How have humans changed the Amazon Rainforest?
Well, modern humans slash and burn hasn’t been beneficial at all but two thousand years ago was another story. The natives living there at the time would dig deep pits, fill the pits with wood, start a fire and bury the smoldering fire to make pure charcoal to use with their pottery. As this also impregnated the soil with charcoal, they unwittingly produced an incredibly fertile soil now known as Terra Preta which is treasured as potting soil. The carbon that was sequestered is still in the soil as it was first stabilized as charcoal; this differs from traditional methods of introducing carbon into soils such as composting which releases the carbon as CO2 within a year or two. We can learn a lot from this, we can actually make synthetic fuels from gasification, sequester the charcoal in soil and effectively render the fuel carbon negative removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
