These days, the riddle isn’t “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

Instead, it’s: “What do we do with the waste they leave behind?”

A team of West Virginia University researchers and poultry producers think they might have the answer.

Josh Frye, a poultry farmer in Wardensville, W.Va., has been using chicken manure as fuel to heat his poultry houses. The byproduct of that process, called biochar, has proven to be a highly prized fertilizer that also helps return carbon to the soil instead of releasing it into the atmosphere.

WVU’s Environmental Research Center, in partnership with Frye and the International Biochar Initiative, has received a grant from the Blue Moon Fund to see if biochar has another potential benefit: restoring soils at sites disturbed by coal extraction.

The ultimate goal, according to project manager Walter Veselka, is “to help facilitate a poultry-based biochar market that can be used to restore and remediate abandoned mined land soils, while concurrently reducing nutrient inputs into the Chesapeake Bay.”

Poultry is one of West Virginia’s top agricultural commodities, and the industry has struggled to come to terms with the impact of waste on the Bay’s water quality. WVU researchers have spent decades developing means of mitigating the impact of coal extraction on soils and landscapes.

“We view this as an opportunity to create positive, environmental, synergies between two of West Virginia’s most environmentally maligned industries – poultry farming and coal extraction,” said Veselka, a wildlife biologist at the Environmental Research Center.

“This has a real possibility of improving environmental conditions on multiple fronts, not only in the Bay watershed by reducing nutrient inputs, but also by increasing the rate of reforestation and environmental regeneration on abandoned minelands as well as the value provided by the carbon sequestered in the ground as a biochar amendment rather than lost to the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas,” Veselka added.

Frye initially obtained the gasification system to heat his poultry houses as part of a Natural Resources Conservation Service grant in 2006 to Coaltec Energy USA, Inc. On the advice of Tom Basden, WVU Extension Service nutrient management specialist, Frye explored modifying the technology to produce nutrient-rich biochar instead of just ash. Frye has been supplementing his poultry production income with fertilizer sales. He’s also generated a great deal of interest in replicating his system, and he’s been profiled by media outlets such as USA Today.

By working with Frye, a local West Virginia farmer, the ERC is not simply completing an academic exercise but will be able to see the entire supply chain from biochar creation to application, creating meaningful tangible results associated with a name and a face.

“This has the potential to make positive economic changes in the daily lives of many West Virginians, while improving ecological stewardship for all,” Veselka said.

The project will begin in the laboratory, with Louis McDonald, a professor of environmental soil chemistry and soil fertility in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, establishing a scientific baseline on biochar’s potential impacts on soils. This will be followed by determination of just how much carbon biochar can lock in the soil instead of releasing it in the form of greenhouse gases.

Then, field tests on plots of abandoned mine land will begin, led by Jeff Skousen, a professor of soil science in the Davis College and the WVU Extension Service’s land reclamation and acid mine drainage specialist.

Nutritionally revitalized mined lands could become future economic opportunities in the form of biofuels such as switchgrass, and could help alleviate the reclamation liability of these former mined lands. In doing so, even on a limited scale, it will create a stable and consistent demand for poultry biochar by industry.

The goal of WVU’s Environmental Research Center, which was established in 2009, is to provide a center of excellence that effectively informs policy and promotes economic development focused on a sustainable and productive natural environment.

The Blue Moon Fund works to build human and natural resilience to a changing and warming world. The fund uses natural, social, and financial capital to implement new models in high-biodiversity regions around the world. It is currently focused on mission impact investing opportunities as they relate to climate change and the carbon economy.

-WVU-

dw/07/26/11

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