Biochar in an Extraction Economy

“There must be a way for him to monetize this biochar thing.”

Some time after visiting my sister in Connecticut years ago, she reported what her husband had said about my (then) new-found pyrolytic passion. Seen through the lens of his job as a New York investment banker, my excitement about finding a way to sequester carbon and build soil health with free stuff needed to be leveraged into a source of revenue.

Some people I know are making money at “this biochar thing.” Josiah Hunt began making it in pits from bamboo in Hawaii and ended up founding Pacific Biochar, a multi-million-dollar company with a huge stationary plant in Willows, CA. Eric Mayer went from a Stanford Ph.D. program to forming Napachar, providing vineyards with biochar from their own spent vines with a crew and a fleet of portable kilns. Kelpie Wilson designed the Ring of Fire™ kiln used by Eric and hundreds of other people worldwide and derives income from speaking fees and royalties on her biochar handbook. In addition to biochar, Bob Wells, an early adopter on Cape Cod, sells soil amendment made with biochar and dead lobster compost, pyroligneous acid (wood vinegar, another profitable product) that he siphons off from the smoke, and the custom TLUD in which he makes them, which he markets internationally.

There are many other examples, but I wasn’t comparing myself to any of them. I was simply obtaining a dividend from rescuing my home in the woods from a century of forest mismanagement, and paying it forward to rebuild the soil. Having spent forty years as a commercial arborist, I chafed at the suggestion that I wasn’t sufficiently motivated to make money.

Most likely I will continue to char non-commercially, spreading the simple message of small-scale, decentralized pyrolysis. What I call the Black Ripple is an each-one-teach-one initiative, not a marketing scheme. The kiln loan program is designed to be given away to an agency, once it gains traction. I can afford to do this, for which I am grateful because it is work that needs to be done, IMO.

So I will not be participating in The Second Annual Global Biochar Market Survey. “Your participation will help strengthen the global dataset that informs the 2026 Global Biochar Market Report,” the announcement declares, “offering insights on global and regional production, market value, and growth trends, challenges and opportunities across the value chain, end-user demand, innovation, and emerging products…to provide a comprehensive picture of the biochar industry’s size, scale, and global growth potential.” I’m happy for the entrepreneurs whose work aligns with this effort.

There are many folks for whom monetizing biochar would be a fit. Assuming that their business model derives biomass sustainably, I believe their business should succeed. My only concern is that vastly more carbon can be drawn down by the multitudes, with just biomass and a match, than industry can. We tend, in our culture, to evaluate opportunities in terms of what we can get out of them, and ignore those that don’t “pencil out.” Where biochar doesn’t reach the bar of profitability, as it often doesn’t, I fear that we could overlook it.

Last year, in a Forest Stewardship Workshop put on by UCANR, I proposed making biochar from forest waste as an alternative to chipping and burning. The instructors, who worked for the Forest Service, pointed out that biochar markets are weak and denigrated it as a “boutique” practice. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given the extraction model of forestry baked into their viewpoint. The fact is that, for the most part, unless you find a niche, as my aforementioned associates did, biochar is best thought of as an investment, not a commodity. Where it fails the market test, as it does in most cases, I view this as a blessing. Otherwise it would just be taken up as another way to extract value from the forest.

Make biochar. Think of it as a donation to life as we know it on Earth. Mix it with compost and put it in your garden, where it will supercharge your soil, or sprinkle it in the forest, where it will do the same. If you might find a way to monetize it, great, but remember that in order for biochar to “ripple,” most of us will need to practice making it outside of the extraction economy.

Kiln Loan Kickoff November 1 & 15

Have you ever wanted to make biochar, but didn’t have a kiln?

The Black Ripple Biochar Kiln Loan Program will kick off November 1 at Benbow KOA, with a training and demonstration for anyone interested.

The Kiln Loan Program provides free training and tools for southern Humboldt land owners and contractors to make biochar from woody material. Trainings include a hands-on workshop using a Ring of Fire™ kiln—the best available biochar kiln for this purpose. Attendees are then eligible for borrowing kilns to make biochar for themselves or as contractors.

Branches and other brush are ideal materials for this purpose. The result is biochar, a valuable form of charcoal for amending soil that retains water and nutrients, enhances microbial habitat, and diverts carbon from re-entering the atmosphere. Making biochar substitutes for chipping and incineration.

