[Terrapreta] charcoal degradation - uncertainties about its half life

[lou gold]

Hi All,

I'm a bit skeptical of this message -- not because of the numbers or the
extent of the damage but because by the time of the hurricane there were
almost no natural forests left in Mississippi and Louisiana. The once-great
forests of this region had been almost entirely converted to commericial
tree plantations of young trees that are cut at a young age and replanted as
in a crop cycle. Young trees, especially the new hybrids bred for fast
growth, have very little resilence toward wind. Thus, I would expect a
massive blow down -- but as a man-made distaster and not a natural one.

Excuse me if my intuitive speculation is incorrect. Perhaps the writer, who
is a member of the Forestry Commission (usually a group weighted heavily
toward industry representation) may be able to offer an informed guess as to
the percent of the severely damaged trees that were more than 80 years old?
Or the percent of killed trees that were non-commercial species?

I would, of course, love to see something really useful done with the
blow-down -- like making char to be placed back in the soils which in
Louisiana and Mississippi have been severely degraded by years of
industrial-style management. I afraid, however, that what might be coming is
a plea for subsidized cellulostic pyrolisis to make ethanol, etc.

I will be most happy to be corrected on these speculations.

Sincerely offered,

lou



On Nov 16, 2007 6:55 PM, henry buehler <henry.buchler at gmail.com> wrote:

> New satellite imaging has revealed that hurricanes Katrina and Rita
> produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in America — an
> essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely
> damaged about 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana. "This is the
> worst environmental disaster in the United States since the Exxon Valdez
> accident ... and the greatest forest destruction in modern times," said
> James Cummins, executive director of the conservation group Wildlife
> Mississippi and a board member of the Mississippi Forestry Commission. "It
> needs a really broad and aggressive response, and so far that just hasn't
> happened." "I was amazed at the quantitative impact of the storm," Chambers
> said. Of 320 million trees harmed, about two-thirds soon died. "I certainly
> didn't expect that big an impact." Chambers was even more surprised when his
> team calculated how much carbon will be released as the storm-damaged
> vegetation decomposes. The total came to about 1.1 billion tons, equal to
> the amount that all the trees in the United States take out of the
> atmosphere in a year.
> we need to build into our refining capacity the ability to consume trees
> again like we did before we drilled for oil.
>
>
> On 11/16/07, Brian Hans <bhans at earthmimic.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you Andrew and Mariska for bring up this very important topic,
> > likely the most important topic that TP should be discussing.
> >
> > Im not going to cite any ref. material but after a few weeks of
> > discussing TP with various soil scientists, it seems that charcoal can
> > infact break down over time, organically and chemically. It is also easily
> > lost thru erosion and other climate events. I heard serious questioning
> > about the perported lifespan of charcoal in the soil. I also heard the term
> > 'priming effect' but he didnt have a cite... likely from the one Andrew
> > ref'ed. Tho charcoal remains longer than raw bio-mass and has many benefits
> > because of that, there is very little longer term data on this topic and
> > definately more needs to be done.
> >
> > To confuse the matter, an activated carbon specialist mentioned to me
> > that hardness would likely determine retention time in the soil, which goes
> > to the feedstock AND quality of process.
> >
> > I am convinced that charcoaling is generally better than composting or
> > just letting it rot. But just as compost has a 1/2 life in the soil, so does
> > charcoal.
> >
> > Brian Hans
> >
> >
> > *Andrew Zimmerman <azimmer at ufl.edu>* wrote:
> >
> >
> > Mariska - It is generally assumed that charcoal (black carbon) is not
> > very biodegradable because of its chemical composition (highly aromatic,
> > with relatively little nitrogen, etc) and simply because it remains in the
> > soil for long periods of time.  However, recent work (papers attached) has
> > shown that microbes can indeed respire and abiotic reactions can breakdown
> > this material to at least some extent, especially when more labile organic
> > matter is also added (so called 'priming' effect).  In fact, my laboratory
> > has found the same and is currently working on defining the properties of
> > biochar and its remineralization rates better.  -AZ
> >
> >
> > At 01:21 PM 11/15/2007, mariska evelein wrote:
> >
> > Hello List
> >
> > A problem I stumbled across today is the half life of charcoal in the
> > environment.
> >
> > No one seems to have rigorous scientific proof that charcoal is inert,
> > but we are all assuming it is.
> >
> > According to the attached peer reviewed article (new directions in black
> > carbon organic geochemistry, masiello, 2004) there are some serious gaps in
> > how much black carbon is produced yearly and how much of it we find in the
> > environment, suggesting there is either a problem with our scientific
> > experiments, or there are other processes that cause a black carbon loss
> > that we haven't found out about yet. Even a thousand year life span can't
> > explain the carbon quantities.
> >
> > Does the fact that we find charcoal in our ancient soils mean that this
> > represents all the charcoal that was produced at that time? How do we know
> > that we are not only finding a fraction of what was once there?
> >
> > I would really like to believe that most the charcoal we put in our
> > soils will stay there indefinately, but am struggling to do so until I find
> > some peer reviewed evidence that proofs this.
> >
> > Can anybody provide me with this?
> >
> > Mariska
> >
> >
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> >
> >   *___________________________________________* Andrew R. Zimmerman, PhD
> >
> > Assistant Professor      Department of Geological Sciences 241
> > Williamson Hall P.O. Box 112120 University of Florida Gainesville, FL
> > 32611 Office: (352) 392-0070 Fax: (352) 392-9294 azimmer at ufl.edu
> > www.clas.ufl.edu/users/azimmer/index.html
> >
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> > it should be possible to extract some energy...."
> >         -J.E. Lovelock, Gaia
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-- 
http://lougold.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionshare/sets/
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