Field trials
- Thematic Strategy:
- Systems & Social
- Key Staff:
- Jason Cook, Jim Hammond
Field trials differ from field experiments in that there is typically less control of all the variables. Field trials usually occur on a commercial farm with the close cooperation of the farmer. They are faced with the constraints and real-world practices of farming including: machinery and equipment, crop rotations, management practices and routines, labour and capital constraints and so on. Biochar has to be deployed in the existing agricultural system if it is to be effective: hence, we need to understand better what the critical constraints, barriers and opportunities to deployment might be from those who will ultimately be undertaking deployment, i.e. the farmer and farm workers. The results of field trials can be difficult to interpret due to the fact that it is very hard, often impossible, to control all the independent variables. As knowledge and experience accumulate, it should be possible to use the results from field experiments and laboratory studies to inform the conduct of field trials. Meanwhile, the results from field trials can be an important source of ideas and hypothesis-generation for field experiments and laboratory work.
Relevant Projects:
- BIOCHARM: Biochar for carbon reduction, sustainable agriculture and soil management
- Biochar Risk Assessment Framework (BRAF)
- Biochar and plant-soil interactions
- Biochar field trials in the UK
- Biochar: Socio-economic and biophysical “fit”
- DAC and other GGR technologies (Phase 2) - Biochar Platform
- EU COST Action
- Interreg IVB North Sea Region: Climate Saving Soils
- Sustainable urban carbon capture - engineering soils for climate change (SUCCESS)
- The analysis of integrating a pyrolysis biochar system within a working arable farm
Publications:
Hammond J 2010. Advancing the science and evaluating biochar systems, write up of the 2nd UKBRC Annual Conference, UKBRC Working Paper 6.
Sohi SP, Shackley SJ, Haszeldine RS, Manning D and Mašek O 2009. Biochar, reducing and removing CO2 while improving soils:A significant and sustainable response to climate change. Evidence submitted to the Royal Society Geo-engineering Climate Enquiry, UKBRC Working Paper 2
Shackley SJ and Sohi SP (eds) 2010. An assessment of the benefits and issues associated with the application of biochar to soil. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, London, UK.
Sohi SP, Lopez-Capel E, Bol R & Krull E. 2010. A review of biochar and its use and function in soil. Advances in Agronomy 105: 47-82
Karve P, Shackley S, Carter S, Anderson P, Prabunhe R, Cross A, Haszeldine S, Haefele S, Knowles T, Field J, Tanger P (2011), Biochar for Carbon Reduction, Sustainable Agriculture and Soil Management (BIOCHARM). A Report for the APN (Asia Pacific Network for Climate Change Research).
Shackley, S., Carter, S., Knowles, T., Middelink, E., Haefele, S., Haszeldine, S. (2012), Sustainable gasification-biochar systems? A case-study of rice-husk gasification in Cambodia, Part II: Field trial results, carbon abatement, economic assessment and conclusions, Energy Policy, 41:618-623
Carter, S. and Shackley, S. (2012) Biochar: Biomass energy, agriculture and carbon sequestration, Boiling Point 60:42-45.
Jeffery, S., Bezemer, T.M., Cornellisen, G., Kuyper, T.W. Lehmann, J., Mommer, L., Sohi, S.P., Van De Voorde, T.F.J., Wardle, D.A., Van Groenigen, J.W. (2013) The way forward in biochar research: targeting trade-offs between the potential wins. GCB Bioenergy 7:1161–1175