Paludiculture & Biochar Collaborations
We (at UKCEH) are seeking collaborations with existing and/or new paludiculture projects for our Paludiculture Exploration Fund project titled ‘Overcoming Financial Barriers for Paludiculture with Biochar Integration’. The project aims to explore the opportunities for combining paludiculture with biochar integration to enhance carbon finance revenues. We aim to identify cost-effective biochar application methods and biochar types to reduce integration costs, whilst also maximising carbon finance revenue by identifying biochar management practices, specific to paludiculture, that offer optimum carbon removal and storage.
What we are looking for?
We are seeking sites that have already been rewetted and/or are due to be rewetted in 2023-or 2024 and have the capacity to provide a small 2m x 2m plot area within their paludiculture site (preferably in the middle of the field/site or 15m away from the field/site boundary). In this area we will install a 1.5m deep PVC dipwell (depth permitting) with a piezometer to record hourly water table depth, data will be provided to collaborators. Within the rest of the plot we will deploy ~20 litterbags (10 cm X 10 cm) into the ground and/or on the soil surface, half of which will be filled with biochar and the rest fresh biomass. This will allow us to quantify decomposition rates over time with periodic sampling (3, 5 10, 12 and 18 months). We will require site access to install and deploy this equipment in June and/or July 2023, preferably with a site manager to allocate the most convenient location. Piezometer data downloads and litterbag retrievals need to be carried out periodically, where possible we ask that collaborators can contribute some time to do this and post samples back to us (once on site this will take no longer than 10 minutes, postage and packaging will be covered). In the circumstance that collaborators are unable to do this we will require site.
How to get involved?
To express your interest then please contact Jenny Rhymes (jenrhy@ceh.ac.uk) with the details we require, these are outlined in bold below.
Site name:
Site address:
Project title (if related to a project):
Project funder (e.g. PEF):
Site contact:
Crop or crops grown (e.g. Typha):
Rewetting date (past or planned):
Rewetting water table depth range (please indicate the range you aim to achieve):
Peat depth (if data is not available define as deep >40 cm or wasted peat <40 cm):
Interest in scaled up biochar experiment (yes/no):
Other opportunities
We also have opportunities for scaling up, which would require a larger footprint of land. Here we would measure greenhouse gas fluxes along with other baseline measurements, which could be of additional value to your projects as the data collated from the control plots (i.e., without biochar application) will represent the carbon emission reduction and/or uptake you have achieved. We do not have specific details for the scale up experiments as of yet, particularly area of land required as this will largely depend on site specifics and the activities that will be taking place on site. We can discuss this with you once we know whether you are interested.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, we look forward to hearing from you very soon and hope you can collaborate with us.