Mike Barton on N-capping

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The following link has a 40min presentation from Mike Barton that is recommended viewing if you are interested in how nutrient capping may affect future agriculture activities in NZ.

http://beeflambnz.com/news-events/News/2013/july/farming-with-nutrient-limits/

An important biochar related take from this presentation is how Overseer may be an impediment to future biochar application activities. It may be vital for biochar proponents to get collaborative research activity under way with regard to Overseer.  I have previously discussed Overseer here.Overseer

I suggested in an earlier post that an economic driver for biochar in NZ may be in nutrient management. One important economic issue I did not address was the potential for biochar to support or enhance land values by buffering the pressures between nutrient management and water quality. You can see from Mike’s presentation that nutrient caps are already dictating land values in the Taupo catchment. If biochar efficacy can be recognised by overseer in the future it will open doors to a range of application scenarios.

Mike’s story on farming under Taupo N-capping was recently the focus of Country Calender… http://tvnz.co.nz/country-calendar/episode-2-nitrogen-bomb-5380543

Climate Change Workshop

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You may be aware that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released new assessment reports described as…

  • Working Group II – Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability
  • Working Group III – Mitigation

Today, the NZ Royal Society hosted a stakeholder workshop to help disseminate this information. This day long workshop was broadcast live via the web and can be reviewed in full from here.

Of particular interest to me was the Working Group III assessment report, Chapter 11 Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses which was presented by Dr Harry Clark from the NZ Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Center. This was covered in the 1st afternoon session (from about the 1hr mark in the video presentation). I managed to slip in a question on biochar at ~1:28:00. This was responded to by both Ralph Sims and Harry Clark (1:29:13 to 30:50).

It would be great to get some response to their comments by the biochar advocacy folk in NZ. Also, I’m posting the key biochar text from Chapter 11 for comment from the biochar community at the Biochar Policy discussion group.

Here is a rough transcript of the comments on biochar from Harry and Ralph…

My posted Q was… “I’m hoping to hear some comment on biochar potential in NZ for sequestration” (introduced 1:28:27)

Ralph Sims (1:29:13): “Biochar is an area that’s covered by AFOLU. I would say we have got a biochar research center at Massey…. Sarah’s [McLaren?] involved, I’m involved and we have been looking at not only producing the biochar but integrating it into the soil and how long it stays there. So quite a lot of information is available for …… Harry should maybe comment based on IPCC basis.”

Harry Clark: “Biochar does get a mention in the Chapter [12]. I think it does emphasis that, although there are strong advocates of biochar, there is probably not strong enough evidence base at the moment to make too many assumptions around the potential mitigation potential of biochar. But it does include it for the 1st time and comments on biochar. With regard to NZ, I’m not fully au fait with the work that is going on in biochar. It is my understanding that there is considerable difficulty in the use of biochar in pastoral situations … its a low bulk density material and that transporting it is somewhat difficult. But there does seem to be a little more potential perhaps in cropland. Because the evidence would seem to be…. we all know there are advantages in water holding capacity etc with biochar and there is some evidence that it can help reduce Nox emissions as well. I’m not aware that there are any good studies on looking at the mitigation potential for biochar across NZ agriculture.”

Ralph: “One very quick point… there is biochar and there is biochar… its not a single material. It depends on what its feedstock is, how it’s processed and then there’s soils and soil and there’s crops and pasture… and these interactions we’re trying to get a handle on. We have just had a PhD who looked at life cycle analysis of the whole process… carbon value and how you can trade it but ‘watch this space’ I suppose is the best way to describe it.” (fin 1:30:50)

Biochar at the EGU General Assembly

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I’m a bit late finding this… it has a large biochar component. A search on ‘biochar’ here, http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2014/meetingprogramme pulls 60 results. A couple of familiar NZ researcher names in the author listings. It seems there will be a big bump in the biochar bibliography listings in May.

European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2014

Vienna | Austria | 27 April – 02 May 2014

Aims & Scope

“The EGU General Assembly 2014 will bring together geoscientists from all over the world to one meeting covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. The EGU aims to provide a forum where scientists, especially early career researchers, can present their work and discuss their ideas with experts in all fields of geosciences. For the first time, in 2014, the EGU General Assembly will have a theme!”

