[Stoves] [biochar] Re: Report on APBC - first two days

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear AD

Based on your own work, I presume that the bacteria living in each
environment are adapted to be able to break down whatever they find (i.e.
high and low pH environments). So the productivity is a combination of the
whole biome and not just the plants.

I asked Bill Mollison what he thought of the extraordinarily deep pine
needle beds at the foot of the trees planted I the Eastern mountains of
South Africa.

In the area around Nelspruit there are large forests where formerly there
was nothing. In fact the traditional name in SiSwati for the area means 'the
treeless place'. After 70 years of pretty intensive planting, South Africa
was turned from a wood-importing to a self-sustaining country, and even
exports large amounts of paper pump and sawn timber.

Under these forests there are 60cm deep layers of pine needles that have
dropped from the trees above. Apart from being a huge fire hazard, they do
grow (at least in Swaziland which is on the escarpment) large and delicious
mushrooms that grow entirely under the surface. They are identified by the
humps they push up.

Bill though about it and said the build-up was caused by them having
imported the tree seeds, but not the other components of the bio-system that
normally went with them. In fact they probably went to a lot of trouble to
ensure there was no 'contamination' by seeds and fungus and bacteria. The
result is that there is no local fungi and moulds and bacteria which can
deal with the imported tree detritus. The solution is inoculation with an
appropriate species, hopefully local, beneficial and benign.

With the inclusion of char in the mix - something that occurs naturally in a
forest through episodic fire events - it is even more complex than just the
relationships between living organisms. It will be very interesting to see
if anything from stove-derived char can be attributed to the unique
characteristics that low temperature pyrolysis provides.

Regards
Crispin


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Dear Crispin,
If one excludes soils formed by silt carried by rivers, or the soils formed
by windborne dust, the rest of the soils are generally formed from the rock
underneath the soil cover. There are large tracts of land which have only
limestone as the bedrock, and yet the fields and forests in these regions
are quite productive. So even limestone must be having the rest of the
minerals needed by plants.
Yours
A.D.Karve