Climate Science Links
U.S. Government
International
Academic, Non-Governmental
Land Use Offers Valuable Solutions for Protecting the Climate
Trees? Made of carbon. Good soil holds a lot of carbon. Plants draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
It’s well-known that the trick to reducing net carbon emissions relies on not emitting so much of the stuff and finding a way to get it back where it belongs.
That’s where the land comes in. Thirty percent of greenhouse gases come from “the land-use sector.” The land holds thrice the amount of carbon polluting the atmosphere. So let’s talk farming. Let’s talk trees. And let’s talk land degradation.
That’s the argumentative thread running through the Worldwatch Institute’s newest report, Mitigating Climate Change through Food and Land Use, by Sara J. Scherr and Sajal Sthapit.
The first step is simply realizing the magnitude of agricultural or forestry-based contribution to emissions and, potentially, to absorption. Amidst the talk of carbon-scrubbers, Gehry-esque solar plants plunked down in deserts, tidal turbines, hybrid cars, and maglev trains, land is often sidetracked.
Oddly. For example, “Indonesia emits 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, or about half the yearly emissions of the United States,” through forest fires, illegal logging, and deforestation for the creation of palm-oil plantations.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases also seep into the atmosphere as the secondary effects of land-use changes. Exposed soil erodes more easily, and oxidizes more readily, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, while nitrogen fertilizers cause soil to emit nitrous oxide, an enormously potent greenhouse gas. The gist is that land-use change is a big problem—close to a third of the problem.
But land use can also be a big solution, even though its extent is often vastly under-appreciated.
One strategy involves pushing the carbon back where it belongs, by enriching soil carbon. As the report’s authors write,
“Soil is the third largest carbon pool on Earth’s surface. New mapping tools, such as the 2008 Global Carbon Gap Map produced by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, can identify areas where soil carbon storage is greatest, as well as areas with the physical potential for billions of tons of additional carbon to be stored in degraded soils.”
Such techniques consist of composting, green manure—growing crops during fallow periods and plowing them back into the land, thereby adding their carbon to the soil—using nitrogen-fixing cover crops, intercropping, and using livestock manure; the mainstays of organic farming. The authors cite a Rodale Institute study finding that such methods could sequester 4 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions if the 65 million hectares in the United States planted with corn and soybeans were converted to organic methods.
They also mention the promising prospects of no-till farming and biochar—no cure-all but a potentially amazing technology worth serious investigation.
Another strategy is transitioning to perennial agriculture, growing crops that do not need to be replanted every year. Such crops grow deep root systems, keeping “living biomass” in the soil, and doing away with annual tilling that exposes soil carbon to oxidization and atmospheric diffusion. Already, numerous alternatives exist for many of the most commonly-grown cereal crops, some of them beginning to approach the productiveness of annual varieties.
Agro-forestry operates on the same principle, as with the “Billion Trees Campaign,” launched in 2006:
“Within a year and a half, the program had shattered initial expectations and mobilized the planting of 2 billion trees in more than 150 countries. Half the plantings occurred in Africa, with 700 million in Ethiopia alone.”
- 1
- 2
- 3
- next page »
|
© InsideClimate News |
Biochar
Welcome friends
I have good news for you; I found the best book about biochar
http://biochar-books.com/
It is a truly biochar Bible.
I believe this is the most beautiful holiday gift for your loved ones.
A real deal at a great price
Biochar Soil Technology.....Husbandry of whole new orders of lif
Biochar Soil Technology.....Husbandry of whole new orders of life
Biotic Carbon, the carbon transformed by life, should never be combusted, oxidized and destroyed. It deserves more respect, reverence even, and understanding to use it back to the soil where 2/3 of excess atmospheric carbon originally came from.
We all know we are carbon-centered life, we seldom think about the complex web of recycled bio-carbon which is the true center of life. A cradle to cradle, mutually co-evolved biosphere reaching into every crack and crevice on Earth.
