Biochar for climate change mitigation (CO2 sequestration) and soil enhancement

4 October 2017
Rob Lavoie
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Research

SoilMatrix Newsletter No. 9

October, 2017

Welcome back to the SoilMatrix Newsletter.  This issue provides a short set of videos to demonstrate how much research is taking place around the world on the topic of using biochar as a soil enhancement agent and as a way to mitigate CO2 emissions to the atmosphere by CO2 sequestration in the form of carbon.  This was one of the identified unknowns in our July Newsletter.

Click here to read the July SoilMatrix Newsletter

Most climate change measures such as driving an electric vehicle, switching incandescent light bulbs to LED lighting, installing solar panels, geological sequestration of coal fired power plant CO2 emissions, and so on, are considered to be carbon neutral activities. In this edition of the SoilMatrix Newsletter, you will learn how using biochar to enhance your lawn and garden soil, or your farm soil or any soil, actually REMOVES CO2 from the atmosphere by sequestering carbon into soils for 100’s to 1000’s of years.

The following series of short videos were made available by the UK Biochar Research Centre of The University of Edinburgh.   They are evidence of the amount of effort being put towards answering questions relating to the use of biochar for soil enhancement and CO2 emissions reduction.

What is Biochar? by Dr. Saran Sohi…   Click here to view this video

The research hope for Biochar as a climate change mitigation and adaptation technology…

Click here to view this video

Current biochar research at The University of Edinburgh’s UK Biochar Research Centre, by Dr. Ondrej Masek…   Click here to view this last video

My hope in sharing these videos is to demonstrate how a large number of researchers around our planet are now investigating both the benefits biochar has for soils and the effectiveness of long term sequestration of carbon in soils to mitigate climate change.

Thank you for your interest in this topic. We will see you at the end of October.

Copyright ©_2017 AirTerra, All rights reserved.

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Biochar – What’s good, not so good, and what’s not fully understood

2 August 2017
Rob Lavoie
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Uncategorized

SoilMatrix Newsletter No. 7

July, 2017

It’s mid-summer, so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.

This is how the SoilMatrix Garden looked on Thursday, July 27, 2017.

The romaine at the front corner is being consumed (by us). It is also being invaded by the zucchini (must remember not to plant so much of it next year).   Once again, this garden is receiving no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides and as little city of Calgary water as possible. We are attempting to bring the soil health up to a level where all of these inputs are happening below ground level via our soil life food web friends.

In this newsletter we will provide a few links to research that indicates the various benefits of biochar soil amendments. I spent some time compiling these for your learning so you can read for yourself how biochar amendments make a difference to your flower and/or vegetable garden.

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Dr. David Montgomery’s Videos and Books… a must listen and read…

1 July 2017
Rob Lavoie
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Uncategorized

Welcome to our June 2017 SoilMatrix Newsletter – “Dr. David Montgomery’s Videos and Books”

It’s amazing how the summer months fly by!  This SoilMatrix Newsletter will be very short, I promise.

Here is what the SoilMatrix Garden looked like on June 29, 2017.

As you can see, we have a relatively good start with the romaine lettuce, kale, swiss chard, green and yellow beans, and peas.   The potatoes are developing very nicely in the back and the zucchini is doing well next to the romaine. All in all we are quite happy with this year’s experimental use of compost only for nutrients. This garden is receiving no chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides and as little city of Calgary water as possible. We are attempting to bring the soil health up to a level where all of these services are happening below ground level via our soil life food web friends.

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A Growing Revolution – Two Great Books about Soil Life!

1 June 2017
Rob Lavoie
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Welcome to our May 2017 SoilMatrix newsletter – A Growing Revolution – Two Great Books about Soil Food Web and Healthy Soil Function!

This month’s newsletter contains some valuable revelations gained from two books and two different authors who have keen insights into how to bring soils back to vibrant life and health through building into the “Soil Food Web”.  I will share these with you after I describe and show you what is happening in the SoilMatrix Garden right now!

Soil preparation and seeding are complete for this year. I went out on a limb and purchased a couple of totes of good garden soil and a tote of Hop compost to blend along with about 25% (by volume) SoilMatrix Biochar.   The additional soil was needed to expand the number of raised beds and I became impatient with attempting to do this out of my own soil stock. Here is what the seeded raised beds looked like at the end of the May long weekend (May 22, 2017).  See photo above:

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