[Terrapreta] Where do you get it?

[Greg and April]

Interspaced between the *****************.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kurt Treutlein" <rukurt at westnet.com.au>
To: "Terra Preta" <terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 5:35
Subject: [Terrapreta] Where do you get it?


> I've raised this question before, and so have others. If we consider the
> large scale production of charcoal, to be used for TP, where is the
> biomass feedstock to come from?
>
> The simplistic answer is "No worries mate, there's plenty of it going
> into landfill and being wasted". And so there is, but I suggest that it
> isn't enough for a really large scale effort.
>
> Past societies have denuded their forests producing charcoal for
> smelting purposes, all the way back to the bronze age, not to mention
> more recent iron smelting in the USA. Today, the humble cooking fire in
> many parts of Africa and India is leading to wholesale deforestation, as
> people endeavor to fill the need for cooking fuel.

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Your right, but, let's not forget that there are thousands ( if not 
millions ) of acers of dead and dying trees, due to pests and disese, and 
all of that dead wood is making conditions ripe for extream forest fires.

In logging areas the tops of trees and branches that have been trimmed off 
the logs, are buldozed into piles doused with gas and burned to get rid of 
them.

Tree trimming efforts in many cities are so big, that the shreadded wood is 
added to the coal in coal burning power plants or just thrown away.    A few 
years ago, I was given for free a load of wood shreads ( and it was a fully 
loaded 10 yard truck ) because they still had work to do in the area but no 
more room in the truck.

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>
> Use crop residues! Sure, but then what goes into the soil to replace the
> Soil Organic Material, that the wee beasties in our charcoal, need to eat.
>
> The increased productivity of the soil will give us more crop residues
> and this will provide the feedstock!. Somehow that doesn't seem likely
> either.

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In many places the crop residue just set's on top of the soil loosing much 
of it's organic value, until it time to plow the field again - at which 
point it's turned under with a high dose of fertilizer to "burn" it off.

Use of the above ground residues doesn't remove the below ground residues, 
which can account for as much or even more than the above ground residues, 
depending on the crops.

In the end, with current modern farming practice, above ground crop residues 
add little if anything to the soil, as they are used right now, and by 
collecting as much as possable and turning it to char, you could actually 
reduce the level herbicides needed the following year, as it reduces the 
number of volunteer plants from the previous year.

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>
> Start managing forestry to give a sustainable output of feedstock? That
> might help, especially with coppicing. "Really selectively" log. Another
> possibility. At present a lot of forests are suffering from fatal
> attacks, pine bark beetle for one, fire killed forest areas for another.
> Building logging roads into them is considered too destructive and I
> agree. New extraction methods are needed. A while back someone married
> secondhand helicopters with an airship. It failed, but that sort of
> thing might just do it. Use the slash from legitimate agricultural land
> clearing. I see a lot of that around here and it just gets burnt, or rots.
>

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While I agree with your case about logging roads built haphazard style, ones 
that are well planned out do very well in multi use duty - as fire lines / 
fire roads, as forest trails for hiking and biking, as Forest Service / 
National Park roads.    I have seen some that with carefully planned routes 
controlled natural erosion.

One idea that I have seen, that made a lot of sense is to use construction 
cranes to lift out trees to deposit in a central area next to the road, then 
when the selected trees in that particular area were done be harvested, the 
crane is dismantled and moved to another area.

Greg H.