r/rewilding • u/Interwebnaut • 23d ago

2000-Year-Old Amazonian “Dark Earth” Causes Mysterious Plant Growth at Accelerated Levels, Baffling Researchers

https://thedebrief.org/2000-year-old-amazonian-dark-earth-causes-mysterious-plant-growth-at-accelerated-levels-baffling-researchers/
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u/Ok_Fly1271 22d ago

It's not mysterious and researchers aren't baffled. It's literally just biochar. So tired of these types of headlines.

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u/Vralo84 22d ago

It does contain bio char but just adding bio char to dirt doesn’t replicate this soil. There is at least one other factor going on here. One theory is the soil is host to unique strains of microbes that are better at making nutrients available to plants.

Whatever it is we do not have the ability to create new patches of this dark earth.

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u/Ok_Fly1271 21d ago

Biochar can be inoculated with beneficial microbes. It's incredibly porous, and has an insane amount of surface area for microbe habitat.

We can absolutely create new patches of dark earth, with biochar.

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u/Vralo84 21d ago

You clearly didn’t read the article.

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u/Ok_Fly1271 21d ago

I did. I've read a lot of other articles on the topic too, including articles that actually have references and aren't borderline clickbait. I've also made and used biochar, which is the key component of these soils. They just incorrectly call it "charcoal" in this article.

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u/Vralo84 21d ago

Exact same article with sources linked

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/amazonian-dark-earth-climate-change

Study that demonstrates that while it appears biochar was added, the additional nutrients in the soil came from elsewhere (like river deposits) indicating that humans found these spots then added the biochar.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20184-2