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Media Release

May 26 2009

Sunflowers bloom in landfill revegetation project

Andrew Wilson, Dane Lamb and Nanthi Bolan with the sunflowers at Coleman RoadSunflowers are blooming on a former landfill site north of Adelaide as part of a new research project by UniSA, CRC CARE and the City of Salisbury.

Scientists from UniSA and CRC CARE (CRC for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment) are using sunflowers and other plants to remediate the Coleman Road site near St Kilda, which closed as a landfill dump in the early 1990s.

They are also examining the potential value of biosolids in revegetating the site, and say that ultimately the dump could be turned into a park and education resource centre in years to come.

“The main objective is to provide some phytocapping, or plants capping, and phytostabilisation to the site,” said UniSA’s Professor Nanthi Bolan.

“We want to provide vegetative cover, and as part of that we’re investigating whether you need other soil amendments such as biosolids to successfully achieve a green belt.

“One of the important aspects is phytopumping, or using the plants to pump water upwards, to reduce any leaching from the site.”

CRC CARE postdoctoral researcher Dane Lamb has been applying biosolids to sunflowers, Indian mustard and Arundo plants in trial plots at the site.

“The soil has a high pH and there aren’t a lot of nutrients and carbon, so we’re using biosolids to improve the fertility of the soil,” Mr Lamb said.

“We’ve found that when we use biosolids it improves the soil’s physical fertility, chemical fertility and biological fertility. The sunflowers and Indian mustard have responded well to the higher concentrations of biosolids used in the plots.

“Sunflowers and Indian mustard are both hyper accumulators of metals, which means if there’s contamination in the soils, the plant translocates a high amount of metals from the soil to the above-ground shoots. You can then harvest the plants and take away the metals.”

Professor Bolan said the research team was pleased the biosolids were making such a big difference to soil fertility in the trial plots at the site, with bugs and earthworms living in the plots.

“Ultimately we would like to be able to turn the site into a park and have a visitor resource centre on remediation and recycling for school students and the public, but that would be some years away yet,” he said.

City of Salisbury’s Manager, Strategic Assessment Management, Andrew Wilson, said the council was pleased to work with UniSA and CRC CARE on the research project.

“There are benefits for the council in terms of remediating the site and there are also community benefits, because we get to work with UniSA and CRC CARE to promote innovation,” Mr Wilson said.


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