Terra Preta: "Black Earth"

[Oilgood]

Has anyone here ever heard of "Terra Preta" ("black earth")? Apparently it is a type of soil in the Amazon that actually grows into the ground, and is prized by farmers in south america for its richness and fertility. It it supposed to be created when Indians in the Amazons burn wood waste on the ground until it turns to charcoal, and on that area of the ground vegetation grows much more prolifically due to the Terra Preta. Does anyone know any more details about this Terra Preta? Is there any way it can be grown in temperate and subtropical climates and non-rainforest soils?

[bart]

There's an article about it in the Chronicle of Higher Education. For an onlnie version, see: link Here are the first few paragraphs:

Chronicle of Higher Education, December 3, 2004
Earth Movers Archaeologists say Brazil's rain forest, once thought to be inhospitable to humans, fostered huge ancient civilizations. The proof is in the dirt. By MARION LLOYD:
Iranduba, Brazil--High along bluffs overlooking the confluence of the mighty Negro and Solimões Rivers here, supersize eggplants, papayas, and cassava spring from the ground.

Their exuberance defies a long-held belief about the Amazon. For much of the last half century, archaeologists viewed the South American rain forest as a "counterfeit paradise," a region whose inhospitable environment precluded the development of complex societies. But new research suggests that prehistoric man found ways to overcome the jungle's natural limitations -- and to thrive in this environment in large numbers.

The secret, says James B. Petersen, an archaeologist at the University of Vermont who has spent the past decade working in the Brazilian Amazon, is found in the ground beneath his feet. It is a highly fertile soil called terra preta do indio, which is Portuguese for "Indian black earth." By some estimates, this specially modified soil covers as much as 10 percent of Amazonia, the immense jungle region that straddles the Amazon River. And much of that area is packed with potsherds and other signs of human habitation.

"This was one of the last archaeological frontiers on the planet. It's as if we know nothing about it," says Mr. Petersen, as he analyzes the discovery of the day, a series of circular carbon deposits that might indicate the outline of a prehistoric house. ....

[Oilgood]

Could Terra Preta be useful in dealing with the decline of Petro-chemical agriculture after Peak Oil? Could it also help in combating soil degredation?

[Devil]

I've been in tropical rain forests in many countries and can assure you that there is no future in trying to exploit them.

Firstly, the average soil depth to base rock is only 10 - 30 cm.

Where the forest has burned due to lightning strikes or man-made activity, a thick layer of charcoal and ash might double the depth. In time, with the rain, this is incorporated in the soil, before much vegetation starts. The natural result is a much more fertile soil, rich in potash, and a "secondary jungle" of thick bushes and undergrowth quickly flourishes or good crops can be grown. However, the richness of this soil is quickly exhausted, aided by erosion, typically in 1 - 2 years, and primary rain forest cannot re-establish itself, except as a slow advance from the edges of the remaining primary forest. I have been told that a 1 km² clearing will take typically 1,000 years to re-establish as primary rain forest and a 10 km² clearing 50,000 years. This is because the rain forest is a unique system. The trees are both evergreen and deciduous, which means there is a constant litter which decomposes in a few days, on the ground, but the nutrients are absorbed again, just as fast. There is no accumulation of humus, as in temperate forests, which is why the soil is so thin. It is also why the trees have wide, spreading roots, often in the form of buttresses, so that they can have the mechanical support on the thin layer.

One thing that has always amazed me in tropical rain forests is how few mushrooms one sees. Yes, on fallen logs, one can see a layer of moss (light is usually availabe where a log has fallen) and some small, spindly mushrooms, but very rarely on the ground. This is because the leaves decompose so rapidly, that the funguses involved never have the time to develop a spore body like we are used to in temperate climates. The layer of rotting leaves do have mycelia growing through them, but the fruiting bodies are so small as to remain invisible, for the most part. Even wood decomposes rapidly, although it may take a few years for a large log to be absorbed back by its brethren.

Until you have seen the dark gloom of a rain forest, it is something unimaginable. I have had to use shutter speeds of 1/10th of a second with an f 1.8 lens at full aperture with a 100 ASA film in the rain forest, where the canopy is in full sunlight. Virtually nothing visible grows there except trees, until you come to where a large tree has fallen or some other clearing.

Leave it alone, please!

[Oilgood]

I'm not saying we cut down the Amazon and cover it in Terra Preta and turn it all into farmland. I'm asking if it is possible to re-create Terra Preta in other soils and climates throughout the world.

[bart]

I'm asking if it is possible to re-create Terra Preta in other soils and climates throughout the world.

