Conservation...

[mpgt]

I think this is really interesting. If true, it seems a simple solution to the environmental crisis in the rain forests.

"In experimental plots, adding a combination of charcoal and fertiliser into the rainforest soil boosted yields by 880% compared with fertiliser alone.

Yet terra preta may have a still more remarkable ability. Almost as if alive, it appears to reproduce. Bill Woods has met local farmers who mine the soil commercially. They find that, as long as 20cm of terra preta is left undisturbed, the bed will regenerate over a period of about 20 years. He suspects that a combination of bacteria and fungi is causing this effect."

BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - The Secret of El Dorado

[richardduckworth]

that is cool, but someone will market, own and then sell it like they do any other "good thing".

it's hard to make people care about something they can't profit from. that's really awesome though and will most definitely be of importance at some point in our lifetimes.

[mpgt]

It's like they're sitting on a gold mine. Their ancestors were able to get much more out of the land without clear cutting and burning large parcels of forest to farm. Whatever they did cut down was carefully burned to preserve the charcoal which was used to create the "black earth".

[mpgt]

An old thread, but here's a new discovery:
Scientists find ancient lost settlements in Amazon - Yahoo! News

[Oroborous]

That is hopeful. But since the rain forests today took thousands of years to form, we won't see the same forests in our life time. And at the rate destruction is going it'll be difficult for the land to regenerate, even with charcoal and fertilizer.