engleski

Can biochar mitigate climate changes?

The world food demand grows due to the increasing number of population. By taking into account climate changes, constant increase in prices of the production inputs and rising ecological awareness of population, the food production becomes very challenging and requires every agricultural producer to quickly adapt to this newly arisen situation. Modern agricultural production is under the great influence of the climate changes, and regarding that, adaptation too many challenges will be in order in the near future. Scientific community is constantly trying, on the one hand, to detect the problems caused by the climate changes, and on the other to mitigate them, to adapt to their influences. One of the frequently mentioned ways of mitigating climate change is the application of biochar. Biochar is the product obtained through the treatment of heating up the biomass with little or no oxygen to the point at which the treated product holds 70 to 95% of carbon. Currently there are several thermo-chemical processes of biochar production, mostly based on pyrolysis, which is simple, economical and energy efficient process of biochar production from the “waste” biomass. According to the results of the researches on biochar as soil conditioner, it is concluded that biochar positively affects a number of physical, chemical and biological soil properties. Biochar is highly resistant to microbiological decomposition and mineralization and it can retain in the soil up for few hundred years. Also, biochar has one more respectable advantage and that is that by the usage of biochar we are sequestrating the carbon in the soil which directly influences the greenhouse gasses (GHG) emission. Some of the researches on biochar show that by switching from the traditional method of disposal of organic matter to biochar production, it is theoretically possible to stabilize 0.2 Gt of carbon, which is about 0.7 Gt of CO2 on the global level. Most of the researches on biochar were conducted in tropical and sub-tropical regions, while its effect on the continental climate is being researched during the last few years. Also, it is important to mention that the effect of biochar on the carbon sequestration depends on the quality of feedstock material which may vary considerably, but also on the method of pyrolysis used in the process of production. That, of course, indicates the need for further researches on this matter, because most of the mechanisms contributing to the reduction of GHG emissions are not yet completely explained, and require many years of research under different environmental and agroecological conditions and also on the number of different agricultural crops.

biochar ; climate change ; mitigation

nije evidentirano