The Black Ripple Kiln Loan Program was created to overcome several obstacles at once. By including public training, this program allows local residents and contractors to discover biochar, learn what it is, learn how to use it, learn how to make it, and get access to a kiln for making it. Biochar can be made faster and more efficiently with a kiln, but the training also describes how to make it without one.

Additional trainings are planned, and two have already been scheduled. A second training is scheduled for November 15, at Southern Humboldt Community Park. Sign up for either training here.

Biochar From Biosolids

One of the points I make in my biochar presentations is that you can make biochar from any sort of biomass. When I say that, what I generally have in mind is brush, wood, bamboo, and untreated lumber—the stuff you might otherwise burn as fuel. As a joke, I like to add that you could throw in roadkill too, and it would char up just as well.

What I generally don’t have in mind is any sort of manure. But the fact is that in many parts of the world, animal manure is a common fuel for cooking and heating. It is, after all, composed of biomass. Its energy content is partly reduced by digestion, which converts some of its embodied energy into a form that the animal can use, but animal waste is unutilized energy and unsequestered carbon. Thus, manure could be pyrolyzed and made into biochar. The pathogenic anaerobes that it contains would not survive the process.

Taking this one step further, our own waste has roughly the same unutilized energy and carbon; theoretically, it could be dried and pyrolyzed. As with animal manure, the end product would be sterile, just like biochar made from plant material.

But why would anybody actually do it?

Well, it turns out that human manure (aka humanure) contains not just pathogens but microplastics, heavy metals, PFAS forever chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, all of which are taken out of circulation by pyrolysis. Where sewage sludge is being diverted to agriculture, these substances need to be effectively removed, and pyrolysis does the job. Heavy metals are immobilized within the biochar, due to the same chemical property of chelation that makes them toxic, and the other substances are broken down into their constituent elements. About half the carbon that they contain becomes sequestered, just like carbon from the biomass itself. Minerals in the sludge are conserved, fulfilling the original purpose of utilizing it for agriculture, with a 90% savings in transport cost from the reduced weight and volume.

It gets better. With the right equipment, there are valuable co-products, such as bio-oil, syngas, and wood vinegar. The economy of scale for this equipment works out to be positive for municipal operations above a certain size.

So if you hear of a sewage treatment plant approaching a sludge disposal problem with pyrolysis, take heart. As with any good permaculture practice, it makes a problem into a solution.

The Biochar to Groundwater Connection

One of the four cornerstones of biochar,* in terms of the ecosystem services that it provides, is water retention. When I started using biochar as a soil amendment, in 2016, this was the first benefit that I noticed. Immediately, our irrigation requirements dropped 25 percent.

Any sort of organic matter boosts moisture retention, making water more available to plants, but biochar does it semi-permanently. Our garden soil became a bigger reservoir. We didn’t realize how much of our water was evaporating or escaping through the ground until biochar started preventing it.

Consider what would happen if biochar-making became widespread, in place of chipping and burning. Added together, many small reservoirs can change the availability of water throughout an entire region, increasing its resiliency to drought. Compacted soil from logging and urbanization are in need of such restoration, and this can be done by just flinging biochar around as a top dressing, letting it be gradually incorporated on its own. The result would be a cumulative augmentation of the water table, raising all biological boats.

It turns out that this is no small thing, in terms of the global water situation. A recent article in ProPublica describes increasing depletion everywhere, mainly through pumping from aquifers for agriculture and commercial enterprises. Two decades ago, Jay Famiglietti at UC Irvine began using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, which measure changes in the mass of the earth, to estimate its water content. Terrestrial (v. oceanic) water depletion is accelerating. Surprisingly, pumping from aquifers is not just causing land subsidence but is a major contributor to sea level rise.

So while locally enhancing soil health by making biochar, know that your contribution is also to the aquifers in your region. And as our personal pyrolysis practices gain recognition by our neighbors and they pick up the biochar baton, let’s be sure to cite the additional benefit of increased groundwater and the biological resiliency that it provides.

*biochar holds water, holds nutrients, provides microbial habitat, and sequesters carbon

Cooling With Fire

Biodiversity for a Livable Climate hosts a paid webinar series this month, starting today with Brock Dolman of OAEC on how water governs our climate.

