The science behind the meme is a bit off. its more like:
Lmfaoooo I did my MSc on biochar, actually, and this sums up my findings nicely.
I still like the comic
They don’t eat it, but from memory the high surface area provides a lot of surface area for bacteria and maybe other things, so it still increases soil productivity, particularly in high-clay soils.
More worrying is the "I like trees, but I like food more. You can’t make biochar out of non-woody plant waste very easily…
That’s right. In my study, we suggested the N production increase we saw was due to increased niche space for N generating bacteria. I know I’m miss-speaking here, RE: N pathway, but I haven’t had coffee yet.
I think the word you are looking for is cation exchange capacity. And its a bit of a chicken and the worm thing with increased productivity, at least in natural systems. Higher productivity areas have more woody material which both increases the probability of a burn, and also increases the material available for pyrolysis.
Higher productivity areas burn more. But are they higher productivity because of the pyrolysis or do we see more pyrolysis because they are higher productivity?
At the end of the day, any C-C bond isn’t going to break itself down if its not being digested, or being combusted. See: the carboniferous. That shit piles up. And from a soil C perspective, if its not getting broken down, who gives a shit? Potato patata. The claim in the meme is that pyrolized carbon is good because XYZ, but that claim is true for all soil C. Not just soil C which has been pyrolized, and in some ways, way more so for non-pyrolized C because it can act as a food source for microorganisms (similar to like, higher density fractions like microbial film C). Pyrolized C isn’t really a food source for microorganisms (and therefore, also not really a [micro]habitat). If it was, it would go away just as fast as any other form of C.
And I agree on the anthropocentric of the meme. Its fine that pyrolized carbon seems to be a useful soil amendment. But being useful to humans isn’t really a related to the science of it. its a pretty anthropocentric take. Also, the obsession with “biochar” as the universal path towards productive soils is a bit… weird. To me at least. Its always reminded me of when some people obsess over shit like raw milk or alpha males or drinking their own piss. Its something people have really hung onto as a “solution”, even if they don’t really entirely understand it. And its not the only way to “improve” soils.
Fucking preach. You’re very right, and my stance aligns closely with yours. Another thing I read while doing my degree was that the C-O-alkyl groups were inductive of the stability of BC and availability for mineralization.
Again, BC is good as a C storage source and might even have some soil boosting effects but those effects were secondary. A lot of the benefits generally come from increased porosity/critter habitat.
It’s also fucking expensive to make without generating a shit ton of CO2 in the process so it’s a crap amendment in general
I just thought the worm was cute.
