Biochar for climate change mitigation: Tracing the in-situ priming effect on a forest site

Abstract

A significant amount of Carbon (C) on global soils consists of black carbon or charred organic matter. Biochar amendment in soils is therefore seen as a potential geoengineering method for climate change mitigation and adaptation. We tested the effects of biochar amendment (10 t.ha(-1)) on soil respiration trace a potential priming effect until 15 months after amendment. Our results indicate that after a short period of initially weak positive priming, there was no significant difference between control and biochar plots during the entire project duration. From a carbon sequestration point of view, it can be concluded, that biochar amendment leads to higher stable C stocks in the organic horizon. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecomons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).