Amazon Fires Should Be Allowed

I do not think these people understand the relationship between the highly oxidized carbon in the Amazonian Terra Preta soil and the intense heat needed to create the same carbon biochar from a forest fire. It seems the system would be healthier if allowed to burn. Here is a link to a firefighting effort. Thoughts?

It feels good, but its a brown thumb move plus adding chemicals to an organic area.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/amazon-wildfire-us-firefighting-plane-brazil

We have the same Udult Ultisol red clay soul here. PH5-5.5. No oxygen etc. Social Media is about to hurt the lungs of the planet in their emotional rush to make themselves feel good.

most tropical soils are poor in carbon for good reasons.

the further away you go from the equator the more likely the soil can keep carbon. the bacterial and fungal breakdown of carbon is fastest where it is warm and wet. this is why the rainforests store almost all of their nutrients in the plants and animals above the soil. soil from slash and burn agricultue is not fertile for long. it reverts to subsoil within a few years unless it is somehow protected from the elements.

terra preta is a manufactured soil (by people), very rich, very good at holding nutrients and persisting but if you abuse it enough eventually it too will revert to poor soil.

the problem with the rainforests burning is that they are a large carbon sink. it takes years for them to recover back to jungle again, but that is a better use of them than for grazing animals or growing crops. you can replant them with fruit bearing trees and nuts and keep them as forests and still harvest tons of food from them, but it means keeping people working instead of using tractors and machines so the big ag people would rather raze it all and kill off all the wild life.

they will be into drought situations as those rain forests are also a large part of their ground water storage system which buffers the rainfall and releases it slower than it would be if i ran off.

you can see the flooding effects in "modern" agricultural societies where they have stripped away the forests and put in ditches and drain tiles to get the ground dry faster. but that also means increased flooding and the loss of nutrients and the ground water table will keep falling as the water runs off easier and the soil gets more compact.

in some places where they have restored forests to the hills that they've previously cut it all down they've restored water flowing in streams/rivers. the return of wild life and having fruit and nut trees around adds to the food security for the people there as long as they control their population.

I disagree with your initial understanding of carbon as a consumable where as an element it is not consumed. Thats the keys here. Your idea of carbon usage is a misapplication.

Consumable organic materials containing carbon versus the seriously aged oxidized carbon in terra preta...ok.

A few years of usability in your description should be changed to a few hundred years were the materials exposed to 700±C temps. Or higher in the fires.

Were I to visualize it for you, consider the your idea of material volume to fill a city building and mine to fill a match box. Why? High heat or long term oxidation. Both carbon.

The filler, fillers, consumables, etc are useful of course, we use them as humic material, acids and so forth. I even use low temp wood char to bbq meat for flavors.

The fact that it rains a lot is defeated by the elemental carbon, which retains oxygen, nutrients and blah blah blah

the element carbon is only one part of the soil carbon cycle. how it gets there and what happens to it can be quite complex along with the various organisms involved. talking about biochar or terra preta are only a few aspects of this.

you do understand that most burning of forests does not create biochar or terra preta right? i've studied these things along with the soil sciences and chemistry involved enough to know a general idea of why things are why they are.

terra preta is a manufactured soil.

biochar is also often manufactured, but can exist in smaller quanties from natural fires, but if you want to actually do something useful with wood or other organic materials you can study the methods and capture the vapors coming off it as it cooks and end up with a much larger percentage of higher quality material than what a crude method will give as a result.

open burning of forests, nah, that's a huge waste of materials and if a forest were managed better it wouldn't be needed at all.

destroying biological diversity should be considered ignorant and nearly criminal, especially as things are going now.

flowerbug said:

the element carbon is only one part of the soil carbon cycle. how it gets there and what happens to it can be quite complex along with the various organisms involved. talking about biochar or terra preta are only a few aspects of this.

you do understand that most burning of forests does not create biochar or terra preta right? i've studied these things along with the soil sciences and chemistry involved enough to know a general idea of why things are why they are.

terra preta is a manufactured soil.

biochar is also often manufactured, but can exist in smaller quanties from natural fires, but if you want to actually do something useful with wood or other organic materials you can study the methods and capture the vapors coming off it as it cooks and end up with a much larger percentage of higher quality material than what a crude method will give as a result.

open burning of forests, nah, that's a huge waste of materials and if a forest were managed better it wouldn't be needed at all.

destroying biological diversity should be considered ignorant and nearly criminal, especially as things are going now.

Click to expand...

I always enjoy the mentality of 'I am in control"! Recently Doctors discovered a new organ, some gossamer sac all about the body. They too were set to say they knew it all, but like them, you rely on others to tell you what is happening until they say differently.

The fires could be enhanced if we blew oxygen to get them even hotter, and the doused them with CO2 to help create biochar. Not sure what that airplane in the link is using.

I Pologize but your posts do not have a thesis relative to the planet. Its sort of a here and there and I think they think something. So burn the amazon or not and why could you do better?