Journal zogger's Journal: Satellite imagery reveals ancient amazon cultures 8
Our understanding of how extensively inhabited the ancient Amazon was has been bumped up perhaps by as much as ten times due to satellite imagery. They have found hundreds of ancient settlements that show sophisticated structures, and they think there might now be as many as two thousand similar sites.
"Since these vanished societies had gone unrecorded, previous research had suggested that soils in the upper Amazon were too poor to support the extensive agriculture needed for such large, permanent settlements.
"We found that this picture is wrong," Schaan said. "And there is a lot more to discover in these places.""
As a note: Amazonian ancient agriculture made extensive use of "biochar". This is *perhaps* one way they were able to colonize those poor soil uplands areas.
I have long recommended that instead of allowing the huge forests of the western US to just burn up in wildfires every year, year after year, the current "best practice" conservation measure they have, that instead we establish a new major industry of manufacturing this biochar with a lot of this now completely wasted wood and make it available to all our farmers at a fair but cheap as possible price, for the common good, to improve soil tilth for the long range, increase productivity and yields, revitalize older clapped out soils, and provide a lot more useful jobs.
Right now, we, a very large number of "we", are headed towards an eventual ag disaster, because our soil tilth, the thing that keeps the soils healthy, that rich carbon mixture that helps things grow and helps to regulate water supplies as well, and acts as a major climate modifier, is on an almost perfect one way trip to being lost, as for all practical purposes it is being stripped from the rural areas and it just vanishes into the urban areas, where it becomes an unwanted and now too contaminated to reuse "product" that is mostly just hidden away/dumped someplace. In essence, most modern farming strips carbon from one area, ships it to another, and that's it..in ye olden days, this carbon was continually replaced in the same place it was needed all the time. That's why they were able to live without "modern" tech and burning petroleum and injecting chemicals, etc, and it is that simple. They maintained their carbon bank where it was needed.
We really only have any sort of mass quantity food now from running a finitely available carbon-theft culture, which is barely sustainable due to the artificial fake out of adding a few expensive to produce chemicals, such as ammonia nitrogen, or expensive to mine, phosphates. Yes, these are some minimum nutrients needed that get spread in the very top level of the soil, and none of which are really a total replacement for the carbon tilth and rich microbial and fungal layers, the "sponge", that is continually lost.
Our modern ag is a time bomb of epic fail. I can't tell you exactly when it will go off, but it *will* go off, that sucker is gonna blow, and it will *suck* food wise then. It will go from pretty darn good "appearing", which it is now, to zip and nada. Hmm, something like a speed freak has this apparent superhuman energy level..well they do, but not for long, and the destructive part of running in "turbo" mode becomes easy to see.
You can only run massive soil depletion so long and try to keep it going with some getting more expensive daily fertilizers. Eventually, it just isn't going to work very well.
Biochar, because of its structure and how it must be placed deep, sequesters carbon quite nicely for centuries and is always there to give plants the boost they need, and to help maintain this vital soil tilth. This is a much better and much cheaper idea, with many more practical benefits, than-say- creating those millions of artificial co2 sucking phony "trees", then pumping that down some mine where it does no good forever, and so on, those sorts of "solutions" they keep pushing. We should learn from our own human history here.
moof (Score:1)
Well, it's not like the people who are for carbon sequestration are for supporting or encouraging current and expanding population levels. From Progressives' POV, the earth is under attack from an "unnatural" enemy, man, and doing something to save the earth while at the same time propping up the force that they think is destroying it, wouldn't make sense.
Re: (Score:2)
From Progressives' POV, the earth is under attack from an "unnatural" enemy, man, and doing something to save the earth while at the same time propping up the force that they think is destroying it, wouldn't make sense.
I take exception to that statement. I consider myself a progressive, though I do not view humanity as itself an enemy of the earth. I do, however, have great concerns about some of the careless activities of "modern civilization" that are considerable drains on the resources of our shared planet.
I acknowledge that more than one significant technological advancement has allowed us to reach the (global) population we are currently at without driving ourselves to extinction. However if we are to continue
Re: (Score:1)
I take exception to that statement.
And that's fine. You can be a Progressive without adopting every last component of the idealogy. For example my sis is a solid Leftie, but she rejects the hug-a-thug, soft-on-crime aspect of Leftism (but that's about it). Doesn't change the fact of what, generally-speaking, adherents of an idealogy are known for.
Biggest siol depletion in history (Score:2)
The Dust Bowl [google.com] in the 1930s was possibly the biggest ecological disaster in recorded history, and more topsoil was likely lost in it than all other US topsoil losses combined. If you mess with an established ecosystem, very bad things can happen.
About your Biochar idea (Score:1)
If it is affordable and reasonable, then get some investors together and do it!
No reason not to, if it would work out.
That would be nice (Score:1)
You can't in mass quantities like I am thinkig about, a national scale effort, without profound environmental reg changes and so on. Most of these huge western forest fires every year burn up public land, and they have all sorts of "logging is mostly verboten" and "roadless wilderness", etc laws on the books.
The idea only has decent merit if they are sourcing using the wood that normally dies off and burns, ie "free for the harvesting". We are having a bad problem with the western pine beetle [wikipedia.org] for instance,
After looking up biochar (Score:2)
It seems to me it would be a wonderful alternative business model for your employer.
You see, Kudzu makes excellent biochar material. Plant seven fields in it. On a seven day schedule, mow the Kudzu, one field per day. Feed the hay into your biochar reactor, harvest the woodgas to run your mowing tractor.
I'm willing to bet you could easily get the process to around 14 tons a week.....
felony (Score:1)
against the law to transport or plant an invasive species. heh
Not my farm here, heck ya I would do some different stuff. Like this airport which ain't open..I'd sell off the junker and good planes and parts, turn it into a redneck dollar extracting drag strip on the weekends at night (runway easy enough made hard surface for that) and a flea market during the day the rest of the time, and fully enclose the hangars so that permanent merchants could lock their stuff up. Sell off the broiler operation as just