The Westerman Draft bill wants to support biochar research. It seems that many folks are already studying biochar. An idea would be to round these up, and look for gaps and overlaps before we send any more funding.
I tried the search terms forest and biochar for a variety of federal research organizations. Apparently, search terms select a broader group than I intended.
I looked at NSF (National Science Foundation) and searched on biochar and forests and got this.. but many of them don’t seem to have biochar or forests, so maybe my searching is at fault.
I looked at Department of Energy and found these, which are about biochar but the forest one is about biomass for energy š not biochar.
Here’s the list from National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA extramural research), again the search did not seem to restrict to biochar and forests.
I could find many biochar projects with the Forest Service, but not in a format that shows the funding and a link to the abstracts (which might exist, and I hope R&D folks will point that out.)
US Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior also doesn’t have project by dollars as far as I could tell, but does have this..including one on the effect of biochar on maize yield in Zambia. But it appears the last one was in 2015.
Speaking of agriculture, ARS (in-house USDA R&D) has a list of biochar projects.
This ongoing study is pretty interesting.
Through this project, we expect to demonstrate that applying biochar in agricultural lands for soil modification and remediation would be a climate-smart solution for sustainability in forest management, timber/biomass har- vesting, and economic growth of bioenergy, bioproducts, and crops. [2] Wood Fiber Insulation: The proposed solution is to evaluate several (underutilized) species in the region as feedstock for wood fiber insulation. Spruce (Pices spp.) and white pine (Pinus strobus) will serve as controls or ābenchmarksā; other species to be investigated include: eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), bal- sam fir (Abies balsamea), red maple (Acer rubrum), and aspen (Populus tremuloides). [3] Wood Fiber Foam Packaging: Most available literature around foam forming is focused on rectangular shaped panels with no specific 3D shape. A process that can produce true 3D shaped lignocellulosic foamed structures by foam forming is currently lacking. In addition, low-density packaging foams are bulky and occupy a lot of space, making them difficult to ship and transport. Innovation is needed to develop foamed materials that can be compressed into high-density thin sheets for easier transportation and used upon 3D shape recovery after exposure to a stimulus. Finally, a clear understanding of the foam forming process in the presence of additives and various types of lignocellulosic feed- stock is required. Use of LCNF derived directly from wood sawdust as a binder in the formulation of such foams is another innovation that needs to happen to reduce costs and enable commercialization.
Sounds like something the FS could be funding?
I didn’t query NOAA, NASA or DOD. Conceivably biochar is related to climate and everyone studies climate (and researcher are creative in rationalizing what they want to do) so who knows?
Wouldn’t it be terrific if the research agencies would feed into a centralized database of all federal research? That included abstracts, and who is funding, how much and how long. Plus links to products. Then those interested could analyze gaps and overlaps. It appears that the Congress is interested in saving money.. but, I guess, not so much in spending it better. Especially when fixes would go across Committee responsibilities. Where is the Admin’s Office of Science and Technology Policy when you need it?