[Terrapreta] Anthropogenic casue for Global Warming

[Jim Joyner]

From: Sean K. Barry <sean.barry at juno.com>
  
 . . . I'm am pretty sure there was at least 10 tons of leaves and vines per acre 
after the crush (grape harvest).

Sean,

Could be, but I think this may be exceptional. And, grapes aren't grown everywhere. But what I am suggesting in no way means it can't be done. Farmers just may have to be more clever to obtain the biomass.

I got my 100+ tons per acre of charcoal from a paper written by Johannes 
Lehmann at Cornell.  They were discussing charcoal concentrations at 60 g 
per kg of soil (The paper is attached).  In it, they showed that the best 
results (for yield in nitrogen fixing beans) that they achieved was at that 
concentration (60 g kg-1).  Below here is the paragraph at the end where 
they came up with 121.5 tons per hectare (10,000 sq meters = ~2.47 acres).  
So, your number 50 tons/acre is closer!  (121.5 metric tons / 2.47 = 49.2 
metric tons, 1 metric ton = ~1.1 metric tons, s0 ~55 tons acre-1)
 


I have no reason to doubt this but it is probably still very ball-parkish because there nothing here about the particular soil or climate they are using/testing. do you know where they did this testing? South America? new York? Soils' natural holding capacities vary a lot.and the climate can have a big of affect on the soils. The above looks more like the USDA's typical one-size-fits-all approach.

Kevin sent me a link to some data on experiments in Brazil. One place showed a gain of <2 up to 44 in the CEC. That is incredible! They didn't say, but the soil must have been a sandy soil or maybe just sand. http://www.georgiaitp.org/carbon/PDF%20Files/CSteinerpres.pdf


I suspect as time goes on and we learn more about the properties of terra preta we'll be able to refine and optimize it applications. What I think is news worthy here is that the gains possible from the use of biochar are much much more than just marginal. That leaves a lot of room for a lot of people to work with and utilize it in many creative ways.

Jim.




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