[Terrapreta] Scientific American Story on Charcoal Decomposition

[Edward Someus]

The ecologists discovered this by leaving hundreds of bags containing either
pure charcoal, or the natural leaf litter of the forest floor, or a mix of
charcoal and leaf litter at three sites in Sweden for a decade. They report
that when they retrieved the bags in 2006, the contents of the bags with the
mixture—the most like natural conditions after a forest fire—had shrunk by
nearly 25 percent and lost a significant portion of their carbon within the
first two years of the 10 year period.
 
 
Duane, 
 
Thanx for this interesting article. The paper concluded that a 10-year
experiment shows that trees turned to charcoal may release more carbon than
previously thought and Charcoal in Burned Forests No Way to Store Carbon,
therefore (according to Wardle conclusion and opinion) such charcoal may not
keep as much carbon in the soil as previously believed.
 
I suggest  David Wardle is misunderstanding two very different natural
phenomena: 
 
CHAR IN OPEN AIR IS RAPID OXIDIZING: of course pure char and especially with
blend natural leaf litter ON THE FOREST FLOOR is oxidizing. As it was low
quality char it took as long as 2 years. Some of my thermal activated chars
(even small samples in few kg batches), after cooling may self igniting
again on open air within few hours or days, not years. 
CHAR IN SOIL IS VERY SLOW OXIDIZING, 100s or 1000s of years needed, all
depending on climate and soil conditions. Despite aerobic soil condition
from microbes point of view, for the char material this condition is still
reductive. This is why it sustaining for long time in soil. 
YES, forest fire chars may not keep char residuals on the forest floor for
long time, BUT TP is aboput char in soil, which is very much different. 
 
 
 
Sincerely yours: Edward Someus (environmental engineer)
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-------Original Message-------
 
From: Duane Pendergast
Date: 2008.05.02. 15:42:00
To: 'terra preta'
Subject: [Terrapreta] Scientific American Story on Charcoal Decomposition
 
Google found this shallow story for me. I hope this is not a redundant
posting. 
 
http://www.sciam.com/article
cfm?id=charcoal-in-burned-forests-no-way-to-store-carbon
 
Duane
 
 
 
 
 
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