Control and Regeneration of Degraded Protected Forest Area Using Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation: A Review

Environmental deterioration, which includes climate change, deforestation, sea-level rise, expanding deserts and catastrophic weather events, stands as a significant threat to the present and future generations. The protected area plays a crucial role in tackling environmental deterioration and helps in adaptation to climate change. Proper planning of the protected area is vital. Planning of a protected area requires the collaboration of people from the interdisciplinary area. For a Geotechnical engineer, the planning includes controlling erosion, which hinders the growth of trees, stabilizing the slopes, which cause problems, and making sure that the soil has adequate water holding capacity and does not allow water to travel through them quickly. All these problems are proposed to be tackled by a single novel technique known as Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP), which has been proved capable of overcoming all the shortcomings of the conventional techniques. This paper sheds light on the use of the MICP in and its applicability in controlling the factors that lead to degradation of protected areas to help researchers working in the same area.