“We’ve already passed 1.5°C of warming. We’re beyond the safety zone. Now, we must not only prevent further heating—but also start cooling the planet using fast, affordable strategies that are proven to work!”—excerpt from announcement

They make the point that water, not just carbon, governs the planet’s temperatures. Deforestation, pavement, and soil degradation diminish the natural air conditioning provided by forests, grasslands, wetlands, and oceans. The webinar plans to offer simple, affordable techniques already working around the world.

As soon as I read the announcement, I thought of biochar. One of the “simple, affordable techniques” presented in the webinar is bound to be biochar, since it cools the planet not just by sequestering carbon, but also by increasing soil water retention and availability to plants so that they, in turn, not only sequester more carbon but cool the air through evapotranspiration. Biochar belongs in the toolbox for restoring planetary hydrological cycles. (It doesn’t appear in the announcement, but the presenters are permaculture teachers who know about biochar.)

The biochar that we put in the soil does more to cool the planet than just sequester carbon—it draws down water as well, which replenishes broken hydrological cycles, which restores natural air conditioning. This is a great point, and it’s going to be included in my biochar presentations from now on.

Making biochar from excess forest material, instead of chipping or incinerating it, turns a “waste” into a benefit. Removing this excess is the first step in returning healthy fire to western North America, where our misguided policy of complete fire suppression has predictably backlashed. We might as well make biochar out of it, so that we don’t just send the carbon back to the atmosphere. But while we do, let’s celebrate the fact that we’re not just fighting fire with fire—we’re also cooling with it.

Air Quenching—What and Why

In response to another member of the Biochar On Site community, I described my kiln vis à vis what most people use.

“Air quenching” means extinguishing by depriving a fire of air.

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Ethan,

You might like to hear from an outlier to the water-quench majority. Among other benefits, "air quenching" obviates some of the necessary practices with water-quench kilns to meet the critical safety considerations of employing fire in a flammable landscape.

I use an air-quench flame cap kiln to make char on our steep forest land. It's impractical to supply water in most places here, and air quenching makes water unnecessary. The main drawback is having to wait, but I can afford to wait three days or more. A major benefit of this system is that the char is dead out when the kiln is opened. The char does not have to be spread out, which makes it easy to collect.

I've been using the same kiln for 10 years. Water warps hot metal, as you know. My kiln has warped very slightly from repeated heating and cooling. I have to mud the seams a few hours after installing the lid, when I can touch the kiln. But by not using water, it could last another 10.

Besides not requiring quench water, the other benefit is that I can operate the kiln myself. It has three stiff panels that ride on a wheelbarrow; the round lid simply rolls. (I hacked a powered hub onto my wheelbarrow to help.) It's only 4' in diameter, and the small footprint takes less work to prepare.

The Ring of Fire is an excellent tool IMO provided that you have water on-site and at least two people. I would absolutely not recommend operating the Ring of Fire alone! But it consumes material at least 2x as fast as my 4' dia. kiln and does a better job pyrolyzing material over 2" in diameter. (I harvest larger material as firewood or leave it behind.) Cooling with water warps the panels, but it doesn't matter when you aren't depending on having an airtight seal at the end. However, warping does appear to age the Ring of Fire quickly (IDK). The slower consumption of my air-quench kiln is actually a benefit, because I'm loading it alone and I'm a senior.

I've worked on redesigning my air-quench kiln, but after consulting with one fabricator and commissioning a new design with another, I've settled on the original design.

Make Biochar, Save Oceans

In case you need another reason to make biochar, have a look at the oceanic carbon cycle.

As we breathe, so does the ocean. Gases move back and forth through the ocean surface. This is how fish get oxygen, which they extract from the water through their gills. The constant exchange of gases between water and air keeps carbon dioxide and oxygen at the same proportion above and below the surface.

As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it builds up proportionately in seawater. But dissolved CO2 reacts with water to form carbonic acid (H2CO3), leaving room for more CO2 to dissolve. As atmospheric CO2 increases, so does carbonic acid, resulting in a more acidic ocean. This is now happening more rapidly, raising alarms among scientists.

Without shells, no oysters. (Photo: Cavan Images)

Sea shells are made of calcium carbonate. The shells are formed by the organisms that inhabit them; coral, urchins, and certain plankton are the same in this way. All the reefs and shells in the ocean are formed by marine organisms, which depend on their ability to extract carbonate ions from the water in order to manufacture calcium carbonate. But ocean acidity reduces the number of carbonate ions, making it harder for these animals to build and maintain their shells. This has started to result in a decline in marine organisms that depend on making carbonate, followed by a decline in animals further along the food chain.