Fortunately, there are known ways to create good soil in areas outside the rain forest. For example, compost, cover crops, no-till farming, and going easy on (or eliminating) pesticides. We don't need to wait until the scientists figure out how the Amazonians created Terra Preta. The article I mentioned points out that Terra Preta is still the subject of controversy and some scientists are afraid that talk of Terra Preta may further encourage farming in rainforests with disasterous consequences.
Nonetheless, the prospect of Terra Preta is intriguing -- a way to create soil in the harsh tropical environment described by Devil.

The research has implications not only for history, but also for the future of the Amazon rain forest. If scientists could discover how the Amerindians transformed the soil, farmers could use the technology to maximize smaller plots of land, rather than cutting down ever larger swaths of jungle. The benefits of what Mr. Petersen calls this "gift from the past" are already well known to farmers in the area, who plant their crops wherever they find terra preta. ...

"I know terra preta is very good and that it was made by the Indians," says Edson Azevedo Santos, a 48-year-old farmer drenched in sweat from weeding his zucchini patch. Unlike the acidic soil found in most of the rain forest, which can only sustain crops for a three-year period, terra preta plots can withstand constant farming for decades, if properly managed.

Even more striking, terra preta may have the capacity to regenerate itself, says Mr. Woods, the Southern Illinois geographer. He recently tested that possibility by removing a large section of terra preta on a plot near Santarem. To his amazement, the soil grew back within three years. "I suggested that the soil should be treated as living organism and that microorganisms are the secret," he says, adding that more research is needed to allow scientists to repeat the process. "This is very sophisticated stuff."
"Earth Movers" article

[gg3]

I read the article and it seems to me that part of it has to do with a constant low-level clearing and burning activity: but "burning" more at the level of "smouldering" rather than what we usually think of. This smouldering probably releases a different set of chemicals into the ground than the usual high-temperature burning of "slash and burn" agriculture. I would have to guess that various microorganisms are also partially responsible.

The other thing that struck me was the degree of ideological stuff going on between anthropologists. Everyone's committed to their theories almost to the point of not wanting to listen to facts that don't agree. Out of that emerges something like a middle ground:

a) There were some fairly sophisticated Indian cultures in the area,
b) They weren't particularly large societies,
c) They developed (probably through trial and error, i.e. empirical method) agricultural techniques that enriched the soil,
d) Western science should be looking to figure out how it's done, and if it can be done in other climates and ecosystems, but
e) We still shouldn't take that as license to pave over the Amazon with industrial agriculture,
f) Instead, we should utilize those techniques in already-developed areas.

[The_Virginian]

slash and burn on a small scale as practiced by indiginous tribes is fine...only when thousands of acres are burn at once does the real destruction begin.

Intresting @ the micro-organisims....something that feeds on wood ash? a fungus that would cause blight or rot? Can't wait untill those answers come out... ...definitly something us western ("northern") farmers must look into, but oh so carefully.

[funzone36]

Biochar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

It's produced from biomass pyrolysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis

Basically, it's heating up the organic materials in the absence of oxygen until it becomes biochar. Biochar is supposed to be a carbon storage solution but in order to store enough carbon, tons and tons of biochar has to be produced. Do we have the necessary energy to produce enough biochar? I believe yes, we have enough energy because of coal supplies. Because biochar stores CO2, that means using coal to produce biochar has no net CO2 emission. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[steam_cannon]

Biochar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar

It's produced from biomass pyrolysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis

Basically, it's heating up the organic materials in the absence of
oxygen until it becomes biochar. Biochar is supposed to be a carbon
storage solution but in order to store enough carbon, tons and tons
of biochar has to be produced. Do we have the necessary energy to
produce enough biochar? I believe yes, we have enough energy
because of coal supplies. Because biochar stores CO2, that
means using coal to produce biochar has no net CO2
emission. Correct me if I'm wrong.

You don't use coal to produce biochar! WTF!

You use plant stalks or wood! I included a link below about making
charcoal, in making charcoal you use the gases driven off by heating
as fuel for the conversion. So very little fuel is needed and definitely not coal.



Energy Accounting





Read these as it seems you don't know much about how charcoal is made:
(Hint, it's not made from coal!)

Making charcoal
http://tinyurl.com/rlpi

Making charcloth
http://tinyurl.com/2brevx



More info about Agrichar/Biochar

Scientists to call for negative emissions fuels & energy
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic34447.html

An answer to rocketing fertilizer prices
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic38114.html

Terra Preta - Biochar
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/ta ... /39/0/feed

[eclipse]

Hi Steam cannon... with a name like that, can I assume you're into Steampunk?

Nice images.

The one point I think Funzone propelled me into thinking about is maximising the synfuel or syngas returns on the biochar process.

So... my understanding of Biochar for dummies (I'm not very technical... have a humanities background) is that:-

1. We take agricultural waste or wood chips or whatever biomass you have handy.

2. We "COOK" it up to make either synfuel (diesel?) or syngas.

3. We then have wonderful biochar left over which conditions the soil and stores that carbon in the soil, permanently for thousands of years.

