Bio-Inspired Land Remediation

Book excerpt: Land is fundamental to the human life. The upper layer of land is a non-renewable resource, and source of food. Therefore, land health is essential to long-term food security and to promote sustainable livelihoods. On account of urbanization, industrialization and population growth, land pollution is one of the major issues worldwide. As a result, land pollution is continuing across the world, and has been linked with a wide range of potentially toxic contaminants at rates that deteriorate land quality. Land pollution can result either anthropogenic activities or natural activities. The major contaminants of land pollution are metalloids, petroleum hydrocarbon, radioactive elements, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), Pesticide, other organic pollutants, etc. that comes from different types of sources. In urban and peri-urban areas, irrigation of agricultural land with polluted water is also a reason of land pollution. Therefore, land security is an important issue for future sustainability. Its remediation and management are important issue worldwide to protect land quality and functions. Land pollution means degradation of earth's surface. Polluted land comes under the category of degraded land. Hence, the remediation of polluted land is essential for regaining biodiversity and ecosystems services and thereby achieving United Nations-Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs).This fact showed the need to develop research into land remediation. Bio-inspired land remediation has undergone a huge development. Therefore, Biomanagement has a lot of potential to secure upper earth’s surface through the land remediation programs targeted during the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030). This book explores the remediation of land pollution that includes Phytoremediation, Bioremediation (bacterial remediation and fungal remediation), Vermiremediation, Biochar-based remediation and other Bio-inspired remediation. This book will be a remarkable asset for research scholars, environmentalists, ecological scientist, agriculturist, practitioners, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders alike.