Similar to proposals for extracting carbon from the air with energy-intensive technology, there have now been others to directly restore ocean pH by adding large amounts of basic compounds. These are untested, IMO dubious and risky initiatives aimed at maintaining fossil fuel extraction and use, whereas sequestering carbon derived from photosynthesis and weaning ourselves from oil dependency are clear solutions. Diverting carbon from the atmosphere to long-term storage is one of the main reasons we pyrolyze excess plant material.

So when you’re making biochar, you’re not just counteracting global warming. You’re helping to save the life in the ocean, along with every life form that feeds on that abundance.

Another Look at Grinding Biochar

Charcoal comes out of the kiln in different sizes, many of which are too big for amending garden soil. (There does not seem to be a too-small size, considering that the particles in terra preta had to be identified with a microscope.) A cornerstone of my biochar practice has been to reduce the charcoal down to 1/4” or less, according to instructions from Paul Taylor. There is a theoretical maximum surface-to-volume ratio at which the char still allows water, nutrients and microbes to fully permeate it, and 1/4” is the number Paul gave me.

The grinder that I designed and built in 2018 was effective at reducing char to this size with only a hand crank, well suited to life in an off-grid neighborhood with limited power.

Decking screws inserted in a lathed 2-1/4” dowel protrude nearly 1/4” to rip the char, just clearing the 1/4” gap. Works in both directions. Hopper is oak plywood; wheel came from a meat grinder.

I would have liked to find a method of grinding that didn’t require hours to build, but the solutions I saw online tended toward inefficiency, unsustainability and health threats. Mine yields a cubic yard in about three hours and propels the toxic dust into the bucket through the lid to which it’s attached.

The wooden parts gradually wore down. I was prepared to replace them this year, but two new factors had come into play. In 2021 we upgraded our solar system and could now consider an electric grinder. Secondly, we had found 1/4” biochar too large for our liking in the garden.

On a listserv to which I subscribe, someone recently claimed success at grinding biochar with an ordinary electric leaf shredder. These devices may not shred leaves very well, he said, but as a biochar grinder, the one he used was fast and efficient. I had to know!

With the loan of a 14-amp chipper/shredder from a friend, I was grinding char down to about 2mm or less about twice as fast as my wooden grinder. Prior experience with an 8-HP gas-powered shredder had taught me to aim for 50% moisture by testing the char with a hand-held probe (wetter material clogs the machine; dryer char makes too much dust).

At 50% moisture, this 14A Portland 1-1/2” capacity chipper/shredder from Harbor Freight can make finely ground biochar all day. Wheelbarrow contains 1/4” charcoal made with hand-powered grinder.

The moisture meter I use, General MMD4E, is the one Kelpie Wilson uses to test whether brush and wood is dry enough to pyrolyze without making too much smoke. It measures the electrical resistance between two sharp probes, which are designed to be inserted into wood, but which seem to work just as well with a pile of biochar.

Making biochar in the woods can be an alternative to chipping, incineration, and lop-and-scatter. It will probably generate more biochar than you can use in your garden. The remainder can be flung around for the benefit of the forest without grinding or inoculation, because it will gradually be pulverized and charged as it’s absorbed by the soil along with the other forest litter.

The Complexity of Biochar Production

In the parable of The Five Blind Men and the Elephant, each man correctly describes the part he is touching, but is mistaken in applying his experience to the whole animal.

The circumstances within which biochar is made result in different choices for equipment, co-products, and overall scale. A centralized facility only pencils out where biomass can be economically delivered to a large stationary plant, and applications for the co-products of heat and electricity may be needed to make it do so. At the opposite end of the scale, in remote locations with no practical opportunities for making use of heat and electricity, making biochar is simply a superior alternative to chipping or burning and is done with mobile devices, compact kilns or no equipment at all.

A recent burn with the Vuthisa kiln. Heat is used here to perpetuate and improve pyrolysis, so it’s not really going to waste!

The product, biochar, is the same in all cases, with variations in quality. Those variations often matter in the market, but I would argue that they do not matter significantly in the soil. I disagree that making biochar should be combined with cooking, heating, or power generation as a rule. We are all making the same substance, but our needs are different.

