I feel we should push for this Terra Preta Soils CO2 sequestration
strategy as not only a global warming remedy for the first world, but
to solve fertilization and transport issues for the third world. This
information needs to be shared with all the state programs.

The economics look good, and truly great if we had CO2 cap & trade in
place:

  These are processes where you can have your Bio-fuel and fertility
too.

'Terra Preta' soils I feel has great possibilities to revolutionize
sustainable agriculture into a major CO2 sequestration strategy.
I thought, I first read about these soils in " Botany of Desire " or
"Guns,Germs,&Steel" but I could not find reference to them. I finely
found the reference in "1491", but I did not realize their potential .

August 06 Nature article:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7103/full/442624a.html

 Here's the Cornell page for an over view:
http://www.css.cornell.edu/faculty/lehm...r_home.htm

This Earth Science Forum thread on these soils contains further links (
I post everything I find on Amazon Dark Soils, ADS here):
http://forums.hypography.com/earth-science/3451-terra-preta.html

The Georgia Inst. of Technology page:
http://www.energy.gatech.edu/presentations/dday.pdf

There is an ecology going on in these soils that is not completely
understood, and if replicated and applied at scale would have multiple
benefits for farmers and environmentalist.

Terra Preta creates a terrestrial carbon reef at a microscopic level.
These nanoscale structures provide safe haven to the microbes and
fungus that facilitate fertile soil creation, while sequestering carbon
for many hundred if not thousands of years. The combination of these
two forms of sequestration would also increase the growth rate and
natural sequestration effort of growing plants.

Also, Terra Preta was on the Agenda at this years world Soil Science
Conference !
http://crops.confex.com/crops/wc2006/te...P16274.HTM

If pre Columbian Indians could produce these soils up to 6 feet deep
over 20% of the Amazon basin it seems that our energy and agricultural
industries could also product them at scale.

Harnessing the work of this vast number of microbes and fungi changes
the whole equation of EROEI for food and Bio fuels. I see this as the
only sustainable agricultural strategy if we no longer have cheap
fossil fuels for fertilizer.

We need this super community of wee beasties to work in concert with us
by populating them into their proper Soil horizon Carbon Condos.

I feel Terra Preta soil technology is the greatest of Ironies since
Tobacco.
That is: an invention of pre-Columbian American culture, destroyed by
western disease, may well be the savior of industrial western society.
As inversely Tobacco, over time has gotten back at same society by
killing more  than the entire pre-Columbian population.

Erich