Three years ago all that was left of the Hope Mine near Aspen, Colo., was a lifeless pile of toxic tailings. Bare of vegetation and leaching metals into nearby Castle Creek, it was like countless other remnants of the silver mining industry that once dominated this area.
One year later, the steep slope was green with new life thanks to an ambitious project spearheaded by Jamie Cundiff, '06, using a novel product: biochar.
Coordinated under the auspices of the nonprofit Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, the Hope Mine reclamation was the first project of its kind in the United States to use the charcoal-like substance. Biochar is made by baking organic matter such as wood chips or yard waste in a container with little or no oxygen. The resulting material is like a highly porous sponge that, when placed on soil, helps retain moisture and attract nutrients. And unlike compost, it's a carbon sink, which means it prevents carbon dioxide—a greenhouse gas—from escaping into the atmosphere.
While farmers have been using similar soil enhancers for thousands of years, the modern-day potential of biochar, especially for things like reclamation and carbon sequestration, is still being explored. At the Hope Mine, biochar was mixed with compost at various rates and concentrations to find the "sweet spot" for regrowth and soil moisture. Biochar Solutions, a partner in the project, measured a 313 percent increase in plant growth and three-and-a-half times more moisture retention on the most productive plots at the mine site.
For Cundiff, the positive results stretch far beyond the Hope Mine. The West is increasingly riddled with "carbon liabilities"—dead plants and trees that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—that result from old mine operations, beetle infestations and wildfires. "Dead forests are waiting to further add to the climate crisis," she says, but by using wood from burned or beetle-killed trees or from lumberyard waste to make biochar, and later to restore vegetation on denuded landscapes, "we're looking to turn two problems into a solution."
ACES has budgeted for more biochar work based on the success of the Hope Mine experiment. Building its own biochar maker, a pyrolyzer, is the first step. That's important because biochar was trucked in from a producer 190 miles away for the Hope Mine project, which, paradoxically, resulted in emitting CO2 as a means of sequestering it. The challenge is to build a biochar oven—in ACES' case, a modified 4-foot by 6-foot castaway fuel tank—large enough to produce sufficient amounts of biochar but portable enough to use onsite. And while the technology is simple—ancient agrarian societies used earthen pits and kilns to create the oxygen-free environment to burn the organic matter—the process needs to be done just right to minimize smoke and greenhouse gas emissions.
ACES will use the biochar it produces on small plots of its own land—"creating a closed system," Cundiff notes—and is looking for a site and partnership opportunities for a larger project this summer or fall. The U.S. Forest Service, on whose land the Hope Mine project was carried out, also is eager to do some larger scale biochar work, Cundiff says.
The Forest Service, however, is constrained by ever-shrinking budgets, and production and transportation are just two of the challenges that prevent biochar from being used on a wide scale for restoration and carbon mitigation work. But it's a challenge that Cundiff feels ready to meet.
Growing up in the Cascades town of Sisters, Ore., just across the street from the National Forest boundary, Cundiff's love of forests—and her concern for them—developed from an early age. Her parents were naturalists and her school curriculum integrated the surrounding environment, so she spent a lot of time in the woods.
After her first year at Stanford, where she pursued a degree in geological and environmental science, Cundiff joined a timber crew based in Sisters for the summer. She spent most of the time fighting fires, mostly digging trenches for firebreaks. The experience, which included being posted to a fire in Idaho that killed two firefighters, made her think a lot about traditional forest management practices. "From an environmental perspective you're taught not to touch the forest," she says. "But firefighting taught me that there's a balance: Some fires that are far away from homes and people should be left alone, and some areas, like the urban-wildland interface, maybe should be managed more intensely."
Cundiff initially came to Aspen for a two-year position as an environmental educator at ACES, teaching kindergarten through fourth graders in the classroom and in the field. When a nonprofit group called For the Forest merged with ACES in January 2012, Cundiff was immediately interested in getting involved, so she volunteered, helping to organize a forest symposium among other things, and last September was hired as director of forest programs.
Now working full time on forest health projects, education and outreach, Cundiff says her experiences in the field and in the classroom have coalesced in an ideal way. But the potential to be part of the bigger picture, to play a role in a climate change solution is what's "incredibly exciting," she says. "With new technologies such as biochar, we're looking to turn forests back into carbon sinks. But it's a big shift and it's going to take time."
Catherine Lutz is a freelance writer in Aspen, Colo.
