil improvement applications?” The research question will be addressed by first identifying the active microbial communities within relevant soil microcosms, and then by manipulating the geochemistry of the microcosms to induce relevant microbial byproducts, such as mineral precipitation or gas generation. An integrated meta-omic approach will address the research question and develop a framework for site-specific bio-mediated soil improvement; therefore, a pivot into meta-omics is needed. The pivot will be accomplished through training in meta-omic approaches within a microbial ecology-focused laboratory. The meta-omic approaches will be applied to various relevant soil microcosms, coupled with physiological incubation experiments. The ability of the identified indigenous microbial communities to improve soil properties will be assessed through experiments and geotechnical testing (i.e., geophysical methods, triaxial and/or simple shear tests, and oedometer tests). This work has the potential to bring about a new paradigm for infrastructure support with the development of site-specific bio-mediated soil improvement. Furthermore, the explored biological mechanisms could provide mechanisms that not only reinforce the soil through carbonate precipitation but also capture atmospheric carbon dioxide and sequester it into the subsurface.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个促进工程变革和公平进步的研究思路（BRITE）枢纽项目将专注于探索可以利用的天然土壤微生物，以改善支持民用基础设施的土壤。土木基础设施的性能通常受到软、松散和/或可塌陷土壤条件的限制。这些问题因全球气候变化而加剧，因为我们的基础设施承受了额外的压力。因此，需要创新的方法来支持新的或修复的民用基础设施，土壤微生物可能有助于解决这个问题。微生物自然地改变地下，在地质时期将沙子变成砂岩;它们也有可能在工程时间框架内产生这些变化。为了利用微生物作为一种自然的、可持续的方法来改善软土，需要更好地了解土壤中复杂的微生物群落。这项工作的成果将通过表征土壤微生物群落和探索利用其自然过程来增强土壤行为的方法来推进生物介导的土壤改良领域。微生物过程还可以提供关于将二氧化碳捕获到土壤中的机制的见解。这可能会导致开发一种土壤改良方法，可以支持基础设施和封存二氧化碳，这将通过同时应对气候变化和我们老化的基础设施为社会提供实质性的好处。首要的研究问题是，“我们能否充分了解现有微生物群落的过程，以利用它们进行土壤改良应用？”研究问题将首先通过确定相关土壤微观世界中的活性微生物群落来解决，然后通过操纵微观世界的地球化学来诱导相关的微生物副产品，如矿物沉淀或气体生成。一个综合的元组学方法将解决研究问题，并制定一个特定地点的生物介导的土壤改良框架，因此，元组学的支点是必要的。该枢纽将通过在微生物生态学为重点的实验室内进行元组学方法的培训来完成。元组学方法将应用于各种相关的土壤微观世界，再加上生理培养实验。将通过实验和岩土工程测试（即，地球物理方法、三轴和/或简单剪切试验以及固结计试验）。这项工作有可能带来一个新的模式，为基础设施的支持与特定网站的生物介导的土壤改良的发展。此外，探索的生物机制不仅可以通过碳酸盐沉淀来加固土壤，还可以捕获大气中的二氧化碳并将其封存到地下。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。