The work of Johannes Lehmann, Professor of Soil and Crop Sciences at Cornell, is receiving renewed attention following last December’s COP21 Paris conference on climate change and the French government’s proposal to sequester carbon in the world’s agricultural soils.

In its cover story Interest in biochar surges, Chemical & Engineering News profiles Lehman’s work:

“Biochar is a heterogeneous material composed of compounds made up of fused aromatic rings. The degree of aromatic linkages in these molecules is directly associated with the time and temperature of pyrolysis, Lehmann says.

He and other researchers use carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance to help reveal the organic chemical structures of biochar and assess how they interact with other substances in the soil. NMR is also a good technique for quantifying the amount of biochar in soil, he says.”

In the article, Lehmann cites the dramatic increase in biochar-related publications in the past decade as well as the increase biochar products being used as soil amendments.

Lehmann was a delegate to COP21 and has recently been named to a list of most influential minds for 2015.

Read the whole article in C&EN
Read a review by Lehmann:  Bio-char Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems