Authors: A. M. Garba, M. Abubakar, K. J. Osinubi, O. Eberemu, T. S. Ijimdiya
Abstract: The potential of biotreated Aeolian soil using Bacillus brevis (B. brevis)-induced calcite precipitation for mitigating wind erosion was investigated through the application of the Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm (BFOA). Laboratory experiments were conducted to generate the data required for the optimization analysis. Sediment flux (y) was considered the dependent variable, while B. brevis suspension density, pH, compactive effort, water content relative to optimum, and cementation conditions were considered independent variables influencing the wind-erodibility response of the treated soil. GeneXproTools 5.0 was employed to develop the fitness (objective) function describing the relationship between sediment flux and the selected independent variables. The resulting fitness function was subsequently incorporated into BFO codes developed in MATLAB 2016 to determine the combination of variables associated with minimum sediment flux. The optimization results demonstrated a strong relationship between the predicted and experimentally measured sediment-flux values, with a coefficient of determination (R²) of 0.912. This indicates that the developed optimization model provided a satisfactory representation of the experimentally observed wind-erodibility behaviour of the biotreated Aeolian soil. The optimization process further showed that sediment flux was strongly influenced by the selected independent variables. The minimum predicted sediment flux of approximately 3.91 × 10⁻³ kg/m²s was obtained after 50 iterations. Based on the optimization results, treatment of Aeolian soil with B. brevis suspension and 0.75 M cementation reagent demonstrated considerable potential for reducing wind-induced sediment transport. The findings indicate that BFOA can serve as an effective optimization tool for identifying suitable microbial treatment conditions for wind-erosion mitigation, particularly in arid and semi-arid environments.
