45th Telluride Mushroom Festival

Biochar is black carbon produced from biomass sources [i.e., wood chips, plant residues, manure or other agricultural waste products] for the purpose of transforming the biomass carbon into a more stable form (carbon sequestration). Black carbon is the name of the range of solid residual products resulting from the chemical and/or thermal conversion of any carbon containing material (e.g., fossil fuels and biomass) (Jones et al., 1997).

The main purpose for the creation of biochar is for carbon sequestration. Biochar is speculated to have been used as a soil supplement thousands of years ago in the Amazon basin, where regions of fertile soil called "Terra Preta'" (dark earth) were created by indigenous people. Anthropologists hypothesize that inhabitants of the region produced biochar by practicing 'slash and char' management on vegetation to improve soil fertility and crop yields (Mann, 2005). Biochar application to soil has been the assumed end use for the created biochar. Even though biochar can be used in other purposes as long as the biochar is not used for fuel or energy. The burning of biochar would not achieve the goal of carbon sequestration since this would allow the carbon to return to the atmospheric pool where it originated before being fixed in plants by photosynthesis.

Source USDA