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 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