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The scene at Mount St Helens in Washington State, USA at 8:32am PDT on Sunday 18 May 1980 looked

one of utter devastation. A pyroclastic flow had blasted out from the stratovolcano at speeds of up to 300 miles an hour leveling an estimated 40,000 acres of forest in an instant.

The VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) 5 eruption column rose 80,000ft into the atmosphere, as snow, ice and several glaciers melted, forming a series of mudslides that reached as far as 50 miles away. Declared a natural disaster, it was the most economically destructive eruption in US history.

Ecologists from the Mount St Helens Pacific Northwest Research (PNR) Station returned to the site at the earliest opportunity to establish the eruption’s impact on its ecosystems. What they found amazed them: they had imagined that the pyroclastic flow – which had reached temperatures up to 1,000°C – the tephra (volcanic ash layer) and mudslides would have completely decimated the ecology of the region, yet it had proved to be remarkably resilient.

PNR scientists found that though many plants and animals were wiped out by the eruption, a surprising number survived. While

chance played a significant role in the survival prospects of the various species, both the complexity of the ecosystem and the species lifecycles were significant factors. When the eruption struck, some species were either underground, such as Pocket Gophers, or under a covering of spring snow, such as Pacific Silver Firs and Huckleberries. Several migratory species of birds and fish, such as Pacific Salmon and Steelhead Trout, escaped the immediate impacts of the eruption as they were elsewhere when it occurred. BOUNCING BACK FROM DISASTERThree decades of research at Mount St Helens has provided invaluable insights into nature’s ability to recover from disaster. Ecologists have identified several key characteristics of ecosystem resilience, including the fact that the biological response to such events is rapid, so long as the events are relatively infrequent, with sufficient recovery times between disasters to enable species populations to replenish.

The erosive aspect of such events has been found to unleash new nutrients, that in some instances, such as in the lakes at Mount St Helens, enabled ecosystems to bounce back even stronger than they were previously. The disruptive element has likewise been found to be a positive, as though it often dramatically re-landscapes a region, the biological communities established in the aftermath are often ultimately more diverse and productive than those prior to the event.

Having researched ecosystem resilience to myriad events traditionally termed ‘natural disasters’, including wildfires, drought, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis and asteroid impacts, I have come to realise what humankind considers a force for destruction, nature considers a force for creation. Take for example the Banksia, an Australian wildflower of which 50% of species, termed ‘seeders’, have seed-bearing follicles that are stimulated by fire. The remaining 50%

of Banksia species, termed ‘sprouters’, have fire-resilience with thick bark and lignotubers that sprout in the aftermath of a wildfire, enabling the species to re-establish quickly. Fire is built into the Banksia’s lifecycle, as is the case with myriad native Australian species including Grass Trees, Acacia and Eucalyptus. Similarly fire is built into the lifecycles of species in historically fire-prone regions worldwide, as is flooding into species living in deltas and wetlands. ➜

The Bionic CityIn the course of her research into ecosystem resilience, Melissa Sterry came to realise that “what humankind considers a force for destruction, nature considers a force for creation.” Melissa is now developing The Bionic City: a model that transfers knowledge from complex natural ecosystems to a blueprint for a future city resilient to extreme meteorological and geological events…

Theoretical in approach, the hypothesis transfers knowledge from Earth’s

ecosystems to a blueprint for a metropolis with resilience to extreme

meteorological and geological events.

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TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE EXTREMEWhereas humankind attempts to suppress or avert major environmental changes, such as drought, nature adapts and does so by inventing innovative ways to not only accommodate the situation, but to take advantage of it.

Extreme meteorological and geological occurrences have always been of concern to Homo sapiens – and with seemingly good reason, as some 74,000 years ago one such event nearly extinguished us. When the super volcano at Toba on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia erupted during the Stone Age, the impacts of the VEI 8 magnitude event reduced our population from an estimated 1,000,000 to just 10,000, of which only 1,000 to 3,000 were breeding adult pairs. The largest known volcanic structure on Earth spewed such great

volumes of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere that an estimated 6- to 10-year volcanic winter ensued. Ironically, several academics now think that this most deadly of events in our history was also a catalyst for rapid innovation in human language and co-operation skills – possibly to the extent that were it not for this event our species could have died out, as did all of our several bi-pedal hominid ancestors, including Neanderthals.

Our species’ capacity to accommodate challenging meteorological and geological events has never been more pertinent. While the past several thousand years have provided a generally temperate climate in many parts of the world, both climate models and real-time events, such as multiple major international flooding incidents in a matter of years, illustrate

that the steady state to which we became accustomed is fast becoming a thing of the past.

While the world’s weather systems become more volatile, we grow ever more aware of the geologically active nature of our planet. We know that it’s only a matter of time before we experience an eruption in excess of VEI 6; in other words an eruption of the scale humankind last experienced when Krakatoa erupted in 1883. Some 20% of the world’s population lives in an eruption hazard zone, many in areas becoming significantly more volcanically active. While our best scientific minds are still deciphering the nature of the Rock Cycle – the system within which volcanoes operate – evidence is building to support a direct relationship between earthquakes and eruptions.

