UK-US workshop on Bio-Soil Interactions and Engineering

生物材料与岩土过程的相互作用长期以来一直被岩土工程和地球科学所忽视，其重要性才刚刚开始被认识。生物材料是独特的，其固有的特性是自我活跃和再生的岩土土壤基质。因此，土壤的机械和反应行为的生物改变是一个潜在的新途径，直接操纵和改善土壤。这种干预的范围有可能解决广泛的土壤质量和功能，本次研讨会的重点是土壤作为建筑环境的平台。然而，我们建议开发的科学领域与土壤作为天然生物反应器的性能广泛相关。这提供了一种生物技术方法，可用于岩土工程，也可用于管理广泛的土壤功能，如生态系统营养，污染物衰减，碳储存和洪水缓解。众所周知，土壤环境在结构上异常复杂和异质。这种复杂性对于支持植物和动物的生命至关重要，因为它提供了一个复杂的颗粒-孔隙基质，该基质由固相、液相和气相组成，用于营养物质的有效循环和储存。同样复杂的土壤基质也是岩土工程的基本组成部分。随着我们对土壤微生物生命的了解的增加，这种生物活性及其产物可以被利用来为岩土工程问题提供新的创新解决方案，并为许多类型的土壤功能的定量性能评估提供工具。这种方法的关键是需要将土壤作为生物反应器的研究从解释能力转移到预测能力。为了解决和探索这一机会，科学和工程的整合是必要的。这些过程的复杂性无法在单一学科内得到充分解决。这个联合的英国和美国研讨会的目的是汇集一个创造性的，创新的环境中，以促进探索和形成的主题生物土壤相互作用和工程的研究计划的科学家和工程师的适当组合

The interaction of biological materials with geotechnical processes has long been ignored by geotechnical engineering and geosciences, and its importance is just beginning to be realised. Biological materials are unique by their innate characteristics of being self-active and re-growing within geotechnical soil matrices. The biological alteration of the mechanical and reactive behaviour of soils is thus a potential novel path for directed manipulation and improvement of soils. The scope of such intervention has the potential to address a wide range of soil quality and functions and the focus of this workshop is soil as a platform for the built environment. However, the science area we propose to develop is widely related to the performance of soil as a natural biological reactor. This provides a biotechnology approach that can be harnessed to geotechnical engineering, but also to manage a wide range of soil functions such as ecosystem nutrition, contaminant attenuation, carbon storage and flood mitigation. The soil environment is known to be exceptionally complex and heterogeneous in structure. Such complexity is essential to support plant and animal life by providing an intricate particle-pore matrix that consists of solid, liquid and gas phases for the effective cycling and storage of nutrients. This same complex soil matrix is also the fundamental building block for geotechnical engineering. With our increased understanding of soil microbial life this biological activity and its products can be harnessed to provide new innovative solutions for geotechnical problems as well as provide the tools for quantitative performance assessment of many types of soil function. Key to this approach is the need to move the study of soil as a bioreactor from interpretive to predictive capabilities. To address and explore this opportunity, integration of the sciences and engineering is necessary. The complexity of the processes cannot be sufficiently addressed within a single discipline. The purpose of this joint UK-US workshop is to bring together an appropriate blend of scientists and engineers within a creative, innovative environment in order to facilitate exploration and formation of research initiatives within the theme Bio-Soil Interactions and Engineering