Our greenhouse experiment on lake sediment phosphorus recycling up and running!

Past months we have been busy with collecting, drying and recycling muddy sediments from lakes in Estonia and Finland- and now the sediments are applied to pots in greenhouse and ryegrass thriving in them.

 

The experiment is a part of the project searching ways of sustainable lake restoration by sediment removal and subsequent sediment phosphorus (P) reuse in agriculture. As we know, large amounts of P are concentrated in lake sediments, and water quality problems (eutrophication) are often related to the release of this P. At the same, the scarcity of mineral P resources is challenging future society. Hence we focus holistically on both lake ecosystem functioning and agroecological sustainability.

Such a practice appeared to be successful in our pilot study area Lake Mustijärv (in central Estonia). In the lake, changes in P release from sediments were related to the variations in iron-bound P (Kiani et al., 2020). At the same time, this fraction was the major source of P for the grass uptake in the experimental study on the sediment P reuse (Kiani et al., 2021). Our recent studies of the four eutrophic lakes in southern Finland (Päijät-Häme region) revealed similarity of the mechanisms behind sediment P release, indicating a high potential for the sustainable model of lake restoration by sediment removal and reuse in agriculture in these lakes. However, the bioavailability of the sediment P is likely low, as soils (and sediments) in Finland are saturated with iron.

In our latest experiment, we explore whether biochar, lime and arbuscular mycorriza can improve the availability of sediment P for crops (ryegrass). We test the fertilizing ability of sediments from the four lakes of the Päijät-Häme region (Enonselkä basin of Lake Vesijärvi, Matjärvi, Kutajärvi, Kymijärvi), but also from two Estonian lakes having different geology. The results will be extrapolated for larger areas, based on the sediment properties from a variety of lakes in southern Finland analysed within the project.

The project is led by Dr Olga Tammeorg (Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, University of Helsinki) in synergy with our AgriChar Research group. We acknowledge particularly Päijät-Häme Regional Fund of Finnish Cultural Foundation and Niemi Foundation for providing funding and our Dream Team of hard-working assistants from France: Lena, Jeanne, Diane, Kevin for all their help. Finally, we highly appreciate the support of Vesijärvi Foundation and City of Lahti and University of Tartu, especially Dr Tanel Vahter for collaboration.

 

We wish everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2022!

New recycling fertilizer experiments & growing season 2021 sample analyses ongoing

 We are happy to announce that our new recycling fertilizer experiments focusing on granular fertilisers based on oil-shale ash and lime enriched with essential soil nutrients is past the laboratory testing phase. In this project we work in synergy with Estonian NGO Soil Innovation Cluster and Estonian University of Life Sciences, University of Tartu  and Ekosovellus and the aim of our work package is to test most suitable fertilizer recipes for their liming and fertilisation efficiency first in lab tests and then in lab incubation. 

Lab and greenhouse tests of new granular organic fertilisers in Helsinki.

 

The recipes include mainly oil shale ash, dolomite, limestone, meat bone meal and vinasses in different proportions and currently we are finalizing report on the lab tests. Some of the fertilisers were comparable to limestone in regards of liming efficacy and also were quite promising with their fertilising properties. Now in winter we are continuing with the next step, greenhouse experiment with most promising fertilisers with barley as the crop. Next summer 2022 we will continue to field experiments, stay tuned for the results and check also other interesting results from the Cluster website https://soilprotection.earth!

Naturally, our field experiments have all been also harvested by now and plant and soil samples being currently analysed in labs. The grass yield of long-term biochar experiments was harvested in September, and under the professional coordination of Mari Unnbom, also the yields of HYKERRYS recycling fertiliser experiment were harvested, even the faba beans where we had most challenges this year. The active experimentation and monitoring in HYKERRYS experiments ends this autumn, closing five-year crop rotation 2016-2021 and thus MSc students Heikki Sikanen and Nea Similä study carefully also the longer-term effects on soil aggregate stability and water retention capacity composts and other fertilisers had. 

