[Terrapreta] Charcoal in soil

[Nikolaus Foidl]

See photos:
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/index.php/v/foidl/?q=gallery


Dear All!

In those photos you can see 3 to 5 year old charcoal stripes left over from
the forest burnings, in some fotos as dark green stripes and in some as
white stripes where nothing is growing. The growth in the beginning depends
on the type of grass you are planting, some cannot grow with this high level
of potassium others love this high level of potassium and thrive
extraordinarily well on it. In the next set of photos you see as well a
actual forest being chained down, after chaining down the wood is lined up
with caterpillars into 4 parallel rows partially covered with loose soil and
then burned up in 24 hours. The piles of wood get up to 10 meters high and
the pile on the base is some 12 to 15 meters wide and as long as the fields
are. Afterwards with a plow with 60" diameter disks the whole field is
turned over to get the remaining roots out. Those are burned as well in the
same rows where the stems where burned or charred.

One photo shows the fields after 15 years and there is no visible evidence
anymore of the existence of those high volume charcoal stripes all though
the charcoal is still in the soil. So the "growth enhancing effect" is
fading away. The only thing I could try from the plain is to use a spectral
reflectance camera to see if different nutrient uptake gives us an image in
spectral reflectance.
Best regards Nikolaus