By Russell McLendon, Source: Mother Nature Network

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Global warming could eventually help Greenland live up to its name, but the icy island won’t transform into a lush, arable paradise overnight. Even with the ridiculously fast pace of modern climate change, Greenlanders will probably still depend on foreign fruits and vegetables for centuries to come.

Unless someone invents a futuristic hydroponic ark powered by icebergs and sunlight, that is.

Glaciers are melting unusually quickly in the Arctic, calving off more icebergs whose freshwater is lost into salty seas. An array of opportunists already harvest it to make everything from bottled water to vodka, but four French architecture students have an even better idea: Use meltwater from Greenland’s icebergs to irrigate crops on an offshore hydroponic farm called the Arctic Harvester.

It’s a cool concept (see details below), but it’s not just a starry-eyed student project. It won first prize at the 2013 Jacques Rougerie Foundation Competition — a global contest for ideas about space, oceans and “enabling the evolution of our society” — and its inventors are now fleshing out the logistics with Polarisk Analytics, a consulting firm that specializes in Arctic and Antarctic issues. An updated proposal will be unveiled April 28, co-creator and Paris-based architect Meriem Chabani tells MNN via email.

Here’s the basic idea: The circular ship floats on the
surface, gathering icebergs in a central bay and collecting their freshwater as they melt. That water then flows up to hydroponic farming levels, and later to an osmotic energy plant that provides electricity (along with solar panels). When it’s not too busy with icebergs, the ship also delivers fresh Greenlandic produce to towns along the coast.
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But this isn’t just a farm on a fancy barge. While other offshore facilities like oil rigs often separate workers and their families for weeks or months, the Harvester would house a community of up to 800 people at sea. That should boost morale and mental health — Greenland is part of Denmark, after all, the land of “hygge” — but it also complicates the logistics, requiring enough public space, amenities and electricity to accommodate more than 1 percent of Greenland’s entire population.

To help its inhabitants feel at home, the Harvester’s amphitheater-like shape is also inspired by traditional seaside villages in Greenland (see illustration below), an attempt to mimic their “social, cultural and economic relationship to the sea,” according to Chabani. Such reminders of home might come in handy, too, since the crew would need to travel hundreds of miles away from Greenland.

“The vessel as a whole is designed to drift with the currents that carry the icebergs during the course of their lives,” Chabani says, “often circling on the ocean currents between Greenland and the coast of Labrador for up to two years, before heading south past the east coast of the United States.”

See more at: Mother Nature Network