Harvesting, sampling and analyses of nutrient uptake and soil aggregate stability from our field experiments 2021.

Further, this autumn our research group is strengthened with four amazing trainees from UniLaSalle, France: Kevin Van Assche, Diane Maujoin,  Jeanne Bideault and Lena Jacquot. They have been busy with field sampling, yield analyses as well as what you see in the photo, analyses of nutrient uptake of plants from different fertilisers. A dream team indeed!

 

CarbonPark #HiiliPuisto measurements 2021 complete, news story in national media YLE news

 We visited the #HiiliPuisto #carbon sequestration park in Jätkäsaari Helsinki for the autumn 2021 measurements of trees and they were doing great! We took also some additional soil samples to find out more. As recently our policy brief on general principles of such C parks was published (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2021.672468/full), the flagship national news program of YLE news made a story on the research, too.

 Check out https://areena.yle.fi/1-50621874?seek=849 and read a more thorough story here https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12116000!

 

Thanks to all the team of CarbonLane project and #HiiliPuisto projects for fruitful collaboration! The work was done in collaboration with Aalto University and University of Helsinki and City of Helsinki. The growing media was provided by all major Finnish growing media companies BiHii, Biolan, Carbofex and Kiteen Mato ja Multa, HSY, Kekkilä and Tieluiska. The Carbon Lane project was funded by EIT Climate-KIC and the first follow-up project of the park, #Hiilipuisto, by Maiju ja Yrjö Rikalan Puutarhasäätiö. Thank you all, let's keep up the good work! 

 

Soon we will report the findings of 2020-2021, the first years after the park was established. But we'll continue the follow up in coming decades!

 

Co-Designing Urban Carbon Sink Parks: Case Carbon Lane in Helsinki

 In order to achieve the goals of carbon (C) neutrality within next 20 year, municipalities worldwide need to increasingly apply negative emission technologies. In our latest Policy Brief published in Frontiers in Environmental Science we focus on the main principles of urban demonstration areas using biochars for C sequestration and explore the lessons learned from a co-creation process of one such park, Hyväntoivonpuisto in Helsinki, Finland. 

 

We found that the demonstration sites of urban C sinks in public parks must be safe, visible and scientifically sound for reliable and cost-effective verification of carbon sequestration. We find that different interests can be arbitrated and that synergy that emerges from co-creation of urban C sink parks between stakeholders (scientists, city officials, companies, and citizens) can result in demo areas with maximized potential for impact, dissemination and consideration of principles of scientific experimentation.

We acknowledge the funding for the Carbon Lane project by EIT Climate KIC Early innovation project # 190365, the full report the policy brief is based on is available at https://www.aalto.fi/fi/Carla. We also acknowledge the funding from Maiju ja Yrjö Rikalan Puutarhasäätiö for funding the first follow-up project of the Carbon Lane park, #Hiilipuisto. We are very grateful also for all the stakeholders and scientists who participated the workshops providing input for both the principles and design for the urban C sink parks.

See more:

Co-Designing Urban Carbon Sink Parks: Case Carbon Lane in Helsinki

 

Full report:  https://www.aalto.fi/sites/g/files/flghsv161/files/2020-02/Plan%20for%20the%20Hyv%C3%A4ntoivonpuisto%20demonstration%20area.pdf

 

Growing season 2021 updates and challenges

 The growing season 2021 has once again proved to be special, also for our research group. Our long-term biochar field experiments in Helsinki were fertilised quite late this year as the sowing equipment was busy in HYKERRYS recycling fertiliser fields (wheat, barley and faba bean) and also other field experiments due to heavy rains in May. For instance, in the Helsinki-Vantaa airfield meteorological station, the May 2021 had the all-time highest precipitation, 92 mm, more than double that of long-term average! Many fields in Finland were too wet for sowing until only mid-June, so record late sowing of spring cereals was not only our case :)

 In Viikki experiments we thus had to use the narrow time window sowing equipment was available, that meant also working in the moonshine at midnight. Few weeks later we already harvested first yield of grasses.

