ROME DELTA UNIT
Team information
Category:
Cristiano Laboureur
Bachelor
Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza"
Francesco Ruffilli
Bachelor
Università degli studi La Sapienza
Arianna Fabrianesi
Bachelor
Università di Roma La Sapienza
Mykyta Silivonchyk
Bachelor
Universita' degli studi la Sapienza
Flavio D'orsi
Bachelor
Università di Roma La Sapienza
Simone Milani
Bachelor
Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza"
Flaminia Scapigliati
Bachelor
Università degli studi di Roma la “Sapienza”
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About the team
We are an interdisciplinary research team of students from Sapienza University of Rome, with backgrounds split between Natural Sciences and Biological Sciences. Our expertise combines ecological analysis, environmental monitoring, and biological systems thinking. We are driven by the challenge of translating scientific knowledge into practical solutions. Our goal is to design and, where possible, prototype strategies that can improve environmental resilience and quality of life in the Mississippi River Delta through applied, evidence-based research.
Our vision
Our vision consists of various solutions to reduce and mitigate current problems in the Mississippi River Delta. Firstly, we look at various ways for aeration as a way to fight stagnation. We can power this process using solar energy, diffusing air in water, restoring vertical mixing, by distributing oxygen in the water column. This helps sediment stabilization, aids the recovery of aquatic habitats, and reduces eutrophication. We have proposed land restoration plans based on the controlled reuse of sediment, low-turbulence dredging, and reinforging wetlands and natural barriers. With these, we hope to reduce erosion, while also protecting against storm surges. Not all sediments can be directly reused for marsh restoration, such as degraded sediments, and we apply phyto-conditioning strategies in order to transform these into soils viable for agriculture and landscaping. This offers great economic value and also reduces disposal impacts. We propose to implement various plants from the genus Spartina to strengthen wetlands and prevent erosion: some of them are highly resilient to saline conditions, while others are completely perfect for freshwater. We have analyzed their costs and planting strategies, and have made a projection based on the data given on the official master plan. We have also noticed that many problems, such as erosion, land loss, and others, may be reduced by regulating invasive species, both floral and faunal. Some plants are harmful because they shield light from lakes and rivers, others by shading native plants, or by competing for nutrients. We aim to reduce their population by introducing highly specific biological control agents, such as some insects. We also noted that nutrias and boars have negative effects on land retention, and aim to reduce their population ethically by using safe, cruelty-free animal contraceptives.
Our inventory & analysis
We developed this project using our skills as students in ecological, environmental, biological, and botanical studies, with review from university professors for further approval. Our analysis starts from various articles uploaded on the NBF Challenge website, and we then expanded our scope using Google Scholar to find various articles that supported our theories and ideas. We carefully refined our ideas and kept in contact with experts from our university, Sapienza, to guide us and correct fallacies we hadn't noticed. We split into minor subgroups to manage research by category, and then peer-reviewed the research, being as critical as possible. This project is the result of many discarded and reworked concepts that have various reliable articles backing them up, to be as realistic as possible. AI was used as support during research, some text summarizing and minor translations for technical language. We also use AI to organize information and research among us and to double-check our hypotheses and aid in confirming the viability of proposals from various articles cited in our sources. Every choice, proposal, and map, are completely man made, no type of Generative Ai has been used.