I sympathize with anyone explaining biochar to novices, of which there are many, because I face the same problem with great regularity. Given the cheap availability and convenience of fossil energy and petroleum-based products over many decades, biochar and pyrolysis are simply not familiar to most people in our culture. How biochar production is done, and what you do with the biochar and its co-products, will vary according to which part of the proverbial elephant you are touching.

Not Your Grandfather's Biochar

Since the discovery of Amazonian terra preta soils in the 1950’s, biochar has been thought of as a soil amendment by Western culture. Seen through the lens of history, there is no other application for it, besides drinking water filtration and relieving gastronomic distress. As far as we know, that’s all that humans ever figured out to do with it.

The Ithaka Institute knows better. Published in 2012, their “55 Uses of Biochar” recognizes many more ways that biochar can improve our lives, relatively few of which involve soil. Careful and consistent attention to process conditions can produce a wide variety of precisely tuned materials for specific applications in a surprisingly diverse range of disciplines. The Ithaka article presaged many of these.

Take snowboarding for example. Who would have thought that biochar would turn up there? Ithaka did, at least in concept—in uses #31 (carbon fiber) and 32 (thermoplastics). The explanation entails quantum physics, but you can skip over that section and still get the point.

Maurizio Bormolini (center) rides biochar to victory in World Cup 2024/25

Granted, highly evolved chars are out of reach for the average bio-collier. But experience begets innovation, and the ambitions of younger biochar practitioners can be served by these advanced applications. Start where you are and see where it takes you.

As the snowboard article states, biochar has a durable value as a soil amendment in gardening, although not for industrial agriculture as it turns out. But all biochar placed in a static medium keeps carbon out of the air, regardless of sophistication. Fortunately for the world as we know it, the limits of carbon sequestration with biochar will probably continue expanding, through human ingenuity.

Biochar's Future

Biochar is usually described in terms of its applications and its value in carbon sequestration, based on its inherent qualities. In a fire-adapted landscape, making biochar also has a role in managing fuel—a service that fire itself normally provides. We make biochar from material that would otherwise burn in a landscape fire. To restore healthy fire in a landscape that has been deprived of it, we first have to reduce the accumulated fuel. We might as well make biochar from it. That way, we accomplish more than just fuel reduction.

Releasing a forest meadow from Douglas-fir encroachment and making biochar from the encroachers

Making biochar in a fire-adapted landscape is only tied to fuel reduction until the fuel is reduced. We have to reduce fuel to save the forest and ourselves. But if and when we ever catch up with the fire deficit, biochar will still be made for an abundance of practical reasons, and by then we will have discovered more of them.

Forests can be managed to supply vastly more biomass than we currently use to make biochar while restoring them to health and keeping them that way. We could increase soil carbon much faster, and given biochar's durability, it can be increased indefinitely. There is actually no limit to how much biochar we could make. Photosynthesis guarantees that.

This capacity will continue after we run out of fossil fuels. The energy density of fossil fuels will be hard to replicate, but as they become more expensive to extract, alternatives will increasingly pencil out. Biochar will gradually become more important as we learn to modify it to replace fossil energy sources. Most likely, biochar will become integral to our way of life. The future of careers in chemical engineering is assured by this, along with related industrial opportunities.

Many Roads to Biochar

Beyond the basics of what biochar is and what it can do, there is a wide frontier for its deployment. The way that biochar is made and used will vary from one situation to the next, depending on many factors. There is no universal template for a biochar system.

As an example, the Cook County, MN Highway Department, has an unusual mandate to help control invasive species, which were being propagated by their existing practices. So the department teamed up with the state ag inspector and an environmental technician to make biochar from them. Not only would the soil be improved on site and elsewhere in the county, but reestablishment and fuel loading would be largely eliminated.

The $10–20,000 equipment budget for their first two kilns suggests that a Big Box kiln design was chosen. Another municipality working at this scale (3,300 square miles) with greater revenue sources might have chosen a CharBoss, or even a TigerCat Carbonizer, which was used in the Oakland Hills to pyrolyze entire trees. Besides budget and scale, other factors influencing their choices would be the high accessibility of their highway right-of-ways and the fairly level terrain.

This set of factors is a far cry from the forested slopes and winding roads of western United States, where the approach tends toward using hand crews with Ring of Fire kilns and water trailers. In the vertiginous, largely undeveloped forest of southern Humboldt County where I live, a kiln that does not require water for quenching makes even more sense than a Ring of Fire, so I chose the air-quenched Vuthisa design. And wherever funds are sufficiently tight, biochar can be made in piles or pits with little more than your own time and sweat.