4. EVEN MORE CARBON joins the soil as the soil comes back to life with soil micro-biology thriving on this miraculous stuff. (I read once that this might be up to 5 TIMES the weight of the biochar itself... but have not been able to source that claim in years.)

5. The MASSIVELY improved soil then requires far less NPK. Less Nitrogen from Haber-Bosch because the microbes in the soil suck N out of the air, less PK because there's less wash-off and it's "glued into" the soil more effectively.
(To be fair to Funzone, he found a nice summary quote on that from Discover magazine.) It also saves energy on pumping water because biochar makes the soil less water efficient, and results in multiple positive nutrient and energy feedbacks.

6. Because it costs far less energy to now grow our food, the whole agricultural system is improved and geared for a post-peak world.

Check out how much Australian of the Year and global warming author Tim Flannery loves biochar! See this episode of ABC's Catalyst show for more. This quote in particular is very encouraging.

Narration: Adding up to 10 tonnes of agrichar per hectare reduces the amount of carbon dioxide given off while tripling the weight of the crop or its biomass.

As well as that they measure another gas that’s important for global warming, nitrous oxide.

Dr Lukas van Zwieten: Certainly nitrous oxide is a very serious greenhouse gas, it’s 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One of the things that really was quite surprising – we didn’t expect it – was that the emissions of nitrous oxide from soil were significantly reduced.

So here's my take on making it more efficient, which Funzone accidentally helped me consider with his funny coal comment above.

Narration: The kiln is heated to 550 degrees by burning the syngas.

Adriana Downie: It’s actually our own energy we’re producing in the plant that we’re firing it on.

Narration: The win-win is that half of the carbon in the biomass makes the syngas fuel, while the other half stays in the char.

The amount of agrichar trickling out the end of this pilot plant won’t change the world, but making it on an industrial scale certainly could.

Adriana Downie: What we put in provides enough energy to run the process, as well as then export energy for other people to use for their processes.

What if we ran the cooker on solar power? Concentrated solar power gets up to thousands of degrees, this baby only needs 550. What if a future "powerdown" village of some sort fed their agriwaste into a local Biochar "cooker" like this, and instead of burning a lot of the syngas/fuel running the process the next day, we geared the Pyrolysis plant for Synfuel and then used ALL the Biochar synfuel for running agriculture. Wouldn't this then give that village a lot more liquid fuel to at least run their agriculture?

[Gandalf_the_White]

If you look really hard in the literature you will suddenly change your focus and see the stereographic image of a middle finger pointing back at you. That's because they are not going to tell you what the EROEI life-cycle numbers are on any of this stuff. Essentially either they are stupid or they think we are stupid.

A possible sustainable life-cycle would be wind to hydrogen, but how many really well done studies have you seen on it that proceeded into a prototype phase.

The issue here friends is one of control. 'They' are in control and we are not. Lesson number one you can't have any pudding unless you eat your meat, humble pie comes before dessert.

When you guys finally figure out how it works maybe we can talk about some non-violent ways of starting to turn things around.

[eclipse]

You forgot to say </rant>

[Gandalf_the_White]

You forgot to say </rant>

<rant></rant>

<truth>we spend most of our time here ranting and/or hiding from our moral obligation to tell somebody about what is coming</truth>

[eclipse]

Speak for yourself, I briefed Maxine McKew on peak oil last year, just 3 days before Dr Roger Bezdek's "Smart Conference" 2007 speech. So she knew a little enough to introduce Dr Roger Bezdek. Then she defeated John Howard at the Federal Election.

There's only 1 or 2 threads I'm consistently ranting in on Sydney Peak Oil... the group I helped found so we could BRIEF POLITICIANS and connect campaigners... but due to burnout, I've resigned as "leader" there. It's now just another peaknik chat group... they don't meet any more. The leaders did some great stuff for a group of newbie volunteers, including getting permission from the EOS team to cut their DVD into 30 minutes and distribute it to every politician in the NSW Parliament (Thanks again EOS TEAM! )

But we've all got various personal commitments, are not selling any books or making any money out of this... and Australia has had a number of government peak oil reports. Mission accomplished as far as government awareness... but hardly begun as far as the general public. We'll, too bad. They'll just have to endure a tougher Great Depression for every year they put off making the requisite changes.

So... you might have time to rant and do NOTHING... I've already done SOMETHING and am pretty much "retired" from it as other personal challenges have come up. Good luck with the ranting!

[steam_cannon]

What if we ran the cooker on solar power? Concentrated solar power
gets up to thousands of degrees, this baby only needs 550. What if a
future "powerdown" village of some sort fed their agriwaste into a
local Biochar "cooker" like this, and instead of burning a lot of the
syngas/fuel running the process the next day, we geared the Pyrolysis
plant for Synfuel and then used ALL the Biochar synfuel for running
agriculture. Wouldn't this then give that village a lot more liquid fuel to
at least run their agriculture?

