Terra Preta Program

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Welcome to the Terra Preta Program!!

Several international conferences in 2013

Several international conferences related to soils, terra preta, and/or biochar will take place this year. Click on the name of the conferences to visit their sites and get more information.

- The 2^nd Brazilian Soil Physics Meeting in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

- The 1^st International Conference on Terra Preta Sanitation in Hamburg (Germany).

- The 2013 North American Biochar Symposium “Harvesting Hope: the Science and synergies of Biochar” in Amherst, USA.

- The International Conference “Biochars, Composts, and Digestates. Production, Characterization, Regulation, Marketing, Uses and Environmental Impact” (BCD 2013) in Bari (Italy).

The Terra Preta Program started in January 2010. It is a 5-year long international and interdisciplinary program focussing on anthropogenic soils (also known as "terra preta") that are found in the Amazon basin. The basic idea of the program is very well summarized in the program's full name:

"Terra Preta do Indio ─ Recovering the Past, Regaining the Future of Amazonian Dark Earths"

In this webpage you will find information about our program, the research topics on which we are focussing, as well as general information on terra preta.

This program is being funded by the Interdisciplinary Research and Education Fund (INREF) of Wageningen University.

Visit us regularly to keep informed of our progress!!

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Articles Published

We are pleased to announce the publication of a paper in the Special Issue of Diversity Genetic Diversity and Molecular Evolution; released in December 2014.

Clara P. Peña-Venegas, Tjeerd Jan Stomph, Gerard Verschoor, Luis A. Becerra Lopez-Lavalle and Paul C. Struik (2014) Differences in Manioc Diversity Among Five Ethnic Groups of the Colombian Amazon. Diversity, 6(4), 792-826

The article is published open source and so is available free of charge here

Successful Thesis Defence

Congratulations to Dr. Sagrilo!

Edvaldo successfully defended his PhD Thesis with the title "Soil and plant responses to pyrogenic organic matter: carbon stability and symbiotic patterns" at the Aula in Wageningen on the 9th December. Edvaldo is the first of the cardumen to defend his thesis. He has now returned to Brazil where he continues to work for Embrapa and we wish him well for his future career!

Upcoming Symposium and PhD Defences

Clara Peña Venegas, Estela Quintero Vallejo and Tatiana Rittl will all defend their PhD theses at the Aula in Wageningen on 1st July 2015. In honour of this event a symposium is planned for the 30th June. The location and speakers will be announced in the near future. Watch this space!