[Terrapreta] charcoal degradation - uncertainties about its half life

[Tom Miles]

See attachment to Mariska's message at:

http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/eveleinchar

 

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Tom Miles

 

From: mariska evelein [mailto:mariska_evelein at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2007 10:22 AM
To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
Subject: charcoal degradation - uncertainties about its half life

 

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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