People are starting to be come aware of the full implications of Terra preta:-
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004815.html Quote:
Claims for biochar's capacity to capture carbon sound almost audacious. Johannes Lehmann, soil scientist and author of Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties, Management, believes that a strategy combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon per year-an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions!
Indeed, there is profit to be made in this black earth, for if green is the new black, then black could be the new green.
Biofuels are touted as 'carbon neutral', but biofuels and biochar together promise to be 'carbon negative'. Danny Day, the founder of a company called Eprida is already putting these concepts into motion with systems that turn farm waste into hydrogen, biofuel, and biochar.
The Eprida technology uses agricultural waste biomass to produce hydrogen-rich bio-fuels and a new restorative high-carbon fertilizer (ECOSS) ...In tropical or depleted soils ECOSS fertilizer sustainably improves soil fertility, water holding and plant yield far beyond what is possible with nitrogen fertilizers alone.
The hydrogen produced from biomass can be used to make ethanol, or a Fischer-Troupsch gas-to-liquids diesel (BTL diesel), as well as the ammonia used to enrich the carbon to make ECOSS fertilizer.
We don't maximize for hydrogen; we don't maximize for biodisel; we don't maximize for char...By being a little bit inefficient in each, we approximate nature and get a completely efficient cycle.
Terra preta's full beauty appears in this closed loop.
Unlike traditional sequestration rates that follow diminishing marginal returns-aquifers fill up, forests mature-practices based on terra preta see increasing returns. Terra preta doubles or even triples crop yields.
More growth means more terra preta, begetting a virtuous cycle.
While a global rollout of terra preta is still a ways away, it heralds yet another transformation of waste into resources.
How ironic it is that ancient humans cultivated the very fertility of Earth's most pristine places so seamlessly as to be nearly invisible.
Perhaps then our challenge as planetary gardeners is not to preserve nature in a bubble but to reweave ourselves into it-to invert our footprints into handprints.
|
The whole thing is incredibly ironic and beautiful.
How important is preserving ALL our history of ALL mankind!
Next we need to start preserving the herbal knowledge of indigenous peoples before the verbal tradition dies out. (It won't take long to disappear 1-2 generations)
I wonder if gardeners took it up wholeheartedly that more than "offset 9.5 billion tons of carbon" could be sequestered? Anyone want to do the math?
Re: Terra Preta 
Re: Terra Preta 
Nemo me impune lacesset. ~Unattested 
