[Michaelangelica]

Terra Preta - Roof top Experiments
Terra Preta - Roof top Experiments

PGR News from the Pacific

Thursday, September 27, 2007
Posted 6:09 PM by Tevita
Ancient knowledge may slow Global Warming

From : Center for World Indigenous Studies

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the modern era may be recognized when it becomes commonly known that ancient knowledge possessed by Fourth World nations can solve modern problems like global warming.
As scientists are beginning to realize, forest practices and jungle management developed more than 2000 years ago in the jungles of Brazil and the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Atlantic Northeast of the United States.
Complex Fourth World societies in the Rio Negro (upstream of the Amazon) employed a technique now popularly labeled “slash and char” to manage and grow the jungle in a fashion that balanced carbon releases with carbon sequestration.
The terra preta–rich dark soils created by the Manacapuru about A.D. 400 and continued in use by the Paredão from A.D. 700 is made to include charcoal. Charcoal is made from slow. smoldering burns of wood instead of rapid burning.
Folding charcoal into otherwise depleted jungle soil adds a binder that allows the soil to retain potassium and phosphorous as well as other minerals and nutrients.
At least half of the carbon produced from burning a forest using the charcoal method goes into the soil–a form of carbon sequestration.
. . .
Some leaders in the Fourth World now call this process Holistic Environmental Management. As a body of knowledge, Holistic Environmental Management is an accurate description for the process of creating terra preta and balancing environmental pressures to growing a jungle and a garden.

Don't forget to check into the Permaculture Forums from time to time
EG
View topic - charcoal agriculture - Biochar - Amazonian Dark Earth - Permaculture discussion forum

[Michaelangelica]

Terra Carbona
International Center for Biochar Research and Experiments

* Home
* Charcoalab
* CharDB
* Field Trials Portal
* Links
* Forum
* Contact

Our projects

* Charcoalab
o Educational project which aims at distributing Charcoalab Kits to schools from all over the world. These kits contain documentation to help the children better understand the climate change issues, and the material (pots, charcoal...) necessary to perform small pots trials showing the benefits of biochar soil amendment on the growth of plants.
o Current status: Initial pilot phase (Sept. 2007 - Jan. 2008) finished.
* CharDB
o Online database providing a Biochar standard, i.e. a unified format to specify protocols for biochar field trials. These trials can then be registered and managed using online forms which simplify the interaction with the database.
o Current status: In development: last release CharDB 1.0 in Jan. 2008.
* Field Trials Portal

o Resources and practical advices for performing biochar field trials. Main features are a gallery showing the past and present biochar experiments performed all over the world and a tutorial explaining how to concretely start such trials.
o Current status: In development: last update in Feb. 2008.

http://terracarbona.com

[Michaelangelica]

Biochar Production Wiki
Submitted by Tom Miles on Thu, 2007-08-16 22:34.

* Biochar
* Braun
* Carbonization
* Wiki

Biochar Production Wiki
Christelle H Braun, August 16, 2007

Hello everybody,

Thanks a lot for all your links and infos. I have just started a small Wiki page which intends to list and compare the different companies on the "carbonization market". Hopefully it can help to get a general idea. However, I hadn't time to do much so far, so don't hesitate to contribute !
Here is it:
Biochar production - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sincerely yours,
Christelle

»

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[Essay]

Hey, Thanks for doing this work.

Lots of reading & learning to catch up on.
It's great that there is a whole sub-forum for this.

Home-made pyrolysis kits! Just what I've been thinking about for months now.

Don't know of any ways to measure the sequestered CO2, do you?
I guess that's the main stumbling block to advancing this wonderful solution.

[Michaelangelica]

I can't remember if this has been posted.
loosing track a bit now
ALKALINE SOILS - TERRA PRETA

Home-made pyrolysis kits! Just what I've been thinking about for months now.

Don't know of any ways to measure the sequestered CO2, do you?

essay there are two threads on this; the "sums' thread might help with measurement. The "pyrolysis" thread may help a little with small pyrolysis plants.
I think there is one being tested in both the Philippines and Canada.
Depends on what you mean by "small".
m

[Michaelangelica]

Good introductory article. A few good research articles.
The Terra Preta phenomenon

[Michaelangelica]

Interesting blog
HPANWO: Terra Preta

Anyone who looks behind the miasma of official history will hear a lot about the lost wisdom of the ancients; I’ve written about the subject myself. Words like “Eldorado”, “crystal skulls”, “Atlantis” “megalithic yard” and “riddle of the Sphinx” are virtually mainstream today. But the most incredible feat of technology and wisdom of the Ancients ever discovered may be something very mundane at first glace and you’ve probably never heard its name before: Terra Preta, “dark soil” in Portuguese, doesn’t sound as exciting as many of the other romantic legends associated with prehistoric civilizations, but it is actually one of the most incredible and exciting pieces of ancient wisdom ever recovered. It could save literally billions of lives and heal the global environmental disaster we're trapped in.
. . .
. . .

Terra Preta is one of the most remarkable substances ever discovered.
It is a soil found in the Amazon jungle with amazing properties. It is extremely fertile and it grows and reproduces like a living organism.
. . .
The moral of the story is never to underestimate people because they appear to be “primitive savages” in Western eyes.
The Amazon Indians may not have had DVD players, mobile phones and laptops, but they achieved feats that we cannot.
What’s more they clearly strove hard and dedicatedly cogitated to find a way of life that respected and cooperated with nature, something that most humans are not even attempting to do!

[Philip Small]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

Good introductory article. A few good research articles.
The Terra Preta phenomenon

PDF of the above

[erich]

This article highlights Dr. Danny Day's CO2 scrubbing from Coal power plants to make Ammonium Bicarbonate-Char fertilizer.

Last year this was discused on the TP-list, My understanding is even if the Coal combusters could remove the volital Mercury fraction , that this CO2 to fertilizer technology couldn't scale up enough to make a significant reduction of Coal 's emissions.


Erich

[Michaelangelica]

terrapreta@bioenergylists.org
we have moved to
biochar@yahoogroups.com