[Stoves] [biochar] Julien Winter: a soil scientist in name but not in practice.

[Ronal W. Larson]

Julien, Paul,  and lists:

	Tough problem.  

	At first I was discouraged at the lack of sufficient Bangladesh input biomass.  But this could be a perfect opportunity, if we can show through a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), that biochar can solve, not exacerbate, the local biomass supply problem.

	Suppose that some donated biochar can be placed on some very degraded land, and is “guaranteed” to produce a first biomass supply dedicated only to char-making apparatus - perhaps mostly stoves.  The char from those first pyrolysis operations (with a valuable energy output for cooking or whatever) can in turn be guaranteed to go to similar land.  Soon there should be no doubt that biochar is solving the biomass insufficiency problem - through exponential, not linear, growth.
My guess is that such an investment will work, and that donors can be found.

	One other thought is that there could well be some fast-growing species especially suited to Bangladesh conditions and biochar production, that would swing the balance in favor of biochar.  Bamboo?  Miscanthus?  Sugar cane probably already there.

	Last is that mangrove (re?-)introduction might be well received, as rising oceans make problems worse.  Mangrove plantings might even create some land.  Makes good char, and presumably smart management can give both annual yield and increasing carbon stocks.  This to be done using geoengineering (CDR) funds.

	There could be some valuable resource improvement data out of Haiti, which has a similar supply problem.

Ron
	



On May 7, 2014, at 7:55 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> Stovers and biochar folk,
> 
> Below is an introduction to Julien Winter.
> 
> 
> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD  
> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu   
> Skype: paultlud      Phone: +1-309-452-7072
> Website:  www.drtlud.com
> A Brief Self-Introduction of Julien Winter               7 May 2014             Cobourg, ON, Canada
> 
>  
> 
> Foremost, I am a consultant soil scientist specializing in soil organic matter conservation (Ph.D.), though I also have a background in plant physiology (M.Sc.) and plant ecology.  People working in soil organic matter are often involved with biochar technology, and so am I.  Once-upon-a-time, my family raised beef cattle.  
> 
>  
> 
> Although my specialty is soils, I often find that other topics trump my agenda.  Recently, I went to Nova Scota to look at how grazing dairy cattle changes the diversity of soil biota, and soil carbon and nitrogen cycling.  However, I found that the first thing that was needed was a way of documenting plant populations and plant biodiversity.  That is not as easy as one might think, because measuring plant populations is dependent on their density, and that changes through space and time.   So, instead of working in soils, I work on measuring and modeling plant populations.
> 
>  
> 
> A year ago, I was invited to Bangladesh to look at their rural agrarian culture, and advise on possible roles for biochar.  That is good soils topic, because it involves organic waste management, and creating a long-term increases in soil organic matter; much needed for their soils.  However, that topic has been trumped as well.  The difficulty was not how to use the biochar, but how to get it.  With the high population density in Bangladesh, there is no spare biomass in the landscape.  In fact, there is a shortage.  So, if we are going to make biochar, it has to be as a byproduct of some current usage, or processing of waste biomass.  At the household level, making biochar in micro-gasifier cookstoves has promise, but this technology needs to be developed locally.  I have been put in contact with good researchers at the Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.  However, as a consequence, I have ended up putting in vastly more time on combustion science than soil science.  We are developing a network of specialists called the Bangladesh Biochar Initiative, and as the momentum builds, my role should diminish.  This has been the most useful and interesting thing I have ever done: culturally fascinating and extremely multidisciplinary.
> 
>  
> 
> That is a brief description of me: a soil scientist in name, but a plant ecologist and combustion scientist in practice.
> 
> 
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