It's hard for most to revere microbes and fungus, but from our toes to our gums (onward), their balanced ecology is our health. The greater earth and soils are just as dependent, at much longer time scales. Our farming for over 10,000 years has been responsible for 2/3rds of our excess greenhouse gases. This soil carbon, converted to carbon dioxide, Methane & Nitrous oxide began a slow stable warming that now accelerates with burning of fossil fuel.
Wise Land management; Organic farming and afforestation can build back our soil carbon,
Biochar allows the soil food web to build much more recalcitrant organic carbon, ( living biomass & Glomalins) in addition to the carbon in the biochar.
Biochar, the modern version of an ancient Amazonian agricultural practice called Terra Preta (black earth, TP), is gaining widespread credibility as a way to address world hunger, climate change, rural poverty, deforestation, and energy shortages… SIMULTANEOUSLY!
Modern Pyrolysis of biomass is a process for Carbon Negative Bio fuels, massive Carbon sequestration,10X Lower Methane & N2O soil emissions, and 3X Fertility Too.
Every 1 ton of Biomass yields 1/3 ton Charcoal for soil Sequestration (= to 1 Ton CO2e) + Bio-Gas & Bio-oil fuels = to 1MWh exported electricity, so is a totally virtuous, carbon negative energy cycle.
Biochar viewed as soil Infrastructure; The old saw;
"Feed the Soil Not the Plants" becomes;
"Feed, Cloth and House the Soil, utilities included !".
Free Carbon Condominiums with carboxyl group fats in the pantry and hydroxyl alcohol in the mini bar.
Build it and the Wee-Beasties will come.
As one microbiologist said on the Biochar list; "Microbes like to sit down when they eat".
By setting this table we expand husbandry to whole new orders of life.
This is what I try to get across to Farmers, as to how I feel about the act of returning carbon to the soil. An act of pertinence and thankfulness for the civilization we have created. Farmers are the Soil Sink Bankers, once carbon has a price, they will be laughing all the way to it.
Dr. Scherr's report includes biochar. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6124
I think we will be seeing much greater media attention for land management & biochar as reports like her's come out linking the roll of agriculture and climate.
Unlike CCS which only reduces emissions, biochar systems draw down CO2 every energy cycle, closing a circle back to support the soil food web. The "capture" collectors are up and running, the "storage" sink is in operation under our feet. Pyrolysis conversion plants are the only infrastructure we need to build out.
Another significant aspect of bichar and aerosols are the low cost ($3) Biomass cook stoves that produce char but no respiratory disease. http://terrapretapot.org/ and village level systems http://biocharfund.org/ with the Congo Basin Forest
Fund (CBFF). The Biochar Fund recently won $300K for these systems citing these priorities;
(1) Hunger amongst the world's poorest people, the subsistence farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa,
(2) Deforestation resulting from a reliance on slash-and-burn farming,
(3) Energy poverty and a lack of access to clean, renewable energy, and
(4) Climate change.
This ordering of priorities is a compelling mantra against the Biofuel Watch UK group who have consistently misrepresented Biochar research work.
Major Endorsements:
Senator / Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar has done the most to nurse this biofuels system in his Biochar provisions in the 07 & 08 farm bill,
http://www.biochar-international.org/newinformationevents/newlegislation...
NASA's Dr. James Hansen Global warming solutions paper and letter to the G-8 conference, placing Biochar / Land management the central technology for carbon negative energy systems.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf
Dr. James Lovelock (Gaia hypothesis) says Biochar is "The only hope for mankind"
Charles Mann ("1491") in the Sept. National Geographic has a wonderful soils article which places Terra Preta / Biochar soils center stage.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/soil/mann-text
Soil Carbon Sequestration Standards Committee. Hosted by Monsanto, this group of diverse interests has been hammering out issues of definition, validation and protocol. The past week, this group have been pressing soil sequestration's roll for climate legislation to congress.
http://www.novecta.com/documents/Carbon-Standard.pdf
Along these lines internationally, the work of the IBI fostering the application by 20 countries for UN recognition of soil carbon as a sink with biochar as a clean development mechanism will open the door for programs across the globe.
http://www.biochar-international.org/biocharpolicy.html.
