RE: [Biochar] Prescribed Burn Smoke Presents Opportunity for Biochar-Making Conservation Burns

From: main@Biochar.groups.io <main@Biochar.groups.io&gt;
On Behalf Of Kevin McLean via groups.io

Sent: Friday, September 29, 2023 5:32 PM

To: main@biochar.groups.io

Cc: Wilson Kelpie <kelpiew@gmail.com&gt;

Subject: Re: [Biochar] Prescribed Burn Smoke Presents Opportunity for Biochar-Making Conservation Burns

1. During the dry season, make a large pile of brush.

2. Put a tarp on the top of the pile.  The tarp does not need to completely cover the pile.  Just enough to keep most of the brush dry.

3. In the rainy/snowy season, remove the tarp and light the top.

Folks,

 

This seems like an opportune moment for pushing the advantages of top down conservation burns over conventional burn piles to greatly reduce the amount of smoke (including dangerous PM2.5) and to make climate-positive
biochar out of forest fuels.  As Kelpie Wilson says (I’m paraphrasing), the biochar could be added directly to forest soils in burned areas to cost-effectively promote regrowth of native species, and to prevent erosion, flooding, and mudslides. 

 

Furthermore, the newly created Biden Administration’s American
Climate Corps is funding an initial 20,000 paid climate-related jobs, including forest fuels removal.  California’s Climate Action Corps also offers forest cleaning jobs.   

 

This article from Politico’s California Climate Online Edition entitled “Careful
about making wildfire smoke a climate villain” describes the difficulties the State of California is having convincing citizens to allow prescribed burns near where they live.  Smoke from prescribed burns contains PM2.5, the small
smoke particles that can enter the lungs and cause diseases.  California SB10, a bill to reduce hurdles for tribes conducting controlled burns on their land, lost because air pollution officials opposed it.

 

Yet California’s Indian tribes, their Congressional delegation and the Biden Administration all favor controlled burns. 

 

From the article: “The Biden administration is trying to bridge the gap.  Air pollution officials in California have been warming to the idea, according to a top air cop. But it’s
still a hard conversation.

We have to recognize that while … smoke is a much easier pollutant to manage when it’s performed in a controlled way, as opposed to an uncontrolled wildfire, and that does have advantages, it’s still PM [particulate
matter] smoke,” said Erik White, Placer County’s air pollution control officer and the president of the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association.”

“A report released today by
a commission of federal, state, local and tribal officials recommends increasing the use of “beneficial fire”, while also helping public health and land management agencies prepare for its health effects.  The recently created federal Wildland Fire Mitigation
& Management Commission recommends 148 actions, under seven key headings:

• Urgent New Approaches to address the wildfire crisis
• Supporting Collaboration to improve partner involvement at every scale
• Shifting from Reactive to Proactive in planning for, mitigating and recovering from fire
• Enabling Beneficial Fire to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire
• Supporting and Expanding the Workforce to hire and retain the wildland firefighting staff needed to address the crisis
• Modernizing Tools for Informed Decision-making to better leverage available technology and information
• Investing in Resilience through increased spending now to reduce costs in the long run

Your thoughts?

 

Kim 

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