[quote=dbd][quote=Steve C]What are we supposed to do? [/quote]
1) Don't rob carbon otherwise destined for the soil from places that don't have carbon to spare. Park regulations attempt to provide guidance here.
2) Don't bring in fuel (or anything else) to burn that contains anything but hydrogen, carbon and oxygen.
[/quote]
Again two very good points.
1) Carbon conservation. Not as simple as "just say no". As you look at the sparse organic matter in the litter and duff layers in a subalpine forest, realize that most of the carbon you are looking at is headed more or less straight to the atmoshpere in the form of CO2, during the decomposition process. In wet areas, add a little methane to that mix. A very small amount will make it through that process to become part of the soil carbon, mostly as humate. That's the dark matter in the topsoil, such as it is, in these high forests. And there isn't much humate in say foxtail pine forest soil, so every little bit counts, hence the high elevation fire ban.
The typical campfire upsets this delicate process by sending a tremendous amount of biomass directly into the atmosphere as CO2. What it leaves behind is mostly locked out of the carbon/nutrient cycle because it is either large chunks of charcoal, or if unburned, torrefied wood. Torrefied wood is wood that has been partially charred - brown but not black - and does not contribute to soil carbon because it is rendered inert: essentially inedible to the microorganisms of the decomposition process. Like that log someone threw into the campfire thatdidn;t burn but sat and cooked all night. So there it sits.
The gasifying stove does something a little different: it leaves no torrefied wood. The combustion process sends half of the carbon content of whatever it is burning directly to the atmosphere as CO2, less than would end up there as a result of natural decomposition . But what happens to the rest is more interesting. If you snuff the stove when the flame dies down, you get about half the carbon content in the form of very pure charcoal. But unlike the campfire charcoal, this stiff is granular-to-powdery and disperses in the soil where it does some interesting things.
Although it is biologically inert (it doesn't get eaten by anything) it works in much the same way carbon in say an aquarium filter works: it hangs on to organics, and provides habitat for microorganisms far beyond the capacity of mineral soil. So net, it holds more soil organic carbon - and holds it longer - than would be there if you just let that 2 ounces or so of forest litter sit there and decompose and leach away into the runoff and groundwater.
SO two points could be made: that the total amount of carbon involved is very small, and because of the way it is made and distributed, is a slight net gain to soil organic carbon where this is practiced.
Oh yes, and a third: the distribution of char in this manner is highly carbon negative: every ounce of carbon applied in this way represents somewhere between 9 and 14 ounces of CO2 equivalent carbon removal from the atmosphere.
2) Composition of fuels. Paper is overwhemingly wood pulp, made up of long chain carbohydrates cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin (all roughly the same CH and O ratios as sugar and alcohol. Polyethylene is a hydrocarbon(C2H4)nH2, where n is the number of links in the polymer chain. OK the paper also has a little calcium carbonate (limestone) titanium dioxide and clay, but compared to the nutrients, urea etc we each introduce into the wilderness areas we visit (with the possible exception of the WZ where wag bag is policy) the milligrams of paper ash left with the biochar are insignificant.
Now balance this against the cumulative effect of all those fossil hydrocarbon fuels we carry to fuel our Dragonflies and Jet Boils and what have we, I come up heavily on the side of the wood gas stove for conservation.
Now to convince NPS and USFS . . .
