[Terrapreta] if yer nor forest....

[Robert Klein]

Glad to see someone losing patience.  You may want to
visit my blog and work through the twenty plus
postings that I have made on the production of terra
preta.

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/

I propose various practical solutions to the problems
implied by the evidence.

regards

bob


--- David Yarrow <dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> wrote:

> having spent many profound and peaceful hours in the
> shade and shelter of many ancient forests doing
> surveys to locate and document the 1/2 of 1% of the
> eastern US forests that remain as old growth, i find
> this anaylsis of old growth forests as inferior
> carbon sinks to be tragic, absurd and incredibly
> near sighted -- a foolish rationale for the
> continued rape and ravage of the most supreme
> manifestations of the living biosphere.  the idea
> that we can store more carbon in young, fast growing
> trees instead of ancient forests is dangerously
> dumb.
> 
> first of all, in this discussion of ancient vs.
> young forest as carbon sink, the keyword here is
> deforestation.  young forests of supposedly rapidly
> growing trees only exist because the original forest
> has been logged, burned and destroyed.  those
> catastrophic processes quickly release nearly all of
> the carbon and nutrients that were accumulated over
> decades and centuries, and stored in the original
> trees, understory, highly organic soil, and other
> living organisms.  in those processes, most of the
> carbon is oxidized, while most of the nutrients
> leach away into subsoil and watersheds.  and most of
> the wildlife is displaced and must find new habitats
> for food and shelter.  those displaced chemistries
> create widespread disturbances and disruptions in
> far distance places.  deforestation is a
> catastrophic release of chemistry and chaos, and
> traumatic degradation of complex biotic communities.
> 
> it will take many, many years of young forest
> growth, however rapid it MIGHT seem to be, to
> compensate for the catastrophic disruptive releases
> of deforestation.  and if in our analysis, we
> include not just crude measures of weight and volume
> in tree and soil biomass, but complexity, density,
> diversity, and stability, this entire
> young-over-ancient argument becomes a no-contest
> triumph for these climax ecosystems.
> 
> at any rate, ancient forests are profoundly more
> than magnificent carbon and nutrient sinks.  they
> are a complex communities of interacting organisms
> that perform multiple funcations to regulate,
> stabilize and sustain the web of living processed
> that make most earth's resplendent bounty and beauty
> possible.  the current discussion is like
> discounting our lungs and kidneys as merely being so
> many pounds of protein, fat, minerals, and water
> that could be ground up and turned into one or two
> nutritous dinners.  forests are powerfully effective
> to regulate the atmosphere, including the release of
> not just oxygen and many other more subtle gaseous
> molecules that are the scent of sublime, not to
> mention the ions that form the electromagnetic unity
> of the troposphere.  forests and their leaves also
> filter the air, removing impurities and wastes,
> restoring ionic balances, releasing moisture as
> humidity,, reducing winds and creating a zone of
> substory serenity.  a forest exerts multiple
> profound physical,  chemical and electromagnetic
> effects to reduce the extreme winds and violent
> rains of storms into beneficial
> 
> ancient forests and their deep, nutrient rich,
> living soils are the guardians of watersheds.  they
> filter and purify the rains and snows, removing
> toxics and excesses.  they hold excess rain and
> snowfall  in their spongy biomass complexity,
> slowing their release to reduce floods with their
> muddy catastrophic erosions that degrade aquatic
> habitat and render estuaries and seacoasts into
> useless, barely habitable mudflats.  they shade and
> cool the land and water, to further regulate the
> temperature of the soil, water and atmosphere, and
> improve its stability and viability as habitat for
> the complex communities of living organisms.
> 
> but if we just stick to simple minded measures of
> weight and volume of carbon and nutrients, very soon
> we must realize that given the constant influx of
> solar energy per square meter, ancient forests are
> far more sophisticated at making use of that harvest
> of extra-terrestrial photons.  just in terms of
> trees, which the superstructures to generate complex
> forest habitat zones, the multi-level canopy,
> understory and ground-story structures of an ancient
> forest are capturing and converting the solar influx
> into carbohydrate biomass with as much or more
> efficiency that a chaotic outburst of upstart young
> trees.  any tree will organize its canopy to
> intercept and absorb a maximum of solar influx.  a
> tree growing in an open field will direct that
> growth into more horizontal than vertical growth,
> creating a landscape of short, fat trees and a low
> canopy and a tangled understory.  a tree growing in
> a forest will direct that same amount of energy into
> growing narrow and tall, stretching to reach the
> high canopy, meanwhile creating a broader, open zone
> at the land surface under that high canopy wirhin
> which many other complex biotic organisms and
> processes to become established.
> 
> however, having spent 25 years working with
> agriculture, i've spent a lot of time contemplating
> the invisible processes below the land surface
> within the soil.  i've developed a rare and profound
> respect that there is as much if not more growth and
> biomass happening under the soil as above.  and the
> most critical factors in this soil biotic ecology
> isn't the plant roots or the inert organic matter,
> its the living biomass of unseen microscopic
> creatures.  and this is exactly the most profound
> gift of terra preta -- the soil biology it engenders
> and sustains -- the so-called 
> "microbial reef" effects.
> 
> enough of this.  all these words barely scratch the
> surface to decribe and enumerate the awesome,
> ivaluable, irreplacable living complexities of
> ancient forest communities in comparison to young
> forests or grasslands.  the notion we can cut these
> tightly woven, ecological tapestries and replace
> them with fast growing high efficiency tree
> plantations is ridiculous if it were not so
> dangerous for the long-term integrity and unity of
> the planetary biosphere.
> 
> back to other more useful tasks.
> 
> David Yarrow
> "If yer not forest, yer against us."
> Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
> 44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
> dyarrow at nycap.rr.com
> www.championtrees.org
> www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org
> www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/
> www.farmandfood.org
> www.SeaAgri.com
>  
> "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of
> times, 
> if one only remembers to turn on the light."  
> -Albus Dumbledore
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Brian Hans 
>   To: Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org 
>   Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 8:40 AM
>   Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] CO2 rising
> 
> 
>   Lou,
> 
> 
>   All that decaying matter in an old-growth forest
> is turning into something. If not soil, then what? 
> 
>   Virtually 100% CO2 and other off gases of carbon.
> If the carbon was turning into 'soil' then wouldnt
> forest floors be 10ft thick black soils? Ofc they
> are not, why would that be?  
> 
>   I learned during my days in the Doug Fir forests
> of Oregon that a cubic meter of that "soil" can 
>   contain more than 35,000 separate species and 2
> billion individual organisms. Your statement 
>   baffles me. Please elaborate. 
> 
> 
>   Just as a forest isnt a carbon sink...neither is
> its floor.
>
http://www.geology.iastate.edu/gccourse/chem/carbon/images/carboncontent2.gif
>   This chart is shows the loss of carbon to the
> system (a neg number = positive carbon fixing).
> Notice how the tropical forests stack up vs other
> ecosystems? Put plainly...the farther away you move
> from the equator, the less soil digestion of C and
> the more soil production. Why is this? Ofc is has to
> do with temp...boreal forest soil organisms done
> have 365 day 80F temps to go to work...they have to
> take the winter off (hard to decompose whilst
> frozen). 
> 
>   Another point here, grasslands do a better job of
> sinking carbon into the soil than does a forest y/y.
> Again clearly on the graph, one can see how forests
> generally dont make soil whilst grasslands and ag.
> does. Anyone who has tried to farm a newly cut
> forest can attest to the fact that the soils are
> very poor and thin VS a grassland. It can be said
> that prairies (grasslands in general but prairies in
> specific) are like an iceburg...most of the mass in
> under the soil line. My suspicion is that it has to
> do with soil biomass amount vs trees soil biomass +
> productivity of grasses y/y vs trees. 
> 
>   Anyone knows that tropical forest soils are very
> poor. But that ideal can be extrapolated to most
> forests...why? 
=== message truncated ===>
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