Abbie Clare
- Position:
- PhD student
- Home Page:
- http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/s1159914
- Email:
- s1159914@staffmail.ed.ac.uk
Title of Research: The Competing Uses of Biomass - The Role for Biochar
Biochar has received significant media and research attention for its potential as a waste manager, carbon stabiliser and agricultural amender. However, much of this research has lacked a social dimension, failing to study biochar within the systems context that will eventually determine whether or not it is adopted.
My PhD aims to address this gap, by providing a systems analysis of biochar’s economic, environmental and social suitability to Chinese farming systems. So far I have spent five months touring four case study sites in China, gathering interview data from farmers, academics, Government officials and state-farm managers. This data will be fed into linear programming and cost-benefit analysis models to compare the biochar’s value for agricultural amendment and carbon sequestration, when compared to other competing uses of biomass, labour, and capital.
I am supported by my supervisors, Dr Simon Shackley (University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Andrew Barnes (Scottish Rural College) with funding from these institutions as well as the Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN), the UK Biochar Research Centre and Derek and Maureen Moss.
I also work in partnership with Nanjing Agricultural University, the Beijing Department of Energy, and the World Agroforestry Centre, Kunming, China.
Supervisors:
Dr. Simon Shackley (University of Edinburgh)
Dr. Andrew Barnes (Scottish Agricultural College)
More information and my CV is available from the following webpages:
http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/s1159914
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/abbie-clare/34/a33/3a4