[Terrapreta] Fwd: Charcoal--- what sort?

[rukurt at westnet.com.au]

Hi Sean,
What does this have to do with the snippet of my posting that DOK quoted 
in his post?

I append his complete post on purpose.

Kurt



Sean K. Barry wrote:
> Hi Kurt,
>  
> I read something Edward Someus or Gehardt Becktold said about there 
> existing Terra Preta" on land in Africa, which was dominated by 
> Savanna.  It is in one of the two posting by those two recently.
>  
> SKB
>  
>  
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* code suidae <mailto:codesuidae at gmail.com>
>     *To:* terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
>     <mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
>     *Sent:* Monday, June 04, 2007 5:41 PM
>     *Subject:* [Terrapreta] Fwd: Charcoal--- what sort?
>
>     On 6/3/07, *rukurt at westnet.com.au <mailto:rukurt at westnet.com.au>*
>     < rukurt at westnet.com.au <mailto:rukurt at westnet.com.au>> wrote:
>
>         From what I've read, the charcoal in TP is hardwood charcoal.
>         Micrographs of even the finely divided lumps shows the typical
>         hardwood
>         structure maintained in the charcoal. We believe that this
>         structure is
>         responsible for the porosity of the charcoal and it's special
>         properties.
>         Will softwood charcoal have a similar structure? Not necessarily. 
>
>
>     Just speculating here. If it is the particular micro-structure of
>     the wood used to produced the char for TP it does not necessarily
>     follow that the structure of hardwood char is the only or the
>     optimal structure for biochar soil amendments. Nor is it
>     necessarily true that the biomass used to produce the charcoal
>     irrevocably sets the final micro-structure of the charcoal.
>     Further processing of the charcoal could alter the structure to
>     improve it's suitability for soil amendments. It might even be
>     necessary to customize the structure to optimize it for the
>     particular microflora that works best in a given region. The wee
>     beasties that make TP so successful in the Amazon probably won't
>     like North Dakota, for example, and the beasties that like North
>     Dakota may prefer different charcoal from the beasties that live
>     in Amazonian TP.
>
>     DOK
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>