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Mining the Soil for Biomass Energy

Mining the Soil for Biomass Energy - Thursday, April 16 at 1 pm PT / 4 ET

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"460","attributes":{"alt":"logging in white river national forest colorado","class":"media-image","height":"360","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","width":"480"}}]]Jon Rhodes, watershed hydrologist, has more than thirty years of professional experience evaluating the impacts of logging and road building on forest ecosystems and watersheds. Jon runs Planeto Azul Hydrology, which provides affordable watershed expertise for a wide variety of conservation efforts.

Call in on Thursday, April 16 at 1 pm PT / 4 ET to learn about the impacts of "fire fuels reduction" and biomass energy logging on forest soils, a precious resource thousands of years in the making and the foundation of forest ecosystems.

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Biomass: The Unsustainable Energy Source

- by Atheo, Aletho News
 
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"426","attributes":{"alt":"biomass logging in frisco, colorado","class":"media-image","height":"360","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;","title":"biomass logging","width":"480"}}]]The promotional material from Big Green Energy, aka Biomass Gas & Electric, presents biomass as "clean, renewable energy," sustainable and green. The US Department of Energy uses the terms "clean and renewable" when introducing visitors at its website to the topic.
 
But is it accurate to describe the repeated removal of biomass from agricultural or forested lands as sustainable? A quick review of some basics on the role of organic matter in soils belies the claim.
 
To support healthy plant life, soil must contain organic matter, plants don’t thrive on minerals and photosynthesis alone. As organic matter breaks down in soil nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur are released. Organic matter is the main source of energy (food) for microorganisms. A higher level of microbial activity at a plant’s root zone increases the rate of nutrient transfer to the plant. As the organic matter decreases in soil so does this biochemical activity. Without organic matter, soil biochemical activity would nearly stop.

Soil Erosion May Get Us Before Climate Change Does

- by Richard Reese, December 1, 2014, Resilience

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"324","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"color: rgb(73, 73, 73); font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20.671998977661133px; width: 333px; height: 151px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Outside the entrance of the glorious Hall of Western History are the marble lions, colorful banners, and huge stone columns. Step inside, and the popular exhibits include ancient Egypt, classical Greece, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, Gutenberg, Magellan, Columbus, Galileo, and so on. If we cut a hole in the fence, and sneak around to the rear of the building, we find the dumpsters, derelicts, mangy dogs, and environmental history.

The Darwin of environmental history was George Perkins Marsh, who published Man and Nature in 1864 (free download). Few educated people today have ever heard of this visionary. Inspired by Marsh, Walter Lowdermilk, of the Soil Conservation Service, grabbed his camera and visited the sites of old civilizations in 1938 and 1939. He created a provocative 44-page report, Conquest of the Land Through Seven Thousand Years (free download). The government distributed over a million copies of it.

Study: Logging Destabilizes Forest Soil Carbon

- by John Cramer, December 2, 2014, Dartmouth College

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"322","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 333px; height: 250px; margin: 3px 10px; float: left;"}}]]Logging doesn't immediately jettison carbon stored in a forest's mineral soils into the atmosphere but triggers a gradual release that may contribute to climate change over decades, a Dartmouth College study finds.

The results are the first evidence of a regional trend of lower carbon pools in soils of harvested hardwood forests compared to mature or pristine hardwood forests. The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology Bioenergy. A PDF of the study is available on request.

Despite scientists' growing appreciation for soil's role in the global carbon cycle, mineral soil carbon pools are largely understudied and previous studies have produced differing results about logging's impact. For example, the U.S. Forest Service assumes that all soil carbon pools do not change after timber harvesting.

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