Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Terra Preta, Christoph Steiner
Terra Preta, Christoph Steiner
Prospects
for Tropical
Agriculture
Christoph Steiner, R&D Director
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov
the bluff-land owes its richness to the refuse of a thousand kitchens for maybe a thousand
years."
"This is the rich terra preta, "black land," the best on the Amazons. It is a fine, dark loam, a foot, and
often two feet thick. ..everywhere we find fragments of Indian pottery, so abundant in some
places that they almost cover the ground."
In this publication Brown and Lidstone were apparently the first to use the term terra
preta (terras pretas) in print.
http://members.eunet.at/rosenkranz/lysi/lysi1.htm
Charcoal production
Sieving
Production
Application
Manmade soils
Photos:
Gilvan Martins,
Embrapa, Brazil
Photos:
Gilvan Martins,
Embrapa, Brazil
Charcoal absorbs and condenses the nutritive gases within its pores.
Charcoal often checks rust in wheat, and mildew in other crops
Ammoniacal liquor holds large quantities of nitrogen,.charcoal
dust may be added , ..the charcoal soon combine with the ammonia,
..it is a powerful manure,
Danny Day
and others
The turnep (Brassica rapa.) Charcoal dust applied in the same way
has been found to increase the early growth from four to ten-fold.
Recalcitrance
JOHANNES LEHMANN, JOHN GAUNT, and MARCO RONDON Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 2006
Soil Fertility
Carbon Stock
Sustainable
Slash and Burn
Time (yrs)
Reduced acidity
Topoliantz et al 2005, Steiner et al 2007
www.biocharfund.org
Photo: Biocharfund
Land tenure
Additionality
Permanence
Leakage
Verification and monitoring