Biochar

After about a year of effort at work, a partnership and project that I started, came to fruition!  I set in motion and facilitated an effort to both create biochar and apply it to the landscape to study whether or not it could be a useful tool in rehabilitating a burnt landscape.

I partnered with our state and national offices in addition to the Rocky Mountain Research Station out of Moscow, ID to generate the funds for acquiring a biochar pyrolizer and getting it delivered to my district.  Simultaneously, I got my soil scientists to develop proposals for creating and/or applying biochar.  Ultimately I picked and developed the project in the Upper Willamette Field Office which sought to utilize salvage logging slash and then apply it to the landscape as a form of rehabilitation.

Anyway, through trials and tribulations, we finally got the pyrolizer delivered and permitted for operation.  And for two full weeks, we burned slash material and converted it to biochar!  Phase 2 of the project (application to the landscape) is set to take place in mid-May!

Since this is a relative new technology to the BLM, I also got our Public Affairs Department on board with promoting and covering the project and we got several entities to cover the work!

• Eugene Register Guard
• KLCC
• OPB
• Facebook and Instagram