Unless you convert the synthesis gas to methanol (pain in the ass),
then you have a gas fuel, not a liquid fuel. There will be some wood
alcohol condensate, but mostly you will produce wood gas. Wood
gas contains lots of hydrogen which is a pain to store, hydrogen
loves to leak out and escape. Though gas bags and float tanks
work for the short term. Generators and farm equipment can run on
filtered wood gas, but usually it is generated at the time it is
needed and not stored. Wood gas is also useful for heating and cooking.

But most gasifiers that fuel farm equipment run best on charcoal, so
producing "biochar and wood gas" at the same time would present
a number of challenges.

Regarding solar, in my experience it's not that hard to make
reflectors capable of getting things into the 1000 degree range. But
making a chamber where this magic happens, capturing the gas
and coming up with a good use for it, that's where things get complex.

A little about woodgas and some links

Woodgas

Wood gas is very fairly easy to produce as demonstrated with this paint can.


http://www.windmeadow.com/node/46


http://woodgas.com/
http://woodgas.com/history.htm

Woodgas Camping Stove
http://woodgas-stove.com/blog/?p=8

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

Bagged Methane
Methane can be produced in a home digester and bagged for use or
pumped into a tank and used much like propane.

http://www.ruralcostarica.com/biogas.html
http://www.diaphragmhandpump.com/bio_ga ... _pump.html

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



Cooking in the city
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic37230.html

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

People are working on systems producing both "biochar and energy"

Traditional charcoal making in Lempira, Honduras, has changed little
over the years. A modern pyrolysis plant has the potential to
produce energy as well as biochar more cleanly.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ ... ochar.html

Though I may have made things sound difficult, as you can
see from these pictures none of these things are impossibly hard
and many of these ideas could certainly be combined. So a solar to
wood gas system is not that bad of an idea.

[steam_cannon]

Hi Steam cannon... with a name like that, can I assume you're into Steampunk?

A reasonable assumption and based on your smile, here are a few
links you might enjoy...

A SteamPunk’s Guide to the Apocalypse
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic33635.html

Archimedes Steam Cannon
http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiment ... annon.html

The worlds simplest steam powered boat
http://scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/ther ... .html#boat

[Gandalf_the_White]

That would work, and possibly on medium scales even. As a personal system you probably could get something that works.

giant lens to wood pile to charcoal to liquid condensate to moped or something like that.

I have always been fascinated by the story of Archimedes using giant mirrors to light the roman ships on fire as they laid siege to Syracuse.

All fun and games aside. How could we discourage anyone from putting together a sustainable life cycle? The difficulty always arises in the scaling. Nothing will ever replace the ease of use and high energy density of oil, and if you read Matt Simmon's book Twilight in the Desert you see that even oil is not really that easy, but they did it.

I'm waiting for the sequel to come out in about 2030 'Toilet in the Desert: How the world went to hell in a hand basket while Americans partied like it was 1492.'

[Gandalf_the_White]

Speak for yourself, I briefed Maxine McKew on peak oil last year, just 3 days before Dr Roger Bezdek's "Smart Conference" 2007 speech. So she knew a little enough to introduce Dr Roger Bezdek. Then she defeated John Howard at the Federal Election.

There's only 1 or 2 threads I'm consistently ranting in on Sydney Peak Oil... the group I helped found so we could BRIEF POLITICIANS and connect campaigners... but due to burnout, I've resigned as "leader" there. It's now just another peaknik chat group... they don't meet any more. The leaders did some great stuff for a group of newbie volunteers, including getting permission from the EOS team to cut their DVD into 30 minutes and distribute it to every politician in the NSW Parliament (Thanks again EOS TEAM! )

But we've all got various personal commitments, are not selling any books or making any money out of this... and Australia has had a number of government peak oil reports. Mission accomplished as far as government awareness... but hardly begun as far as the general public. We'll, too bad. They'll just have to endure a tougher Great Depression for every year they put off making the requisite changes.

So... you might have time to rant and do NOTHING... I've already done SOMETHING and am pretty much "retired" from it as other personal challenges have come up. Good luck with the ranting!

No need to be sensitive. I am also doing my part. I was responding in the same way you did, I thought you were joking. I'm glad you have put in your requisite Peak Oil Corps service and are now moving on to more important issues. [Now please try to take that in the spirit it was intended]

[eclipse]

OK, we're good then.

I think I saw that Archimedes thing on an "Atlantis" movie (from the Golden years of science fiction), but correct me if I'm wrong... this one happened to "store" sunlight as well? It worked when the sky was blotted out by the volcanic eruption that eventually killed Atlantis. Now if we could only figure out how they pulled off THAT TRICK, we'd be right!javascript:emoticon(':P')