[Terrapreta] the scope of the problem

[Greg and April]

I think allot of it depends on the plants in question.

There are many plants that put on exceptional growth when young like, aspen, cottonwood, bamboo to name a few - but - it will be a matter of actually having enough space and a long enough growing season for it to happen.

If the trees are coppiced rather than cut down entirely, the large root systems actually provide for even faster regrowth.

Example:
My neighbor has a cottonwood that had a large branch that was sticking over my garage, and after I expressed my concern about it last year, they had it cut off.    Not two week later the tree was sending up new shoots, and from the time the branch was cut off last year to the time that growth stopped last fall, the one sapling that I left alone was 5 ft tall.

Take advantage of that sort of regeneration that many plants are capable of, and yes, you can harvest tons of biomass each year.


Colorado is currently having a problem with the Pine Bark Beetle in the State and National forests, and this bug is killing thousands of trees a year - all of those trees are being left, because eco-activists refuse to let the drastic measures that are needed be taken ( basically the dead and dieing trees along with those in the immediate vicinity have to be removed to control the spread of the beetles ).    That is hundreds of tons of wood in Colorado alone that could otherwise be put to beneficial use.

Greg H.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Sean K. Barry 
  To: Larry Williams 
  Cc: Terra Preta 
  Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 7:42
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] the scope of the problem


  Hi Larry,

  My point was, and please feel free to correct me on this, but if we need 6 billion tons of char per year, then we need 25 billion tons of dry biomass per year to make it.  Can sustainable forestry harvest 25 billion tons of woody biomass every year?  I didn't think it could.  Perhaps this is wrong.  I know forests can be managed in such a way that wood can be harvested and the forested does not "shrink" in an overall way.  If a ton of wood is perhaps 1000 board feet, then can the worldwide forest management harvest 25 trillion board feet of wood each year and still sustain the forests?

  I've suggested multiple times that we need to use other forms of biomass than forest wood to make charcoal annually on that kind of scale.
  I just don't see that there is enough wood to be had each year to keep up with making 6 billion tons of charcoal per year.

  TABLE II

  Estimated Distribution of World's Biomass Carbon

                                              Forests        Savanna and grasslands        Swamp and marsh        Remaining terrestrial        Marine

  Area (10^6 km2)                     48.5              24.0                                     2.0                                74.5                         361
  Percentage                               9.5                4.7                                     0.4                                14.6                          70.8
  Net C production (Gt/year)        33.26              8.51                                   2.70                                8.40                        24.62
  Percentage                             42.9              11.0                                     3.5                                10.8                          31.8
  Standing C (Gt)                     744                 33.5                                    14.0                               37.5                            4.5
  Percentage                             89.3                4.0                                      1.7                                4.5                            0.5

  Note. Adapted from Table 2.2 in Klass, D. L. (1998). ''Biomass for Renewable Energy, Fuels, and Chemicals.'' Academic Press, San Diego, CA.

  The total amount of standing Carbon in ALL of the world's forestlands is 744 Gt (744 billion tons).  Each year produces 33.26 Gt of new carbon on ALL of the forest land together.  Can the world's forest managers harvest ~20% (~6.6 Gt) from all of the new growth each year and not destroy the total number of acres/hectares of some forested lands?  I do not know that ALL of the worlds forest lands are even accessible, let alone whether we could harvest from them at a rate of ~20% of the new growth.

  Mathematically, it is possible that there is enough carbon being grown into forests each year that we could use that as the sole source for charcoal feedstock, but is it feasible?  Will our rush to harvest wood for charcoal decimate forests?  Won't the first and easiest ones to harvest be the first to be harvested completely?

  I think you are right, that we need a shift in thinking and action about how we live in the world.  A paradigm shift away from consumption of the easiest to get at and consideration for sustainable living is totally what's called for.  This is what permaculture aspires to.  Maybe we should be teaching permaculture in elementary grade schools, huh?

  Regards,

  SKB

    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Larry Williams 
    To: Sean K. Barry 
    Cc: Terra Preta 
    Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 3:38 AM
    Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] the scope of the problem


    Sean-------You have suggested and other members using similar figures suggest that  "In order for TP (Terra Preta) to work at solving these problems the world needs to cleanly produce ~6 billion tons of charcoal from ~25 billion tons of dry biomass every year.  This cannot be done with trees alone.  We would exhaust all of the standing wood on the planet in 10 or 20 years doing that. " 


    This is a mischaracterization, as I see it, of the available biomass from forests and I would like you to consider the significance of individual tree harvesting in our evergreen forests. This concept applies to areas of the world where there are full canopies, specifically multi-layered canopies. In the Pacific Northwest we have sustainable farm foresters who practice individual tree harvests on their forest lands. As a general rule, it was recommended by these timber harvesters that trees selected for harvest be subordinate trees within the forest canopy. This practice is on private forest lands.


    In a newly acquired properties they would first remove trees that were of lesser value, that is, trees with physical or disease damage so that the dominate trees would have the available light, water and nutrients that were used by the subordinate trees. The practice was to remove 5-8% of the canopy every 10 years. This was enough opening to encourage natural regeneration and at the same time allow for a significance closure of the canopy before the next harvest.


    As it was described to me by different forest owners and consultants it was important:
    1) to downsize the logging equipment, 
    2) narrow the width of the road to 10 feet, 
    3) increase the frequency of the road system,
    4) have the road layout to be very protective of the existing tree roots systems, that is, to follow the least damaging routes, 
    5) to have highly skilled loggers who fell, yarded and loaded logs with the least damage to the standing timber and
    6) that these companies use forest managers who spent decades with there respective companies and knew every inch, so to speak, of their land.


