[Terrapreta] Biochar and the nitrogen cycle

[Ron Larson]

Terra preta list members:

        1.   Today Lorenzo (Biopact) had a followup to his announcement from yesterday in which he quoted a U. Virginia press release, saying:   While human-caused global climate change has long been a concern for environmental scientists and is a well-known public policy issue, the problem of excessive reactive nitrogen in the environment is little-known beyond a growing circle of environmental scientists who study how the element cycles through the environment and negatively alters local and global ecosystems and potentially harms human health.
Two new papers by leading environmental scientists bring the problem to the forefront in the May 16 issue of the journal Science. The researchers discuss how food and energy production are causing reactive nitrogen to accumulate in soil, water, the atmosphere and coastal oceanic waters, contributing to the greenhouse effect, smog, haze, acid rain, coastal "dead zones" and stratospheric ozone depletion."

2.   My knowledge on the relationship between nitrogen and biochar mostly comes from a visit to one nitrogen researcher in Australia last year (Dr. Lukas van Zweiten at IAI conference) who claims 80% reduction in nitrous oxide release in field trials with biochar (see towards end of http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2007/aug/tech/rr_biochar.html?sa_campaign=rss/cen_mag/estnews/2007-08-01/rr_biochar ).  Note that most nitrous oxide comes from agriculture, so 80% is potentially a big deal - and N2O is much worse than CO2 for climate impacts.

3.  I have read the two articles in Science.  They are good, and they talk about solutions to this serious problem.  But biochar/terra preta is not mentioned among the solutions.   Same for following up with another recent reference in Nature.

4. I found that there is a group called INI  ( http://www.initrogen.org/ ), with a focus on exactly our list interests - soils, food, and global warming.  The reactive nitrogen problem is almost the same as CO2 - too much of a good thing.

5.  I visited the site of the US branch of IBI ( http://ibl.colorado.edu/NANC.html ) - which (surprisingly) is pretty close to me.  I shall report as I learn more.  No chance yet to interact.

6.  This last site had two good UN reports that seem to cover the same subject matter as the two articles (and also do not mention biochar, as near as I can tell).  Try http://ibl.colorado.edu/PolicyBrief_Final.pdf  (from UNESCO) and http://ibl.colorado.edu/Reactive_Nitrogen_sml.pdf (UNEP and Woods Hole).

7.  My conclusion is that understanding the Nitrogen cycle and biochar's possible impact is an important area for this list.  These sites demonstrate very similar interests to this list.  Possibly this a place where we (biochar) can help, especially as we seem to not be known.  The reason it is important to our list is possible (likely?)future additional money in the hands of biochar producers and users.

Ron


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