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Water Repellency of Two Forest Soils after Biochar Addition
Page-Dumroese, D.S.; Robichaud, P.R.; Brown, R.E.; Tirocke, J.M. 2015.
Water Repellency of Two Forest Soils after Biochar Addition.
Transactions of the ASABE 58(2):335-342.
Keywords: Biochar, Black carbon, Carbon sequestration, Hydrophobicity, Infiltration rate
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Abstract:
Practical application of black carbon (biochar) to improve forest soil may be limited because biochar is hydrophobic.
In a laboratory, we tested the water repellency of biochar application (mixed or surface applied) to two forest
soils of varying texture (a granitic coarse-textured Inceptisol and an ash cap fine-textured Andisol) at four different application
rates (0, 1, 5, and 10 Mg ha-1) and five soil moisture contents (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of saturation). To
address the impact of biochar on water infiltration into the soil, we measured soil water repellency using three methods
(tension infiltrometer, water drop penetration, and molarity of ethanol). Generally, all three infiltration methods gave
similar results. Compared to the unamended coarse-textured Inceptisol at 0% saturation (oven dry), biochar mixed into
the soil at the rate of 5 Mg ha-1 did not result in a significant change (p = 0.05) in infiltration rate. The fine-textured
Andisol soil at 0% saturation did not show a significant change in infiltration at the application rate of 1 Mg ha-1 when
biochar was mixed into the soil. Surface applications of biochar on both soil textures resulted in less water infiltration
than the mixing treatments. Our results suggest that biochar decreases infiltration rates less on coarse-textured forest
soils as compared to finer-textured soils, and 1 to 5 Mg ha-1 will likely not detrimentally alter water infiltration rates.
Moscow FSL publication no. 2015b
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