In June we also visited our urban carbon fixing biochar park #HiiliPuisto in Jätkäsaari Helsinki, measured all the trees growing in different compost-biochar mixtures (also the ones that were replaced this spring) and also took the samples for water retention characteristics of different growing media from topsoil and also subsoil. The trees are thriving nicely and so do the flower meadows! Currently we're measuring in the laboratory, how much plant-available water can these growing medias hold.

 

Softwood biochars work as long-term slow-release fertilizers: results from 8 year field studies

Since biochar can persist in soil for several thousands of years, the single application of biochar can be expected to produce beneficial agricultural and environmental effects for the long-term. However, there is limited information available about the long-term effects of biochar particularly from the boreal regions. We studied the effects of softwood biochar on plant nutrient uptake dynamics for the first eight years from the two ongoing long-term field experiments with contrasting soil properties: fine textured Stagnosol and coarse textured Umbrisol in Helsinki. In addition, we also investigated the effects of biochar on greenhouse gas emissions and soil physical properties in the long-term.

 

AgriChar team sampling plant samples in 2018

 

 The results were not optimistic since only limited effect of biochar was observed in terms of plant aboveground biomass yield over the eight years in these two fields. However, there were two exceptional growing seasons (barley in 2013 and peas in 2016) when biochar increased plant biomass yield in Stagnosol with higher fertilization rate. We hypothesized that the increased plant biomass yield by biochar in these two cases were the result of pre-crop effect because nitrogen fixing legume or grass were planted in the previous years in both cases. 

The most notable effect of biochar observed was increased plant K content in Umbrisol and decreased plant contents of Al and Na in Stagnosol.  This suggests that biochars can function as a K source in K poor soils and may relieve the salinity and Al toxicity stress of plants. We also studied how the effect of biochar on plant nutrient content change over the time. We found that biochar decreased the plant Mn content while increased the plant Cd and Mn contents over the time in Umbrisol. Similarly, the plant contents of several elements were increased by biochar over the time in Stagnosol. 

 

We found biochar had potential to affect the N₂O emission even after seven years of the biochar application. Whereas, the beneficial effects of biochar on soil physical properties in the initial years disappeared in the long-term.

Check out more: Kalu, S., Simojoki, A., Karhu, K., Tammeorg, P. (2021). Long-term effects of softwood biochar on soil physicalproperties, greenhouse gas emissions and crop nutrient uptake in twocontrasting boreal soils. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. 316: 107454.

Potential of biochar soil amendments to reduce N leaching in boreal field conditions

The leaching of applied nitrogen (N) fertilizer from agricultural fields to the waterways is one of the major environmental issues that lead to algal blooms or eutrophication. The changing climate with warmer winters and increasing precipitation in wintertime further exacerbates the N leaching problem, leading to  increased N leaching to the Baltic Sea in Nordic conditions unless new methods to reduce N leaching are developed and put to practice.

We measured N leaching in the soil amendment field experiment maintained by Soilfood Oy (https://soilfood.fi/en) at Qvidja farm (Päästösäästö project site) in Parainen, south-western Finland (www.qvidja.fi/en). There, we tested the effectiveness of two types of biochars produced from spruce and willow, and a ligneous nutrient fiber (pulp and paper mill side stream) in reducing the leaching of N during the growing season of 2017 and the following winter. We used resin bags placed under the plough layer to collect the dissolved inorganic nitrogen passing through the soil column. The resins were collected at frequent intervals and extracted  to measure the amount of leached ammonium and nitrate. 

Field experiment of PäästöSäästö project in Qvidja

We found that only the studied spruce biochar significantly reduced nitrate leaching by 68% during the growing season of 2017 compared to the corresponding fertilized control. The results were similar during winter, but differences between treatments were less clear because of high variation. Such reduction in nitrate leaching could be mainly due to the physical entrapment of water and dissolved nitrate inside the biochar pores. 

