- Author: Milton E McGiffen
Congratulations to Steve Feher, Butte College, and a fine list of conference participants for the excellent Biochar Workshop. Good to see a lot of people from within and outside of California that work on biochar given a chance to speak and interact. Steve has done an excellent job over the last several years of making, characterizing, and using biochar for hands-on instruction. He has done this conference each February for the last few years so I think we have to call it an annual event.
If anyone wishes to donate materials, money or time to Steve's efforts should contact him. The enthusiasm of the students make it all worthwhile.
- Author: Milton E McGiffen
Hugh McLaughlin has done much good work on characterizing biochar over the years. He most recently set out to come up with the simplest tests possible that accurately reflect biochar's relevant functions, e.g. enhance soil productivity.
Attached are three well-written papers on Hugh's proposed "Baseline Biochar Metrics":
1) The "Perspective" paper, explaining why these are so needed and welcomed by the biochar community.
2) The actual Metrics themselves.
3) A very lucid spreadsheet "Comparison of European Biochar Certificate Version 4. 8 and IBI Biochar Standards Version 2.0 and Baseline Biochar Metrics Ver IX"
The California Biochar Association welcomes any comments.
Perspective on Baseline Biochar Metrics Ver V
Baseline Biochar Metrics Ver IX
EBC-IBI-BBM comparison Nov 2014 I
