It's what they call a shake-and-bake colony. Takes decades.
The Gaia Process is a method of terraforming originally developed by the Horadrim, and further refined by humans to produce a quick and effective method of transforming most types of terrestrial planets into earth-like ecosystems with pleasant climates and a lush environment condusive to agriculture and habitation. In addition to the usual methods of skimming comets through the atmosphere to add water, seeding the soil with microbes, algae, insects, and other soil-enriching organisms, and planting Terraforming Pines and other quick-growing plants to oxygenate the atmosphere and darken the surface, the Gaia Process adds self-replicating Horadrim-designed nanobots. These nanobots rapidly spread throughout the ecosystem, powered and organized by microwaves beamed down from orbiting solar power satellites, and rapidly and radically alter the soil chemistry and even topography of the planet. This accellerates the other phases of the terraforming process, enabling a barren rock to be turned into a livable world in only a couple of decades rather than taking a century or more. San Angeles was the first world the Gaia Process was tested on, and it was a smashing success. The series of wars in the mid-23rd century cancelled plans to extend the process to many other worlds, however, due to tight budgets and other pressing concerns.
Behind the Scenes[]
Of course, we borrowed the term from the "Gaia Transformation" technology available to player empires in Master of Orion II: Battle At Antares.