By Karen Hills

Biochar has the potential to sequester carbon and improve the properties of soils when used as an agricultural amendment. However, biochar will only be a viable option for carbon sequestration if there are uses and viable markets for this biochar. In recent years, there has been interest in adding biochar to agricultural soils in conjunction with compost, and in some cases, “co-composting” biochar—putting the biochar in with the feedstock before the composting altogether. Read on to learn about a study led by Dr. David Gang, a professor at Washington State University’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, indicating that co-composting can provide additional benefits, both during the composting process and to the crops grown in soil amended with the resulting co-composted biochar.

Figure 1. Mark Fuchs (left), John Cleary (right) (both of the Washington Department of Ecology) and Nathan Stacey (middle, WSU) use equipment to measure gas emissions from a commercial scale co-composting experiment. Photo: Doug Collins, WSU.

Continue reading →

By Laurie Houston

Biochar made from woody biomass. Photo: Oregon Department of Forestry under CC BY 2.0.

My colleagues kicked off a discussion on biochar with their recent articles. Biochar can potentially be a win for soil health, for carbon sequestration in soils, and for fire risk reduction in forests. Kristin Trippe talked about the benefits of biochar as soil amendments in agricultural soils, and a tool to help producers choose biochar products. Chris Schnepf and Darrell McAvoy discussed the benefits and challenges of using forestry slash to produce biochar, and how mobile kilns can facilitate that. So, if biochar has all these benefits why aren’t all farmers spreading biochar on their fields? And why isn’t all the biomass from thinning being processed into biochar? Continue reading →

By Chris Schnepf, University of Idaho, and

Darren McAvoy, Utah State University

Biochar is being used in a variety of agricultural and home and garden applications. Photo: C. Schnepf.

Biochar has many possible agricultural benefits. Given the large role that fire plays in western forests, biochar has likely also already played a significant role in Northwest forests, as evidenced by the charcoal commonly found on top of or buried in our forest soils. Biochar shows promise in providing additional benefits in restoring heavily disturbed forest sites, such as forest roads, skid trails, and landings. For more information, see a chapter in a recent biochar book detailing the current state of North American forest biochar research.

Most of the enthusiasm around biochar in the forestry community, however, is related to using forest management residues to create biochar and useable fuels, such as bio-oil and syngas. Continue reading →