[Terrapreta] Biochar attacked in Gristmill: please leave your comments

[Robert Klein]

What this result is saying rather loudly is that charcoal accelerates the microbial breakdown of organic material and the release of their nutrients.  The next question is were do these nutrients end up?  I think that they are largely bound into the carbon providing a long term nutrient sink.  We really need some truly imaginative science that clarifies this once and for all.  You wonder why I saw little future fifteen years ago pursuing the application of carbon to soils.   It needed several lifetimes to get it right and that has since been provided by the folks in the Amazon.

arclein


----- Original Message ----
From: Biopact <biopact at biopact.com>
To: terra pretta group <Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org>
Sent: Monday, May 5, 2008 4:05:50 PM
Subject: [Terrapreta] Biochar attacked in Gristmill: please leave your comments

 
Dear colleagues, 
the very popular blog Gristmill has taken up the 
press release about the research by Dr Wardle. This is what it 
says:
 
=========
Monday bummer blogging
Posted by JMG (Guest Contributor) at 3:16 PM 
on 05 May 2008
Read more about: greenhouse-gas 
emissions | extinction | climate | climate change impacts
Tools: print | email | + digg | + del.icio.us | + reddit | + stumbleupon
Damn, one of the more promising ideas, biochar, seems to be a 
little less promising than hoped:
... a new study ... suggests that these supposed benefits of  biochar may be somewhat overstated. 

... They found that when  charcoal was mixed into humus ... charcoal caused greatly increased losses of  native soil organic matter, and soil carbon ... Much of this lost soil carbon  would be released as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Therefore, while it is true that charcoal represents a long term sink of carbon  because of its persistence, this effect is at least partially offset by the  capacity of charcoal to greatly promote the loss of that carbon already  present in the soil.
 
------------------------------
 
Feel free to replicate the discussion we've had  here over at Gristmill.
 
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/5/2/211036/2352#1
 
The press release describing Dr Wardle's  research is really damaging the Terra Preta idea. 
 
It's unfortunate that Wardle didn't ask the  person who wrote the press release to frame things in a more narrow context,  as his findings definitely have no bearing on biochar as such (remember:  nobody ever suggested using biochar in SOM-rich soils, on the  contrary.)
 
I hope prof Lehmann or Dr Steiner visit Gristmill  too, to leave a note.


      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better friend, newshound, and 
know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.  http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080505/1344585c/attachment.html