[Terrapreta] [Bioenergy] Cornell biogeochemist shows howreproducing -- TerraPreta

[Duane Pendergast]

Tom,

 

Remember that those houses, being mostly made of wood, are carbon sinks and
a source of biomaterial for char if they are demolished. Perhaps there
should be a little more emphasis on placing them on unproductive land.

 

Duane

 

-----Original Message-----
From: terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org
[mailto:terrapreta-bounces at bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Tom Miles
Sent: February 11, 2007 11:02 AM
To: Bioenergy at listserv.repp.org; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] [Bioenergy] Cornell biogeochemist shows
howreproducing -- TerraPreta

 

Dick,

 

How about slash and char in the urban landscape? 4% of our productive land
and forest land in the US is converted to housing each year. How can
bio-char, applied to urban landscaping, horticultural production and urban
oriented crops, pay for its own production and contribute to carbon
sequestration?

 

If I have a process that produces biochar in 20 lb bags can I get $2.00/bag
or $200/ton for it? 

 

In Portland we build 5 homes to the acre going in on heavy clay soils. Out
of 8,000 ft2 per home 2,000-4,000 ft2 probably gets landscaped. Landscaping
is usually included in the cost of the home these days. If I was an
enterprising landscaper I could probably convince the developer or home
owner that 2-4 tons of biochar (1 ton/1,000 ft2 or 2lb/ft2) would make their
yard healthy and substantially reduce irrigation. (Maybe you could go on a
summer vacation and not have the plants die.) That should be worth adding
$2,000 to the cost of the $300,000 home ($500/1000 ft2 x 4,000 ft2). The
benefit of the char will kick in the second or third year, about the time
the homeowner starts focusing on the garden.

 

What is the value of bio-char to a nursery growing plants for the same
gardens? They now buy activated carbon for something like $1200/ton. Could
they get the same value for $200/ton? 

 

What is the value of bio-char to blueberries or other crops planted in rows?
Could bio-char be trenched in under the plants at the time of planting?
Would there be long term benefits?

 

We have slashed the natural ecology. Can we partly restore it by planting
urban char?

 

Tom       

 

 

  _____  

From: bioenergy-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:bioenergy-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Dick Glick
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2007 9:34 AM
To: Brian Hans; Bioenergy at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [Bioenergy] Cornell biogeochemist shows how reproducing --
TerraPreta

 

Feb. 18, 2006

Cornell biogeochemist shows how reproducing the Amazon's black soil could
increase fertility and reduce global warming

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Feb06/AAAS.terra.preta.ssl.html

By Susan S. Lang <mailto:ssl4 at cornell.edu> 

ST. LOUIS -- The search for El Dorado in the Amazonian rainforest might not
have yielded pots of gold, but it has led to unearthing a different type of
gold mine: some of the globe's richest soil that can transform poor soil
into highly fertile ground. 

That's not all. Scientists have a method to reproduce this soil -- known as
terra preta, or Amazonian dark earths -- and say it can pull substantial
amounts of carbon out of the increasing carbon dioxide in the Earth's
atmosphere, helping to prevent global warming. That's because terra preta is
loaded with so-called bio-char -- similar to charcoal. 

"The knowledge that we can gain from studying the Amazonian dark earths,
found throughout the Amazon River region, not only teaches us how to restore
degraded soils, triple crop yields and support a wide array of crops in
regions with agriculturally poor soils, but also can lead to technologies to
sequester carbon in soil and prevent critical changes in world climate,"
said Johannes Lehmann, assistant professor of biogeochemistry in the
Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell University, speaking today
(Feb. 18) at the 2006 meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. 

Lehmann, who studies bio-char and is the first author of the 2003 book
"Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management," the first
comprehensive overview of the black soil, said that the super-fertile soil
was produced thousands of years ago by indigenous populations using
slash-and-char methods instead of slash-and-burn. Terra preta was studied
for the first time in 1874 by Cornell Professor Charles Hartt. 

Whereas slash-and-burn methods use open fires to reduce biomass to ash,
slash-and-char uses low-intensity smoldering fires covered with dirt and
straw, for example, which partially exclude oxygen. 

Slash-and-burn, which is commonly used in many parts of the world to prepare
fields for crops, releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Slash-and-char, on the other hand, actually reduces greenhouse gases,
Lehmann said, by sequestering huge amounts of carbon for thousands of years
and substantially reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from soils. 

"The result is that about 50 percent of the biomass carbon is retained,"
Lehmann said. "By sequestering huge amounts of carbon, this technique
constitutes a much longer and significant sink for atmospheric carbon
dioxide than most other sequestration options, making it a powerful tool for
long-term mitigation of climate change. In fact we have calculated that up
to 12 percent of the carbon emissions produced by human activity could be
offset annually if slash-and-burn were replaced by slash-and-char." 

In addition, many biofuel production methods, such as generating bioenergy
from agricultural, fish and forestry waste, produce bio-char as a byproduct.


"The global importance of a bio-char sequestration as a byproduct of the
conversion of biomass to bio-fuels is difficult to predict but is
potentially very large," he added. 

Applying the knowledge of terra preta to contemporary soil management also
can reduce environmental pollution by decreasing the amount of fertilizer
needed, because the bio-char helps retain nitrogen in the soil as well as
higher levels of plant-available phosphorus, calcium, sulfur and organic
matter. The black soil also does not get depleted, as do other soils, after
repeated use. 

"In other words, producing and applying bio-char to soil would not only
dramatically improve soil and increase crop production, but also could
provide a novel approach to establishing a significant, long-term sink for
atmospheric carbon dioxide," said Lehmann. He noted that what is being
learned from terra prate also can help farmers prevent agricultural runoff,
promote sustained fertility and reduce input costs. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/terrapreta_bioenergylists.org/attachments/20070211/61523c27/attachment.html