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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Harvesting of prairie biomass for energy?

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  • From: Rael Bassan <rael@ripco.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Harvesting of prairie biomass for energy?
  • Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:32:30 -0600

Actually soil organic matter increased.

The ten year study used infertile agriculturally degraded land and showed that soil carbon increased logarithmically, and is likely to continue to -- leveling off after perhaps a hundred years, especially if including late successional species. Again, they propose harvesting only the aboveground biomass, which is akin to the burning practices of Native Americans and restoration ecologists. The only soil amendment likely to be required is phosphorous, which could be handled conveniently by returning last years ashes during harvesting (stacking).

...Rael

At 01:13 AM 1/26/2007 -0500,Lawrence F. London, Jr. <lfl@intrex.net> wrote:
Rael Bassan <rael@...> writes:
>
> In a recent [Permaculture Forum (Upper Midwest)] post there was some
> concern about the proposed harvesting of prairie biomass for energy,
> suggested by the Minnesota studies of David Tillman's group. According to
> their analysis, using a prairie plant mixture of up to 14 species "comes
> out 6 to 16 times better than corn grain ethanol or biodeisel [sic] ."
> www.vnps.org/chapters/princewilliam/wildnewsjanfeb07.pdf

Doesn't hrvesting prairie plants for conversion to ethanol result in serious
organic matter and accompanying soil microflora depetion in those soils?

LL





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