On the Potential of Biochar Soil Amendments as a Sustainable Water Management Strategy

Steve W. Lyon, Benjamin M. C. Fischer, Laura Morillas, Johanna Rojas Conejo, Ricardo Sánchez-Murillo, Andrea Suárez Serrano, Jay Frentress, Chih-Hsin Cheng, Monica Garcia and Mark S. Johnson
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Steve W. Lyon: School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University, Wooster, OH 44691, USA
Benjamin M. C. Fischer: Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden
Laura Morillas: Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
Johanna Rojas Conejo: Water Resources Center for Central America and the Caribbean (HIDROCEC-UNA), Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, Liberia 50101, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Ricardo Sánchez-Murillo: Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Texas, Arlington, TX 78712, USA
Andrea Suárez Serrano: Water Resources Center for Central America and the Caribbean (HIDROCEC-UNA), Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, Liberia 50101, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Jay Frentress: Faculty of Science and Technology, Free University of Bolzano, 39100 Bolzano, Italy
Chih-Hsin Cheng: School of Forestry and Resource Conservation, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
Monica Garcia: Research Centre for the Management of Agricultural and Environmental Risks (CEIGRAM), E.T.S.I. Agronomica, Alimentaria y de Biosistemas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
Mark S. Johnson: Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: Biochar has been put forward as a potential technology that could help achieve sustainable water management in agriculture through its ability to increase water holding capacity in soils. Despite this opportunity, there are still a limited number of studies, especially in vulnerable regions like the tropics, quantifying the impacts of biochar on soil water storage and characterizing the impacts of biochar additions on plant water composition. To address this critical gap, we present a case study using stable water isotopes and hydrometric data from melon production in tropical agriculture to explore the hydrological impacts of biochar as a soil amendment. Results from our 10-week growing season experiment in Costa Rica under drip irrigation demonstrated an average increase in volumetric soil moisture content of about 10% with an average moisture content of 25.4 cm 3 cm −3 versus 23.1 cm 3 cm −3 , respectively, for biochar amended plots compared with control plots. Further, there was a reduction in the variability of soil matric potential for biochar amended plots compared with control plots. Our isotopic investigation demonstrated that for both biochar and control plots, there was a consistent increase (or enrichment) in isotopic composition for plant materials moving from the roots, where the average δ 18 O was −8.1‰ and the average δ 2 H was −58.5‰ across all plots and samples, up through the leaves, where the average δ 18 O was 4.3‰ and the average δ 2 H was 0.1‰ across all plots and samples. However, as there was no discernible difference in isotopic composition for plant water samples when comparing across biochar and control plots, we find that biochar did not alter the composition of water found in the melon plant material, indicating that biochar and plants are not competing for the same water sources. In addition, and through the holistic lens of sustainability, biochar additions allowed locally sourced feedstock carbon to be directly sequestered into the soil while improving soil water availability without jeopardizing production for the melon crop. Given that most of the expansion and intensification of global agricultural production over the next several decades will take place in the tropics and that the variability of tropical water cycling is expected to increase due to climate change, biochar amendments could offer a pathway forward towards sustainable tropical agricultural water management.

Keywords: tropical agriculture; melons; biochar; hydrometric observations; stable water isotopes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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