 

Dairy wastewater and biochar – new report

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Kathleen Draper, US CHARector at Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence, has provided this link on the Biochar Farms & Gardens site to a study that should be of interest to the NZ dairy farming industry. This is further reinforcement of the role biochar could and should be playing in future nutrient management in NZ.

Biochar can be used to recapture essential nutrients from dairy wastewater and improve soil quality

Abstract
“Recently, the potential for biochar use to recapture excess nutrients from dairy wastewater has been a focus of a growing number of studies. It is suggested that biochar produced from locally available waste biomass can be important in reducing release of excess nutrient elements from agricultural runoff, improving soil productivity, and long-term carbon (C) sequestration. Here we present a review of a new approach that is showing promise for the use of biochar for nutrient capture. Using batch sorption experiments, it has been shown that biochar can adsorb up to 20 to 43 % of ammonium and 19–65 % of the phosphate in flushed dairy manure in 24 h. These results suggest a potential of biochar for recovering essential nutrients from dairy wastewater and improving soil fertility if the enriched biochar is returned to soil. Also, learn how to manage regular waste material from Dumposaurus Dumpsters & Rolloff Rental website. Based on the sorption capacity of 2.86 and 0.23 mg ammonium and phosphate, respectively, per gram of biochar and 10–50 % utilization of available excess biomass, in the state of California (US) alone, 11 440 to 57 200 t of ammonium-N and 920–4600 t of phosphate can be captured from dairy waste each year while at the same time disposing up to 8–40 million tons of waste biomass.”

Effective waste management is crucial for a sustainable future, and dumpster rentals can play a significant role in this regard. They provide an easy and convenient way for individuals and businesses to dispose of their waste responsibly. By partnering with reliable dumpster rental companies such as Grissman Dumpster Rental, one can ensure that their waste is properly collected, transported, and disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. Furthermore, to learn more about waste reduction and recycling, one can make more informed decisions about waste management practices and contribute to a healthier planet.

ABE has been posting frequently about dairy, nutrient management and water quality. Try clicking on the following tags to the left of this post: nutrient management; dairy farming; water quality; phosphorus; nitrogen. With this type of research continually being released, its hard to imagine that the biochar story can remain in the NZ media wilderness for much longer.

NZSSS Conference opportunity

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The NZ Society of Soil Science has advised that they would be interested in receiving participation from the biochar community in their next annual conference. Details here: http://www.nzsssconference.co.nz/

“The conference welcomes participants with all soil-related interests.  If there are a sufficient number of abstracts related to biochar we would try to put them together in one session.  You are welcome to send information related to the NZSSS conference to your contacts and encourage them to participate.”

And to keep up to date on other national events, the OrganicNZ event calender may be of interest (but I note they have not got NZSSS conference listed yet). Note the Organic Sector Forum at Taupo in June. It would be great to get a few biochar events on their calender.

Motueka biochar initiative

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One of our group members has supplied the following report…

“After consulting with a few international experts and a few knowledgeable local people, we took their cautions seriously and decided to start with a small “open burn” rather than a trench burn which we originally intended.  Recently we tried this for the first time on a small scale. The idea was to build a pyramid of wood (the base of ours was about 1 meter square) and light it from the top (rather than the bottom as in a more normal bonfire type burn.)  This is called a pyrolysis pyramid, and it  is the way charcoal has been made by Jack Daniels for a very long time (they filter their whiskey though charcoal.) As well as lighting from the top there is a need to hose the pile with water in places that it are burning too hot and forming ash rather than charcoal. The trial was successful in that we did end up with a nice pile of good quality charcoal. However to do this on a larger scale is daunting because of the amount of water that would be required to control the burn. Our next plan is to do an open trench burn (rather than covering the trench  which is when the risk of explosions  apparently increases.) Small cautious steps, and lots of learning along the way.  (Photos below).
We’d like to come up with something simple that works on a large scale, and encourage foresters and horticulturists in our area to deal with their waste wood in this way and then enrich depleted soils with the biochar produced. …. a long term goal but one very worth pursuing, especially in light of the latest IPCC report. As you know, there is an urgency not just to cut global emissions, but to actually take carbon out of the atmosphere and lock it away safely for a very long time. Biochar is coming to be seen worldwide as one of the”solutions” to mitigate climate change.
I did watch the video Biochar – The Next Stage In Climate Action on your website and found it inspiring.
Comments on our project very welcome,  cheers,
Katerina Seligman, on behalf of “The Renewables, Motueka” “