    The purpose of removing the minimum canopy was so that the sunlight (photons) would have a limited opportunity to initiate germination of lower valued trees species and maintain the available light for the higher valued trees.


    With this selection system the subordinate trees were trees in a biological decline and would lose more value over time than they currently had at the time of harvest.


    I agree that the majority of the forest industry is interested in the profit and not the impact of current logging practices. Your comment above is likely true for corporate loggers interests and your statement that we "would exhaust all of the standing wood on the planet in 10 or 20 years doing that " needs to be seriously considered. Exhausting a stand of trees or a forest is not necessary. Maybe society and the monied interests need to rethink the value of corporate profits as a long term value rather than a quarterly goal, especially in terms of global climate change.


    I acknowledge that this is not happening at this time but the price of a barrel of oil is only at $102 dollars and the value of the U.S. fiat dollar is only down to $0.68 to the Euro. Think about how fast those values are changing. There are no rats leaving this ship if we get into a run away CO2 event (refer to the history of Venus' atmosphere).


    Biologically, if we were to manage forest land products with an individual tree harvests perspective then we could have a sustained yield for the production of charcoal.


    My hands are in the dirt, ah! soil, and it has power if we attend to the biology even in desert climates. I believe that we can produce far more biomass than we are currently, in our forests and in our deserts. See: Geoff Lawton: 1) We Are The Weeds, 2) Greening The Desert - Permaculture in Action. He did capture the available water to succeed in his Jordanian project. Did you catch the statement in "Greening the Desert "where the local farmers were burning the crop residue. I wonder what the moisture content is for that debris compared to what we have to deal with with our seasonally wet woods? Let's make charcoal over there.


    Now, why do we have to "exhaust all of the standing wood on the planet in 10 or 20 years"? Because we don't know how to grow plants? We can grow plants around the world when be put our minds to it.


    I wonder, does Geoff knows about charcoal and Terra Preta nova? If he can figure out how to grow plants in the desert then can't we figure out how to do it in the temperate zone? Your  friend-------Larry
      






    ----------------------------------------

    On Mar 2, 2008, at 7:32 PM, Sean K. Barry wrote:


      Hi Michael,

      I think the scope of the problem is not addressed by any means.  Whether we uses conservation (turn lights off for an hour), short term sequestration (plant trees), or whether we put charcoal-in-soil into practice as a CO2 emissions offset and carbon sequestration strategy, the total of our effort has to be ENORMOUS!  Humans put 6 billion tons of new carbon (as CO2 and CH4) into the atmosphere every year.  That amount is growing.  Nitrous oxide-N2O (another highly potent GHG) emissions are growing too.  The population is growing and consuming more fossil fuel than ever before, with no stop in sight.  Food production is suckled to fossil fuel based fertilizer production and it is required to grow with the population, lest some will starve.

      In order for TP to work at solving these problems the world needs to cleanly produce ~6 billion tons of charcoal from ~25 billion tons of dry biomass every year.  This cannot be done with trees alone.  We would exhaust all of the standing wood on the planet in 10 or 20 years doing that.  Handling and processing 25-50 billion tons of biomass every year into 6 billion tons of charcoal would be the largest industry the world has ever seen!

      I believe forming Terra Preta soils to improve agricultural productivity on degraded and poor land and to sequester carbon is among the best of approachs to solving this atmospheric carbon concentration, but it is just simply a very huge undertaking.  Reduction in fossil fuel emissions would help (by reducing the need to produce charcoal for TP carbon sequestration).  When charcoal is made with a yield of ~25% by weight and ~50% by energy content, then there is ~50% of the original chemical energy in the biomass which is released in the process.  We need to find ways to capture and use this energy, as much as possible.  This could reduce fossil energy consumption by 20-25%.

      Fossil fuels will eventually run out, cheap fossil fuel will go first, natural gas first, then petroleum, and lastly coal.  Some arrogant fools believe we will be able to continue to burn fossil coal for 300-1000 years more!  God help us if we do not see that this will choke us all in the heat and starve us or drown us in the inundation by the seas and the loss of most of the living species (and food) on the planet.

      Mitigation work for the Global Climate crisis is only beginning.  All approaches needs to be looked at and undertaken immediately.  Action, action, action, on extremely large scale atmospheric CO2 reduction has to also take place very soon.  Forming Terra Preta soils needs to begin ON MASSE with many other types of CO2 emissions reduction and carbon sequestration strategies.  This needs to be looked at not as a hobby, or research, or studied by a few any longer.  Everyone (all 6 billion of us) needs to sequester 1 ton of charcoal away every year for the rest of our lives.  The 1 ton initiative!

      Regards,

      SKB


        ----- Original Message ----- 
        From: Michael Bailes 
        To: geoff moxham ; Terra Preta 
        Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2008 8:50 PM
        Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] methane, cowfarts and charcoal in the feedlot





        On 03/03/2008, geoff moxham <teraniageoff at gmail.com> wrote: 
          I'd call that a BINGO!

          How many win win win win situatuations did we need as a culture to see
          a good thing when it was under our noses? (or our cow's noses) I think
          it's too late to catch the current collapse slide, that will probably
          take high-intensity feedlots with it, but after the dust settles char
          in feed may be a part of dairying.
          Geoff TDH

         
        Yes 


        How many do we need??? 

        It is depressing me a bit at the moment with people with fly-by-night tree planting schemes and switching off city lights for an hour 
        .What is it about charcoal and basic TP that is hard to understand?



        -- 
        Michael the Archangel

        "You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . . 
        Most people don't know that"
        FROM
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