[Terrapreta] Charcoal in soil

[Richard Haard]

Nikolaus

The images you have posted are very interesting to me. I went further  
to look at this part of the world on google earth to appreciate the  
scope to the deforestation that is currently occurring in your corner  
of Bolivia and adjacent areas of Brazil. Chaining this forest down  
with bulldozers ( what kind of machines do they use?) seems to be a  
dramatic environmental  and a social change for the indigenous human  
population.

Yet the technique is the slash and burn method for agriculture, a way  
of farming that is not sustainable in the moist tropical climate and  
soils without supplementation with fertilizer, and eventually letting  
the ground after a period of time revert to forest cover for renewal  
by native vegetation. Am I correct in this assumption? What will  
happen with those 15 year fields - will they stay in production with  
no further treatment or rotation?

You have shown us that this burn pile effect seems to fade after a  
number of years and that your trials with charcoal the effect in the  
fields also seems to be transient as with the burn pile remnants. Your  
hypothesis is that the charcoal brings potassium into the soil which  
is eventually depleted. Yet we read in the writings of Dr Lehmann that  
replacement of slash and burn with slash and char will return 50 % of  
this forest ecosystem standing crop of carbon to the soil as charcoal.  
He is proposing that slash and char be accepted as a general practice  
in agriculture for the region. And that this technique will result in  
terra preta nova which if fully implemented will counterbalance 12 %  
of all CO2 emissions.  It would seem that implementing slash and char  
at the scale I witnessed today on google earth in Bolivia would  
require additional work and expense but that the potential for  
benefits would return this investment.

What is happening with the introduction of large scale commercial  
agriculture into this region is really changing the ecosystem in a  
dramatic way. I am interested to learn from your on the ground view if  
you believe slash an char can be implemented in this production  
system. Are there agencies, individuals or groups in Bolivia or Brazil  
who are advocating slash and char? How do you see this trend direction  
of agricultural development in your area? We now have corn futures  
over US $5.50/bu and wheat is now approaching $15. Soybeans at similar  
levels also and all to supply demand for biofuels and our grain belt  
farmlands are at maximum production capacity mode indicating this  
intensive utilization will only increase demand for grain everywhere.

Yours is a unique place to study this use of charcoal. I value your  
observations and reports of your efforts.

Thanks

Rich H





On Feb 7, 2008, at 6:32 PM, Nikolaus Foidl wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
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