Call for more papers on Terra preta

Springer-Verlag and Kluwer Academic Publishers have obviously done well with the first two books. Now they want a third. At $400+ a pop I would want a new volume too !
michael

Call for Contributions

“Terra Preta Nova: A Tribute to Wim Sombroek”

Edited by William I. Woods1, Wenceslau Teixeira2, Johannes Lehmann3, Christoph Steiner4, and Antoinette WinklerPrins5

1University of Kansas, USA (wwoods@ku.edu); 2 Embrapa Amazônia Ocidental, Brazil (wgt007@hotmail.com); 3Cornell University, USA (cl273@cornell.edu); 4University of Bayreuth, Germany (christoph.steiner@uni-bayreuth.de); 5Michigan State University, USA (antoinet@msu.edu)

Introduction

Springer-Verlag and Kluwer Academic Publishers have already produced two volumes devoted to the examination of Amazonian Dark Earth soils [(1) Lehmann, Johannes, Dirse C. Kern, Bruno Glaser, and William I. Woods, editors. 2003. Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties and Management. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht; and, (2) Glaser, Bruno, and William I. Woods, editors. 2004. Amazonian Dark Earths: Explorations in Space and Time. Springer-Verlag, Berlin]. This, the third edited volume in the series, will highlight the results of the present research and prospect opportunities provided by these distinctive anthropogenic soils and their potential analogs under development. The soils have been formed by Amerindian occupation before the arrival of Europeans and are still much sought-after for sustainable small-holders settlement. Beginning in the mid-1870s researchers first published reports of these distinctive anthrosols. Since that time the pace of research and interpretation of these soils have varied widely and now, instead of merely a curiosity, these soils are viewed by a variety of disciplines as an essential component of any discussion of sustainability in Amazonia – past, present, and future. These soils demonstrate that the region’s notoriously unproductive soils can be transformed into a permanently fertile resource. This fertility is most likely linked to an anthropogenic accumulation of phosphorus, calcium, and other nutrients and of black carbon as charcoal coupled with the resultant vigorous microbial activity. A research-and-development group called Terra Preta Nova (TPN) and formed by the late Wim Sombroek (ISRIC, Wageningen, The Netherlands) aims at the replication of the formation of such soils on additional sites, this time within a time span of decades rather than centuries. The focus of this research is to develop and provide applications for environmental-friendly management of agricultural landscapes based on sound understanding of the biogeochemical processes. Sombroek, who passed away in 2003, made such fundamental contributions to the study of these distinctive anthrosoils that Wim is now widely referred to as "The Godfather of Terra Preta."

Volume Rationale

Wim Sombroek in his monumental 1966 Soils of the Amazon (Centre for Agricultural Publication and Documentation, Wageningen) not only provided the baseline for the soils of this enormously significant region, but also brought the anthropogenic terra preta (black earth) and terra mulata (brown earth) soils to the attention of the outside world. These soils, Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) as they are now known, have highly elevated organic carbon and nutrient contents relative to surrounding Oxisol and Ultisols. These were created by pre-Columbian Indians and abandoned after Europeans contact and consequent depopulation. Seemingly out of place in a region with weathering rates 100 times those of the mid-latitudes, these soils are significant for the following four reasons:

(1) The soil properties give invaluable information about settlement strategies, carrying capacity and human behavior in prehistoric times. The significance of these data is greatly increased by the fact that there are few early contact documents and archaeological investigations are really only beginning to reveal substantive evidence upon which to make more than site-specific generalizations.
(2) Present utilization of these soils by both Indians and colonists provides an important resource for food production within Amazonia. The anthropogenic dark earths have high soil fertility and are therefore much sought-after for sustainable small-holder settlement efforts.
(3) The high and sustainable soil fertility prompts efforts to recreate these soils for more productive and environmental-friendly crop production. The upland soils in the central Amazon are usually highly weathered and have low nutrient availability. If the techniques of making “terra preta” were known, smallholder farmers would be able to improve their standard of living and the need for clearing new land after degradation of the cropped land would decrease. This would contribute to the preservation of valuable natural resources.
(4) The long-term persistence of the elevated soil organic matter contents has important implications for carbon sequestration in soil. Organic carbon storage is often an order of magnitude higher in the anthropogenic dark earths than in adjacent soils. If the soil organic matter level in other agricultural soils can be increased in the same order, significant amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide can be bound in soil. This may have important effects on climate change.

Invitation

We the editors cordially invite you to participate in this project by contributing a single authored or co-authored chapter for the volume. Our timetable will be tight as to insure a publication date by November 2007 we must submit the final edited copy to Springer by 30 June 2007. Consequently, we would like to receive your prospectus as soon as possible and definitely before 15 January. Please send them to wwoods@ku.edu and Bill will distribute the proposals to the appropriate editors for review. We will review the materials you submit rapidly and get back to you with a firm answer regarding acceptance by 1 February. Based on a projected volume length of 360 pages, it is expected that we will be able to accommodate 35 chapters organized along the four criteria of significance given above. No more than 17 double-spaced pages of draft text without accompanying figures/tables will be permitted for each contribution. Consequently, it may be our recommendation that some chapter proposals be combined with others to both maintain focus and balance and remain within our projected volume size. The timetable for the project is provided below. Please feel free to contact any of us with questions about this endeavor and we sincerely hope that you will be able to participate.

15 January 2007 – All chapter proposals received

1 February 2007 – Proposal comments returned by editors

15 April 2007 – All draft chapters received

15 May 2007 – All draft chapters returned to authors with editor review comments and editing instructions.

7 June 2007 – All chapters returned to the editors for formatting.

30 June 2007 – Volume submitted to Springer

1 November (or earlier) – Volume published by Springer