Simultaneously paleogeological records indicate that climate change has a direct impact on the level of geological activity. NASA scientists researching present-day activity in Greenland amongst other regions, have discovered a new type of geological event; called a Glacial Earthquake it is caused as the pressure on the Earth’s crust below a melting glacier shifts. When glaciers are melting at their current rate and the world’s tectonic plates are interconnected, it goes without saying that alarm bells are ringing in some of our most distinguished geoseismic research institutes.

Making matters yet more complicated is the fact that there are seven billion of us and it’s estimated that by 2050 there will be between two and five billion more. While this presents many resource challenges, one of the greatest is land availability. Increasingly humankind is destroying natural habitats that are imperative for the survival of the planet’s inter-connected ecosystems. Perhaps most alarmingly, as we chainsaw our way through habitats that, in some instances, have taken hundreds of millions of years to evolve, we assume that our own ideologies and technologies are better than those of nature.

THE BIONIC CITYThe Bionic City is a model I’m developing as an alternative to the current built-environment paradigm. Theoretical in approach, the hypothesis transfers knowledge from Earth’s ecosystems to a blueprint for a metropolis with resilience to extreme meteorological and geological events. Working to worst-case, not best-case future scenarios, it’s an attempt to answer the question “how would nature design a city?”

While ecosystem-resilience research remains a heavily under-resourced science, it is nonetheless a rapidly growing field. Likewise, Earth Systems Science, which at one time was treated as an underdog to the likes of Space Science, is finally getting the recognition, and therein the funding, it deserves. Simultaneously fields heavily influenced by developments in the Ecological and Earth sciences are fast evolving, including Biomimetics (now more commonly known as biomimicry), Resilience Theory, Complex Adaptive Systems and Living Architecture. Breakthroughs, in amongst other fields, materials science, sensory and information network technology, dynamic and responsive architectures and civil engineering extend the possibility of developing more sophisticated built environments; built environments not unlike natural ecosystems.

The greatest challenge when developing

The Bionic City is acquiring sufficient data on ecosystem resilience. Traditionally species are studied in an individual, not a whole-systems context, meaning there’s relatively scant knowledge of the nature of the symbiotic (inter-dependent) relationships across species communities and in particular complex communities. However, in 2008 the Moorea Biocode Project launched the world’s first comprehensive inventory of all non-microbial life in a complex tropical ecosystem. Since then, the ‘Big Picture’ approach to ecosystem research has been gaining ground. Globally ecosystem resilience researchers are mobilizing to build a body of knowledge that will help us gain a far deeper understanding of the dynamics of the Earth’s ecosystems, many of them working against the clock, as the habitats they are studying are threatened by the likes of deforestation, pollution and over-fishing.

A scientist’s worst enemy is an assumption. When I started my research I thought, as had Mount St Helens PNR ecologists, that some types of meteorological and geological event, such as eruptions and tornadoes, posed more of a threat to nature than others. However, in practice this has not turned out to be the case, for while the variables of a specific event will determine its level of impact, natural ecosystems’ resilience capacities are, it appears, more or less universal in context, regardless of the type of meteorological or geological event.

A COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMHow might The Bionic City look? While my sketchbook is growing, it’s too early to be certain as to the specifics of the aesthetic. However, it’s already clear that in contrast

to the sprawling mass of disconnected, static and inert structures that compromise today’s cities, it would instead operate as a seasonally adaptive collective of interconnected and interdependent shape-shifting, colour-changing, dynamic architectures, that are sensitive to their surroundings, fused to form a complex adaptive system in synch with the Earth’s natural processes. Both Biomimetic (mimicking nature) and ecosystem inclusive (embedding natural technologies), the city would bring together human and ecosystem intelligence into one system: a fusion of low- and hi-tech, man-made and natural.

The vision is ambitious, but then, to quote Arthur C Clarke: “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” n

About the authorMelissa Sterry is a PhD researcher at the Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research (AVATAR) laboratory in London and a futurologist and transformational change strategist to the construction, utilities, manufacturing, design and media industries. A Visiting Fellow at University of Salford and member of the International Bionic Engineering Society scientific committee she has recently joined the presenting team of Earth 2 Channel,

which presents state-of-the-art solutions to some of humanity’s most pressing problems. The creator of catalyst for rapid innovation in sustainable design NEW FRONTIERS, she was the recipient of the Mensa Education and Research Foundation International Award for Benefit to Society 2011. Melissa is hosting a Bionic Cities event at the International Bionic Engineering Conference in Boston, USA, 18th – 20th September 2011.

If you’d like to participate find details at: http://bionicengineeringconference.com

The only way

to discover

the limits of

the possible is

to go beyond

them into the

impossible.