Workforce Training in Forest Health

making biochar as an approach to managing biomass

During the pole construction workshop in Whitethorn last September, it was hard to miss the enormous pile of debris across the driveway. We were erecting a shade structure at the native plant nursery at the Lost Coast Education Center in back of the Whitethorn BLM field office over the weekend. I knew that BLM stations in other states were making biochar, but not here. What a great opportunity for an exhibition!

The following Monday, I contacted BLM King Range National Conservation Area about making biochar from the pile. Kacie Hallahan put me in touch with Bryan Boatman, Fire Management Officer for BLM in Arcata, who liked the idea. He had been prepared to incinerate the pile, but he was curious about biochar.

I had just learned that the California Conservation Corps now owns one of Kelpie Wilson’s Ring of Fire kilns. Brian Starks at CCC Fortuna said yes to bringing a crew and the kiln to train them in making biochar. I put “the other Brian” in touch with Bryan Boatman, and the three of us chose Monday, Feb. 24 as the date. Bryan got someone to cover the pile with a tarp, but after it blew off in the big December storm, the pile never really dried out. I made sure we had propane torches on hand to light the kiln.

Bryan covered the pile as best he could.

The night before the presentation, the weather forecast was for rain and wind, so Bryan and I chose to switch it to Tuesday Feb. 25. The prediction for Tuesday was great.

This had no effect on Brian Starks and his CCC crew, who had committed to working Monday through Wednesday. The backhoe operator, Wayne from BLM, dismantled the pile for them and spread it out. Bryan Boatman and I were there to help. But even with two propane torches, it took over 1-1/2 hours to get this wet brush to light.

We worked all day in the rain, and it took three days for my boots to dry out!

At the end of the day on Monday, the CCC crew staged brush a for Tuesday’s burn and left a nice ring of biochar. The green grass and unburned leaves under the biochar impressed BLM engine operator Angus, who had seen many burn scars from pile burning. This is one of the chief benefits of switching from incineration to making biochar.

Small results from wet brush, but no soil damage from the burn. Dismantled Ring of Fire and covered pile for conservation burn in background.

Tuesday dawned warm and foggy, then became bright and sunny. The C’s got right to work scooping up the biochar, then setting up and loading the kiln again, with help from Wayne and his backhoe.

Wayne sifts through eight years of debris. Painted wood, PT and plywood are set aside to exclude contaminants from the char.

At about 10:15, we had about a dozen guests who came for the presentation. I addressed the group for 45 minutes or so and answered questions.

Talkin’ char with the assembled guests. If the tumbler on the tailgate is yours, contact me!

By the end of Wednesday, the brush pile was consumed, and LCEC ended up with a couple of cubic yards of biochar. How much carbon was displaced from the atmosphere? Check out my earlier post, How Much Carbon Does Biochar Sequester?

California Recognizes Cultural Burning

Last month, the State of California officially recognized the right of first peoples in the state to practice burning the way their ancestors did. Senate Bill 310, which passed the state assembly and state senate in September, has been entered into law and is in effect as of February 27.

The new law restores tribal sovereignty to the 109 federally recognized tribes in California for the use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge of fire in their ancestral territories, allowing them to burn without state permits, and places tribes on equal footing with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air resources control boards. Tribes can also access the Prescribed Fire and Cultural Burning Claims fund without having to complete formal burn plans.

Tribes use fire to enhance food sources, fiber resources, and medicinal plants as part of their belief system, while also establishing and maintaining wildfire resilience. This layered practice distinguishes cultural burning from prescribed burning, which simply reduces the severity of landscape fire. Together they are referred to as healthy fire.

Healthy fire and making biochar both reduce fuel in overstocked forests that has resulted from over 100 years of fire suppression. They can be seen as bookends, approaching the wildfire problem from opposite directions. Where manual fuel reduction is unnecessary, fire can be returned to a unit of forest land in a single step. Otherwise, manual treatment comes first, and the thinned material can be pyrolyzed and left in place as biochar, a valuable soil amendment for long-term forest health. In either case, the endpoint is to manage land with fire. Making biochar can be seen as transitional toward that end, although some will continue to be needed by us indefinitely.

We can be grateful that TEK still exists in California and that tribes are willing to work with us after all the damage that our culture caused to the forest and the people who sustained it before we arrived.

A press release from CNRA is available here.