Terra Preta Data bases, Web Sites, Mail List and Blogs

[Michaelangelica]

Good grief!

Does anyone ever read all this guff?

Join the TP list and you can discuss those things that confuse you.

[email protected]

to me

 

show details

1 Dec (1 day ago)

This is a reminder, sent out once a month, about your

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You can visit the URLs to change your membership status or

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If you have questions, problems, comments, etc, send them to

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[InfiniteNow]

Good grief!

Does anyone ever read all this guff?

 

Yes. ;)

[Michaelangelica]

EcoWorld - The Global Environmental Community - Nature and Technology in Harmony

A number of comments by lou Gold

[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.

:eek: :eek2:

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

 

»

 

* Login or register to post comments

* Read more

* 433 reads

[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]

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]

[email protected]

we have moved to

[email protected]

[Eclipse Now]

Anyone going to the IBI conference this year?

 

The 2008 International Biochar Initiative Conference "Biochar, Sustainability and Security in a Changing Climate" will be held at the Newcastle Civic Center in Newcastle, United Kingdom September 8 – 10.

[Eclipse Now]

Sorry, forgot the link...

The International Biochar Initiative (IBI)

 

Also... the marketing for Biochar could be something like "Biofuels are normally Food V Fuel. Biochar is Food AND Fuel!"

 

I see its most important function not being solving global warming (which is an EXCELLENT side effect) but creating sustainable agriculture in a post-oil world. When oil hits $500 a barrel, how many farmers are still going to have fuel and afford farming? Biochar reduces the energy required for farming by reducing the fertiliser inputs, and creates regional economic security and fuel security at least for the farming communities. It probably won't supply all us SUV driving suburbanites with the fuel we need in a post-oil world... so tough. We'll have to catch the bus, ride a bike, or maybe buy a smaller electric car. But if farming goes down, we're in a world of pain.

[erich]

Dear TP Forum,

 

The Yahoo Biochr list has split to three specialised areas;

 

Disscusion Groups;

 

The group home page location, General Biochar orientation:

biochar : Biochar

 

Biochar POLICY;

biochar-policy : Biochar Policy

 

Biochar Soils;

biochar-soils : Biochar in Soils

 

Biochar Production;

biochar-production : Biochar Production

 

 

Your Chartarian,

Erich

[Michaelangelica]

1.

The Pacific Northwest Biochar Initiative group site.

PNW Biochar | Google Groups

 

2.

[email protected],

Description

 

This is the home for discussion devoted to regulatory, economic and social factors that are integral to biochar production and use. This will be the place to use words such as "carbon offsets", "renewable energy credits", "de-forestation", "indigenous land rights", "sustainability", and "return on investment".

 

This list will encompass all possible geographic areas and political divisions from communities and villages to nation states and international agreements. Finance, development, biodiversity and employment are all issues that may impact or be impacted by biochar production and use. This is the place to discuss those issues. We anticipate this website to be active in developing future certification standards for Biochar.

 

This new revised "Biochar-policy" list will not debate theories about the causes of climate change or global warming, believing that the vast majority coming to this site agree that biochar can remove CO2 from our atmosphere (one of the three main claimed benefits of biochar). This is primary place to discuss the integration of biochar technology with policies to mitigate climate change.

You are encouraged to visit the related Yahoo Groups Biochar (basic information)

,

3. Biochar in Soils,

Description

 

"Biochar-soils". This is the home for discussion devoted to technical issues concerning biochar use in soil. This will be the place to use words such as "productivity improvement", "tonnes per hectare", and "char placement depth (or technology)". This list will also be the pre-dominant location of terms such as "CEC (cation exchange capacity)", "pH", "optimum char size", etc.

 

This list will encompass all possible scales of use in soil (from a single backyard pot up to the largest possible farm or plantation.) The list will encourage discussion of all possible geographic areas - and all possible forms of soils or new green growth - from backyards to algae farms to forests to feed-lots, etc. Discussion of biochar use that can create new forests will be encouraged.

 

One type of "characterization" - that of the physical attributes of the biochar in the soil itself - will be focused in this list. When there is a need to discuss char-in-soil characterization that impacts char production, that is appropriate for the Biochar Production Group. The reverse will also true. Policy and economic issues related solely to biochar use in soils are appropriate here, but in general, we encourage those to be discussed on the Biochar Policy Group.

and

4. Biochar Production.

biochar-production : Biochar Production

Description

 

This is the home for discussion devoted to turning any form of biomass into char for the purpose of making biochar. This is the place to use words like "pyrolysis", "gasification", and "hydrothermal carbonization" ("HTC"). This list will also be the pre-dominant location of terms such as "energy", "biofuels", and "hybrid systems".

 

This list encompasses all possible scales of production (from those that exist today for industrial-scale biofuel production involving biomass transport over tens of kilometers, to the smallest possible char-making cooking and heating stoves). Discussion of char-making that is polluting (venting) will generally be discouraged, if flaring is at all possible. The list encourages discussion about all possible geographic areas - and all possible biomass feedstocks, except those that would result in the destruction of primary forests.

 

One type of "characterization" - that of the physical attributes of the char itself - will be focused in this list. We encourage the topic of characterization of biochar in soils in the Biochar in Soils Group. Policy and economic issues related solely to char production are appropriate here, but in general, we encourage those topics in Biochar Policy Group.

 

5.As well as our Biochar Web site: BioEnergy Lists: BioChar (or Terra Preta) | Information on the intentional use of BioChar (charcoal from biomass) to improve soils.

 

6.Biochar-Remediation

http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/Biochar-Remediation/

Description

"Biochar-Remediation". This is the home for discussion devoted to technical issues concerning biochar use as a soil and environmental remediation technology.

This will be the place where words such as "runoff", "leaching", "decontamination" and "biostimulation" will be used.

This list will also be the pre-dominant location of terms such as "phytoremediation", "pollutants", "contamination", "surface water", "groundwater" and "aqifers" etc.

 

This list will encompass all possible scales of use in soil or on its own as a remediation agent or technology. The list will encourage discussion of all possible geographic areas - and all possible forms of remediation techologies that might use or benefit from biochar. Discussion of biochar for use in phytoremediation/bioremediation will be encouraged.

 

The type of "characterization" (the physical attributes of the biochar) that will be focused on in this list will be those that benefit the field of remediation. When there is a need to discuss char-in-remediation project characterization that impacts char production, that is appropriate for the Biochar-Production Group. The reverse will also true. Policy and economic issues related solely to biochar use as a remediation technology are appropriate here.

 

Brother Erich strikes agin

http://gardentenders.com/topics/971