Measurement of leachate from the field.

 

The spruce biochar (328 m² g^-1) had much higher specific surface area than the willow biochar (1.3 m² g^-1). This means that the spruce biochar had more small pores. Such small pores can withhold the percolating water, eventually retaining the dissolved nitrate. This was further supported by increased soil nitrate concentration in the spruce biochar treatments. However, the willow biochar and the nutrient fiber did not clearly reduce the leaching of either ammonia or nitrate. Therefore, the reduction in nitrate leaching is attainable in boreal conditions by applying appropriate type of biochar with a reasonable application rate (21 tons ha^-1). The detailed mechanisms of nitrate retention by biochar requires further study. Investigating the pore structure characteristics of biochars produced from a wide range of feedstock with different pyrolysis techniques and combining such characteristics to nitrate leaching measurements would be needed to facilitate the development of tailored biochars that can efficiently retain nitrate for plant availability and keep it safe from leaching. 

See more: Kristiina Karhu, Subin Kalu, Aino Seppänen, Barbara Kitzler, Eetu Virtanen,
Potential of biochar soil amendments to reduce N leaching in boreal field conditions estimated using the resin bag method, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 2021, 316, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2021.107452. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167880921001560). 

Wood-based biochars reduced N leaching, N2O emissions, enhanced plant uptake of NO3- but reduced the uptake of NH4+

As part of our PhD student Subin Kalu's doctoral study, we have just published a in Biology and Fertility of Soils a greenhouse pot experiment to test the effectiveness of two types of wood-based biochars in reducing N leaching, N₂O emissions, and plant N uptake. Using ¹⁵N tracing technique, we studied the effects of biochars on the fate of added ammonium (¹⁵NH₄⁺) and nitrate (¹⁵NO₃^-) fertilizer.  

 

 The two types of biochars used were a regular biochar and a Kon-Tiki produced nutrient-enriched biochar at two application rates: 1% and 5%. Kon-Tiki is a conical kiln for producing home-made biochar that follows the principle of flame curtain pyrolysis i.e. even though the feedstock seems to be burnt in an open fire, the flame itself acts as a barrier between feedstock and atmosphere maintaining oxygen-free condition. Right after pyrolysis, the hot Kon-Tiki produced biochar was enriched with a cattle-slurry mixture.  

Both the biochars significantly increased plant aboveground biomass by 22–23% at the higher biochar application rate. The biochars significantly reduced NH₄⁺ and NO₃^- leaching by 21–53% and 47–68%, respectively. Similarly, the biochars significantly suppressed N₂O emission by 57–81%. At the higher application rate, the biochars significantly increased plant N uptake by 24%. Interestingly, we found that the biochars increased the plant uptake and soil recovery of added ¹⁵NO₃^- fertilizer. 

These results suggest that the biochars were able to retain highly mobile ¹⁵NO₃^- ions in soil by preventing them from leaching and denitrification. Such retained ¹⁵NO₃^- ions were accessible for plants. On the other hand, biochars decreased the plant uptake and soil recovery of added ¹⁵NH₄⁺ fertilizer although biochar helped to reduce ¹⁵NH₄⁺ leaching. We suspect that added ¹⁵NH₄⁺ fertilizer was lost due to biochar induced ammonia volatilization (conversion of NH₄⁺ to NH₃). Increased soil pH with biochar justifies our reasoning because high soil pH favors ammonia volatilization. 

We also noticed that the significant increase in the plant biomass due to the addition of the biochars was because of the enhanced uptake of N derived from the soil. This suggests that the interactions between biochar and native soil organic N may be important determinants of the availability of soil N to plant growth.  Read more at

Kalu, S., Oyekoya, G. N., Ambus, P., Tammeorg, P., Simojoki, A., Pihlatie, M., & Karhu, K. (2021). Effects of two wood-based biochars on the fate of added fertilizer nitrogen—a 15 N tracing study. Biology and Fertility of Soils, 1-14.