The Past and Future of “Biochar”
Invited Plenary
Professor Michael Bird
Federation Fellow
James Cook University
(Cairns Campus)
Biography
Professor Bird completed his PhD in isotope geochemistry at the Australian National University in 1988 before accepting a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He returned to the Australian National University in 1990 as Research Fellow and later Queen Elizabeth II Fellow. In 2000 he took up an Associate Professorship in Singapore and in 2004 moved to the Chair in Environmental Change at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He returned again to Australia to take up a Federation Fellowship in the School of Earth and Environmental Science at James Cook University (Cairns campus) in February 2009. He has research interests in the global carbon cycle on a range of timescales, as well as records of past environmental change (sea-level, biomass burning, weathering or vegetation change) and archaeology.
Synopsis – ‘The past and future of biochar’
‘Biochar’ is simply charcoal, produced by combustion of biomass under conditions of restricted oxygen. Natural and anthropogenic fires burn 2-4 million square kilometres annually and humans have been making biochar inadvertently and purposefully since they started to use fire over a million years ago. Biochar was largely supplanted during the industrial revolution by fossil fuels, but, ironically, will now be considered by UN climate change negotiators in Copenhagen in December as an option for mopping up carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion and storing the carbon back in the soil. Biochar does have the potential to sequester significant amounts of carbon, generate ‘carbon negative’ energy and improve soil fertility. However, it is a complex material and its interactions with the soil environment and plants are similarly complex. Hence biochar is not a ‘one size fits all&rsquo solution. This talk will outline the history of humanities long association with biochar, provide an introduction to the nature and potential uses of biochar as well as consider the potential for developing biochar applications in Queensland.