[Gasification] Forest Duff & Earthworms - Off Topic ?
David Murphy
djfmurphy at dodo.com.au
Wed Oct 1 00:19:55 CDT 2014
Gentlemen, I've seen these posts about earthworms
and finally feel the need to comment.
I thought the last person to publish material
prejudicial to earthworms was Ewald Wolny
(1846-1901) but he was shown to be wrong by
Charles Darwin. Wolny was man enough to
acknowledge his errors and I have always applauded
him for this.
But then, over 120 years later, the state of
Minnesota takes up the cudgels ! The original
post about the attitude of Minnesota to /Amynthas
agrestis/ simply displayed the fact that because a
person may be well qualified in one discipline, it
doesn't mean he's qualified in another. Here I
refer to the person who drafted the Minnesota
paper on "Crazy worms" and how damaging to soils
they were. What nonsense ! One of the world's
greatest authorities on earthworms (and there are
few of these) is Prof Clive Edwards and last I
heard he was at Ohio State Uni, head of the
Entimology Dept. A phone call from Minnesota
would have saved them from publishing such
rubbish. "Invasive earthworms" indeed ! J.M
Stockdill of the New Zealand Dept. of Primary
Industry demonstrated that by transplanting
(invasive) earthworms into pasture, that
productivity of that pasture was permanently
raised by 25% with no other action taken. Then,
Anand Karve joins in ! I've heard of earthworms
being called Bioreactors, but never biogas
plants. Bioreators was a name conferred on
them by Dr. Uday Bhawalkar of the Bhawalkar
Earthworm Reasearch Institute, Pune, India. Most
of the matter taken in by earthwoms in their
search for food, passes through their gut
unchanged and this is particularly so for metals.
The preferred food for worms (both compost and
earth) is bacteria, with yeasts and asssociated
soil life second. In seeking the bacteria,
worms are forced to take in parent food to which
the bacteria have attached themselves.
J.N.Parle (circa 1939) found that some worms could
absorb metals up to a particular level and then
the accumulation ceased. However, no chemical
or physical reaction takes place in any metals
passing through the worm's gut and gas being
produced by earthworms is unknown. Castings
produced are aerobic on the outside but the inside
anaerobic. The anaerobic portion would indeed
produce some gas but to my knowledge this has not
been measured.
Some products such as antibiotics were once
credited to worms but this was found to be not so,
and it was the bacteria fostered in the gut which
was responsible for the antibiotics. It's an
interesting symbiosis, that while worms create an
environment in their gut in which bacteria thrive,
the host worm also consumes bacteria as food.
This, and a whole lot of other stuff, is all in my
latest book on the topic, Organic Growing with Worms.
David Murphy
On 01/10/2014 1:37 PM, Anand Karve wrote:
> Dear Mark,
> I am not an earthworm specialist. I started thinking about earthworms
> only when it was reported that the casts of earthworms had an
> unusually high iron content. It was then I realised that the guts of
> earthworms acted as miniature biogas plants. I would therefore assume
> that the microbes in the guts of earthworms converted nitrates into
> ammonia, sulphates into H2S, and cellulose (i.e. carbohydrates) into
> methane. There might be other chemicals formed by reducing oxidised
> minerals i (e.g. silicates) nto their reduced forms, but I am ignorant
> of them.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
>
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 11:23 PM, Mark Elliott Ludlow <mark at ludlow.com> wrote:
>> Dr. Karve,
>>
>> Do you have a list of those positive effects attributable to earth worms,
>> particularly those in the biochemical transformational mode?
>>
>> Thanks, kindly,
>>
>> Best, Mark
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Gasification [mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On
>> Behalf Of Anand Karve
>> Sent: Monday, September 29, 2014 9:58 PM
>> To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification
>> Subject: Re: [Gasification] Forest Duff & Earthworms - Off Topic ?
>>
>> Dear Jeff,
>> one of the points that is missed in most discussions on earthworms is the
>> fact that earthworms are miniature biogas plants. Ms Hemangi Jambhekar, a
>> lady selling earthworm compost as a business, told me that earthworm casts
>> had unusually high iron content. The soil in our area is rich in iron, but
>> the iron, being Fe2O3(ferric oxide) is not soluble in water and therefore
>> soil analysis shows our soils to be poor in iron. When this soil passes
>> through the gut of an earthworm, the anaerobic micro-organisms in the gut
>> take a part of the oxygen from the Fe2O3 for their own metabolism and
>> convert the Fe2O3 into FeO(ferrous oxide), which is water soluble.
>> Similarly, the casts of worms contain many other organic and inorganic
>> components of the soil in their reduced form. The reduced compounds serve
>> the soil microbes as food, because they can oxidise them to obtain energy
>> for their own metabolism. This causes an increase in the population density
>> of soil microbes. It is a universally accepted fact that the population
>> density of soil microbes is positively correlated to soil fertility.
>> Yours
>> A.D.Karve
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Jeff Davis <jeffdavis0124 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Kind of off topic:
>>>
>>>
>>> Aren't earthworms good for soil and gardens?
>>>
>>> It depends. Earthworms create a soil of a certain consistency. For
>>> soils that are compacted due to heavy use by agriculture and
>>> urbanization, for example, earthworm tunnels can create "macro-pores"
>>> to aid the movement of water through the soil. They also help
>>> incorporate organic matter into the mineral soil to make more
>>> nutrients available to plants. However, in agricultural settings
>>> earthworms can also have harmful effects. For instance, their castings
>>> (worm excrement) can increase erosion along irrigation ditches. In the
>>> urban setting, earthworm burrows can cause lumpy lawns.
>>>
>>> Relative to simplified ecosystems such as agricultural and
>>> urban/suburban soils, earthworm-free hardwood forests in Minnesota
>>> have a naturally loose soil with a thick duff layer. Most of our
>>> native hardwood forest tree seedlings, wildflowers, and ferns grow
>>> best in these conditions. However, when earthworms invade they
>>> actually increase the compaction of hardwood forest soils. Compaction
>>> decreases water infiltration. Less infiltration combined with the
>>> removal of the duff and fallen tree leaves results in increased surface
>> runoff and erosion.
>>> <http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialanimals/earthworms/in
>>> dex.html>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Jeff
>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> ***
>> Dr. A.D. Karve
>> Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>>
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