ABSTRACT
The “founding father” of terra preta soil study is Dr. Wim Sombroek. Before Sombroek died in 2003, he called together a team of internationally renowned soil scientists and gave them the challenge of creating a new terra preta capable of solving some of the world’s most pressing problems. He called this new terra preta, terra preta nova, created using modern thermal conversion technologies: pyrolysis, gasi‹cation, and hydrothermal carbonization. The question now is whether it is possible to meet this challenge Sombroek laid out before us. Are we capable of creating rich, self-sustaining soils without doing any further harm to the Earth’s already fragile ecosystems? I believe the answer to this question is yes, yet the real work lies in ferreting out the mechanisms, the soil physical property changes, how to improve soils’ sustainably on a bioregional basis, and doing it at a scale that will make a difference.