Reports:
This new Congressional Research Service report (by analyst Kelsi Bracmort) is the best short summary I have seen so far - both technical and policy oriented.
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R40186_20090203.pdf .
This is the single most comprehensive report to date, covering more of the Asian and Australian work;
http://www.csiro.au/files/files/poei.pdf
Biochar data base;
TP-REPP
http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org/?q=node
Given the current "Crisis" atmosphere concerning energy, soil sustainability, food vs. Biofuels, and Climate Change what other subject addresses them all?
This is a Nano technology for the soil that represents the most comprehensive, low cost, and productive approach to long term stewardship and sustainability.
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.
Cheers,
Erich
Erich J. Knight
Eco Technologies Group Technical Adviser
University of California Riverside advisory board member
Shenandoah Gardens (Owner)
1047 Dave Barry Rd.
McGaheysville, VA. 22840
540 289 9750
Co-Administrator, Biochar Data base & Discussion list TP-REPP
I will be speaking at the first North American Biochar Conference, at CU in Boulder , about my efforts to network the many disciplines and organizations researching and implementing biochar systems.
Keynote speaker Secretary Tom Vilsack & Dr. Susan Solomon (NOAA's head atmospheric scientist) at.
http://www.regonline.com/builder/site/Default.aspx?eventid=684390
My attendance is thanks to the folks at EcoTechnologies Group .
( http://www.ecotechnologies.com/index.html , they have also fully funded my field trials with the Rodale Institute & JMU)
There is real magic coming out of the Asian Biochar conference.
15 ear per stalk corn with 250% yield increase,
Sacred Trees and chickens raised from near death
Multiple confirmations of 80% - 90% reduction of soil GHG emissions
The abstracts of the conference are at
http://www.anzbiochar.org/2009presentations.html
Capitalism vs Environmentalism
Rampant unregulated vulture capitalism in "Gold Rush" style has devastated this earth! The culprit: ROI! When you have a fistful of the other guy's money, and are promised a commission for a ROI you have only one obligation - to get a ROI! Suddenly, the noise about environment, notions of self preservation, the plight of you children, religious ideals, social obligations, familial ties, everything, go out the window, as you switch over from decent human being, to a commissioned servant of the mindless, heartless corporation, who answers only to the shareholders meeting of faceless proxy votes, impersonally demanding one thing and only one thing alone, ROI. Legally defensible? Killing others with pollution - as long as the clean-up fines do not sufficiently lower ROI; building death-trap cars, as long as ensuing lawsuits don't substantially affect ROI; pissing tonnes of mercury into the Great Lakes, as long as fines don't change the ROI; pig farming and pumping the offal and sewage into drinking water of others, as long as "others" can't afford enough lawyers to make a dent in ROI; selling tainted peanut butter to your fellow Americans, as long as only a few pay-offs get sick or die, and it doesn't change the ROI; This is the American Way! It has to be changed! In the courts! By the lawmakers! Who are bought and sold daily like fish in the market-place in America ! Good luck and Fat chance! It is America's destiny to pave over its best farmland, fill its best lakes and rivers with sewage, destroy its ocean shoreline with sewage, eat its biggest cities from the center out and leave a smoldering wreck of the once greatest ecosystem the world has ever known, then to reach out and turn the Amazon and other areas of great riches into the same, and all for the same reason - ROI. Change the basic laws of incorporation and change the world - add in some humanitarian responsibilities and the next day, enforce them, and watch the whole world dramatically change! Obama, you are a lawmaker, and the ball is in your park! Change, dammit Change!
Post new comment