Biochar

                Biochar seems an appropriate subject considering the curriculum this week is on soils and minerals. Recently biochar has been marketed as a soil amendment by many gardening companies. It is something that can occur naturally in soils around the world. Biochar is the result of burning vegetation in low heat in the absence or reduction of oxygen. This has been an agricultural practice in the Amazon for over 2000 years. The result of the burning is an extremely dark charcoal like substance with amazing properties. It is capable of sequestering carbon and has an enormous number of pores. These pores enable it to better hold nutrients and water, making it an ideal soil amendment. Corporations have recognized this and are selling it to home gardeners. Many scientists are interested in the potential to store carbon in the soil. There is promising research surrounding biochar. One estimate suggests we could store 2.2 gigatons of carbon a year by 2050 using biochar. That would be a substantial amount of carbon in our battle against climate change. 

http://www.biochar-international.org/biochar

                During my first year at the University of Vermont I participated in the greening of Aiken internship. This provided me with a great opportunity to work with a wide array of talented teachers. We broke off into smaller groups to tackle the various problems associated with the renovation. I chose to work in the living machine group. Under the supervision of Matt Beam, the graduate student who designed the machine, we began testing. Our goal was to solve a common issue with living machines: the inability to filter ecoli. We acquired our effluent and set up a series of filters. All of the filters were run with aquarium pumps, through a 5 gallon bucket, tubing and back down a bright red funnel. The first was a control that just pumped water in a loop. The second was a biochar filter. A third filter was set up with oyster mushrooms grown on cardboard. In the final filter we combined the biochar with oyster mushrooms. By far the most successful filter was the mushroom and biochar filter. The oysters seemed incredibly healthy growing on the biochar. It was amazing to see the level of success produced by this all natural filter. Since this experiment I have been encouraged to seek out more natural solutions to problems. These solutions are gaining popularity across the globe and are especially popular in the field of biomimicry.