Biochar in Riparian Buffers

Tyler Groh, an Assistant Research Professor and Watershed Management Extension Specialist, Calvin Norman, and Metlzer Forest Products have teamed up to show the use of biochar in streamside buffers and stormwater management. Biochar is made from any natural matter, typically low-value plant material like coconut husks, tree branches, and corn husks, heated at a high temperature without oxygen. Similar research has been carried out in Delaware and resulted in biochar being approved as a stormwater management tool. This work also seeks to get biochar approved as a management tool by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality. To do that, the team will be working with the DCNR and ClearWater Conservancy to put biochar in new buffers and study the impact of biochar.

Known benefits of biochar include:

• Adding biochar to soil can protect damage from pollution like acid rain by increasing soil pH.
• Biochar can add stable carbon which slowly decomposes to the soil. Depending on use, it has been estimated that biochar could store between 10 and 25% of the annual US fossil-fuel emissions while increasing plant growth. 
• Biochar decreases nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas and damaging pollutant, release from fertilized agricultural. 
• A 10% addition of biochar to wetland soil decreased pollution from nutrients like phosphate, ammonium, and nitrate Those nutrients were trapped in the soil rather than running into streams.
• Biochar can have an impact on available soil water for plants in coarse textured soils, like sandy soils, by increasing in available water by 40%.
• Biochar has been shown to increase tree growth by trapping more nitrogen in the soil. Soybeans responded positively as well to biochar. Corn has been shown to not have negative response (long-term or short-term) to biochar.
• When added to sandy and silty soil biochar decreased erosion. 
• The ability for water to move in soil (soil hydraulic conductivity) and the ability for soil to hold water went up as more biochar was added. Increasing these properties help increase water filtered by the soil and decreased erosion.

Using biochar in streamside buffers and stormwater management could be good not only for streams, but also for forests and the forest products industry. Making biochar from wood could create a market for trees that currently have little to no value. This could make it easier for forest to be managed suitability, as loggers would be paid to cut low-quality or unhealthy trees (see "Why Penn's Woods Needs Biomass" about the need for a low-quality wood market:).