The stability of low- and high-ash biochars in acidic soils of contrasting mineralogy

Murray, James; Keith, Alexandra; Singh, Balwant

doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2015.07.014

Cited by 23 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Biochar amendments are expected to immediately increase the pH of adjacent soil due to the alkaline pH of biochar, which relies heavily on the nature of feedstock materials and pyrolysis temperature. Biochar made from crop residues and formed at relatively high temperature tends to have high ash contents and carbonates [21]. Biochar is found to simultaneously promote SMC and available water to microorganisms, which can be attributed mainly to the reduced bulk density and increased proportion of large voids and porosity [22].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive interaction with keystone taxa induced negative priming under biochar amendments

et al. 2019

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Background Biochar amendments have been widely proposed as a conventional and efficient strategy to promote soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration via negative priming. Unfortunately, the extent and biological mechanisms responsible for biochar-induced negative priming are still not fully understood. Despite traditional explanations focused on the environmental filtering mechanisms of biochar amendments on microbial biomass and community composition underlying the priming effect on SOC dynamics, whether and how a biochar-induced competitive interaction with keystone taxa determines SOC mineralization in natural ecosystems has been minimally explored. Results Here, we paid particular attention to the relationships between the diversity and network structure of soil bacterial and fungal communities and SOC mineralization. A 3-year field experiment was conducted comprising five treatments: no fertilization, conventional fertilization, and conventional fertilization with three rates of biochar amendments. Biochar amendments considerably increased soil moisture capacity and pH and subsequently shaped the composition and co-occurrence networks of soil bacterial and fungal communities. Importantly, network analysis revealed that the biochar amendments triggered the competitive interaction with putative keystone taxa in the bacterial and fungal networks. Structural equation modeling suggested that the competitive interaction with keystone taxa promoted bacterial and fungal diversity and consequently reduced carbohydrate catabolism and soil metabolic quotient. Stable isotope probing incubations further provided consistent evidence of competition by keystone taxa with the increases in bacterial and fungal diversity under the biochar amendments. Conclusions We found that biochar-induced competition with keystone taxa stimulated the bacterial and fungal diversity and consequently decreased SOC mineralization. The comprehensive understanding of the unexplored biological mechanisms underlying the biochar-induced negative priming may provide crucial implications for enabling SOC sequestration. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s40168-019-0693-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competitive interaction with keystone taxa induced negative priming under biochar amendments

et al. 2019

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“…Compared to Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria were higher in the present study and showed a shift in the community structure. Biochar increased the soil pH due to its alkaline nature, which would lead to the abundance of Gram-negative bacteria compared to Gram-positive bacteria (Feng and Zhu 2017; Murray et al 2015).…”

Section: Soil Microbial Community Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Short-term impacts of biochar and manure application on soil labile carbon fractions, enzyme activity, and microbial community structure

Sandhu

Sekaran

Ozlu

et al. 2019

Biochar

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Biochar is known to ameliorate soil fertility and increase crop yield; however, information regarding its effects on soil chemical and biological properties remains limited. The experiment was conducted to study the short-term impacts of different types of biochar on soil C fractions, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure at depositional and eroded landscape positions at different sampling times [before planting, after planting, and after harvesting of soybean (Glycine max L.)]. Three biochar materials, produced from C-optimized gasification of corn (maize, Zea mays L.) stover (CS), ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Lawson and C. Lawson) wood residue (PW), and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) (SG), and dairy manure (DM) and mixture of dairy manure and pinewood biochar (DMP), were applied at a rate of 10 Mg ha −1 to depositional and eroded landscape positions. Data showed that the application of DMP and sole application of DM treatments significantly increased the labile C fractions at the depositional and eroded landscapes. The addition of DM and DMP increased the activities of β-glucosidase and urease enzymes, and those are involved in C and nitrogen cycling at depositional and eroded landscape positions. There were no significant differences between different biochar materials. However, there was an increase in soil microbial community structure in the DM and DMP treatments at both the landscape positions. In conclusion, our study revealed that DMP and sole application of DM influenced the soil labile C pool, enzyme activities, and microbial community structure at both the landscape positions for different sampling times. Article Highlights• Application of DMP and DM significantly increased the labile C fractions at both the landscape positions. • DM and DMP application increased the soil enzymatic activities. • DM and DMP treatments significantly increased the soil microbial community structure.

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“…When showing priming as X e − X c (Naisse et al 2015b;Yousaf et al 2017), X e was calculated by the addition of X c . For other cases (Murray et al 2015;Kerré et al 2016;Sheng et al 2016;Luo et al 2017), it was calculated by the combination of the above equations. If we were unable to calculate X e and X c , the study was excluded from data collection.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A meta-analysis and critical evaluation of influencing factors on soil carbon priming following biochar amendment

et al. 2017

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Purpose Previous studies have found biochar-induced effects on native soil organic carbon (NSOC) decomposition, with a range of positive, negative and no priming reported. However, many uncertainties still exist regarding which parameters drive the amplitude and the direction of the biochar priming. Materials and methods We conducted a quantitative analysis of 1170 groups of data from 27 incubation studies using boosted regression trees (BRTs). BRT is a machine learning method combining regression trees and a boosting algorithm, which can effectively partition independent influences of various factors on the target variable in the complex ecological processes. Results and discussion The BRT model explained a total of 72.4% of the variation in soil carbon (C) priming following biochar amendment, in which incubation conditions (36.5%) and biochar properties (33.7%) explained a larger proportion than soil properties (29.8%). The predictors that substantially accounted for the explained variation included incubation time (27.1%) and soil moisture (5.0%), biochar C/N ratio (6.2%), nitrogen content (5.5%), pyrolysis time during biochar production (5.1%), biochar pH (4.5%), soil C content (5.2%), sand (4.7%) and clay content (4.1%). In contrast, other incubation conditions (temperature, biochar dose, whether nutrient was added), biochar properties (biochar C, feedstock type, ash content, pyrolysis temperature, whether biochar was activated) and soil properties (nitrogen content, silt content, C/N ratio, pH, land use type) had small contribution (each < 4%). Positive priming occurred within the first 2 years of incubations, with a change to negative priming afterwards. The priming was negative for low N biochar or in high-moisture soils but positive on their reverse sides. The size of negative priming increased with rising biochar C/N ratio, pyrolysis time and soil clay content, but deceased with soil C/N ratio. Conclusions We determine the critical drivers for biochar effect on native soil organic C cycling, which can help us to better predict soil C sequestration following biochar amendment.

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The stability of low- and high-ash biochars in acidic soils of contrasting mineralogy

Cited by 23 publications

References 46 publications

Competitive interaction with keystone taxa induced negative priming under biochar amendments

Competitive interaction with keystone taxa induced negative priming under biochar amendments

Short-term impacts of biochar and manure application on soil labile carbon fractions, enzyme activity, and microbial community structure

A meta-analysis and critical evaluation of influencing factors on soil carbon priming following biochar amendment

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