Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
tural problems associated with high sand or silt contents, and, above all,
little or no profile development as characteristic of Inceptisols and Enti-
sols. Floodplain soils have buried soil horizons due to deposition of debris
during the receding floods. Pedogenesis is hardly evident with nondescript
horizonation and poor structure. Thus floodplain soils suffer from moder-
ate to severe physical problems, which are accentuated by their vulnerabil-
ity to flood induced erosion and sedimentation. Still, the course of rivers
exhibits sufficient variability in the extent of these problems. So do we
need to identify the critical factors that make some areas more vulnerable
than the others? In other words, can we identify any critical component
that accounts for these differences in vulnerability?
A large chunk of these problems are related to the physical quality and
can be mitigated by improving the structure and stability of the floodplain
soils. An approach towards this end being considered in this proposition
is adding stabilized carbon such as biochars to the soils and cultivating
horticultural crops for an economic advantage. One of the important goals
of producing biochar and burying it in soils is to sequester atmospheric
carbon perpetually in the soils. The practice of smoldering agricultural
wastes in pits or trenches for increasing soil productivity several centuries
ago by these people, still visible as
Terra Pretta de Indio
or Indian Black
Earths, has found renewed interest in recent years in view of the anthropo-
genic modification of the global carbon cycle. Large amounts of CO
2
are
cycling between atmosphere and plants on an annual basis and most of the
worlds organic C is already stored in soils. Increasing atmospheric CO
2
is
an important global issue and long-term storage of carbon in soil is con-
sidered an important option to mitigate the increasing level of CO
2
in the
atmosphere (Lal, 2009). A similar material called biochar can be produced
artificially when biomass, such as wood, manure or leaves is heated in a
closed container with little or no available air. Biochar application in soils
is a carbon-negative technology and can remove CO
2
on Giga ton scales
to combat climate change because biochar halts the decay process and
captures CO
2
in a virtually permanent carbon stock preventing its rerelease
into the atmosphere. Biochar yields several potential cobenefits such as re-
newable bioenergy, improved agricultural productivity specifically in low
fertility and degraded soils, reduced losses of nutrients and agricultural
chemicals in runoff and improved water holding capacity of soils (Woolf
et al., 2010). Hence, in this proposition, we consider various options of
