Patrick Kangas and Peter May, both faculty members in Environmental Science & Technology (ENST), have built a lasting legacy in the ecological engineering world. From concept and design, to engineering and implementation, their innovations accurately represent the optimization of urban environments, green technology, and community engagement. But behind any successful faculty research initiative, there are undergraduate students at the center of it all, deploying the fundamentals of research, testing, and prototyping.
Matt Lagomarsino, ENST BS ‘18, hooked up with Kangas and May at the start of his senior year, hoping to apply his living walls expertise to their “Green Bulkhead” project, which had been in the process of scaling up for a few years. As an undergrad, Lagomarsino had been working hard in the public eye as a horticulture and living systems consultant for the worldwide Solar Decathlon, a Department of Energy sponsored collegiate competition that challenges student teams to design and build highly efficient and innovative buildings powered by renewable energy. Lagomarsino’s UMD team won second place internationally.
“The ‘Green Bulkhead’ project facilitates a process where sediment-laden water is pumped through a living wall featuring plant growth found in native wetland ecosystems,” said Lagomarsino. “The process comes complete with a heavy dose of fun and inspiration, with the pump built to hook into any common bicycle! Anyone with a bike can tie it into the living wall and watch as they personally power a trickle of water over plants through the growing medium.”
With this approach, the community engagement benefits are limitless. Lagomarsino made the Green Bulkhead the focus of his senior capstone project, leading efforts to test different sediment loads to see the removal rates in the system by using indigenous wetland plants from the Anacostia River. He also tested out three different growing mediums to see which performed the best.
He quickly became the living walls expert for the Green Bulkhead. His work as an undergrad paid off in spades after graduation when he was asked by Kangas and May to collectively start Vertical Wetlands Benefit, LLC.
“The end goal is to take the living wall, complete with the bike pump system, and hang it off the side of a hardened waterfront bulkhead,” said Lagomarsino. “Anyone can drop by, hook in their bike, and start cleaning the waterfront. Vertical Wetlands have several community engagement and environmental benefits, and we feel it has a lot of promise for the Anacostia River. Right now, we are working with Bladensburg Waterfront Park to install a series of Vertical Wetlands, and have interest from an Anacostia Waterfront building owner. It’s a very exciting time!”
