Biochar effects on methane emissions from soils: A meta-analysis
Open accessAbstract
Methane (CH4) emissions have increased by more than 150% since 1750, with agriculture being the major source. Further increases are predicted as permafrost regions start thawing, and rice and ruminant animal production expand. Biochar is posited to increase crop productivity while mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon in soils and by influencing greenhouse gas fluxes. There is a growing understanding of biochar effects on carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluxes from soil. However, little is known regarding the effects on net methane exchange, with single studies often reporting contradictory results. Here we aim to reconcile the disparate effects of biochar application to soil in agricultural systems on CH4 fluxes into a single interpretive framework by quantitative meta-analysis.This study shows that biochar has the potential to mitigate CH4 emissions from soils, particularly from flooded (i.e. paddy) fields (Hedge's d = −0.87) and/or acidic soils (Hedge's d = −1.56) where periods of flooding are part of the management regime. Conversely, addition of biochar to soils that do not have periods of flooding (Hedge's d = 0.65), in particular when neutral or alkaline (Hedge's d = 1.17 and 0.44, respectively), may have the potential to decrease the CH4 sink strength of those soils. Global methane fluxes are net positive as rice cultivation is a much larger source of CH4 than the sink contribution of upland soils. Therefore, this meta-study reveals that biochar use may have the potential to reduce atmospheric CH4 emissions from agricultural flooded soils on a global scale.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Another meta-analysis by Jeffery et al. (2016) drew a contradictory result that biochar has much higher potential to mitigate CH4 emissions in acidic soils.
“Another meta-analysis by Jeffery et al. (2016) also drew a contradictory result that biochar has much higher potential to mitigate CH 4 emissions in acidic soils.”
From Role of biochar toward carbon neutrality (2023) · cites this paper as Jeffery et al. (2016)
A high pyrolysis temperature is favorable for CH4 emission mitigation due to lower available organic carbon content suppressing methanogenesis.
“Besides, a high pyrolysis temperature is also favorable for CH 4 emission mitigation due to lower available organic carbon content suppressing methanogenesis (Jeffery et al. 2016; Ji et al. 2020).”
From Role of biochar toward carbon neutrality (2023) · cites this paper as Jeffery et al. 2016
Cites
Distribution Theory for Glass's Estimator of Effect Size and Related Estimators
Hedges, L. V. (1981) · Journal of Educational Statistics · doi:10.2307/1164588 · Cited by 5,695 · see citing works
The meta-analysis of response ratios in experimental ecology
Hedges, L. V., Gurevitch, J., & Curtis, P. S. (1999) · Ecology · doi:10.1890/0012-9658(1999)080[1150:tmaorr]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 4,704 · see citing works
Jeffery, S., Verheijen, F. G. A., van der Velde, M., & Bastos, A. C. (2011) · Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment · doi:10.1016/j.agee.2011.08.015 · Cited by 2,422 · see citing works
Self-citationA review of biochar and its use and function in soil
Sohi, S. P., Krull, E., Lopez-Capel, E., & Bol, R. (2010) · Advances in Agronomy · doi:10.1016/s0065-2113(10)05002-9 · Cited by 2,240 · see citing works
A Fail-Safe N for Effect Size in Meta-Analysis
Orwin, R. G. (1983) · Journal of Educational Statistics · doi:10.2307/1164923 · Cited by 2,064 · see citing works
Biochar's role in mitigating soil nitrous oxide emissions: A review and meta-analysis
Cayuela, M. L., van Zwieten, L., Singh, B. P., Jeffery, S., Roig, A., & Sánchez-Monedero, M. A. (2014) · Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment · doi:10.1016/j.agee.2013.10.009 · Cited by 1,053 · see citing works
Self-citationRonsse, F., van Hecke, S., Dickinson, D., & Prins, W. (2013) · GCB Bioenergy · doi:10.1111/gcbb.12018 · Cited by 1,000 · see citing works
Karhu, K., Mattila, T., Bergström, I., & Regina, K. (2011) · Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment · doi:10.1016/j.agee.2010.12.005 · Cited by 941 · see citing works
Reducing CH4 and CO2 emissions from waterlogged paddy soil with biochar
Liu, Y., Yang, M., Wu, Y., Wang, H., Chen, Y., & Wu, W. (2011) · Journal of Soils and Sediments · doi:10.1007/s11368-011-0376-x · Cited by 393 · see citing works
Aguilera, E., Lassaletta, L., Sanz-Cobena, A., Garnier, J., & Vallejo, A. (2013) · Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment · doi:10.1016/j.agee.2012.09.006 · Cited by 383 · see citing works
The way forward in biochar research: targeting trade‐offs between the potential wins
Jeffery, S., Bezemer, T. M., Cornelissen, G., Kuyper, T. W., Lehmann, J., Mommer, L., Sohi, S. P., van de Voorde, T. F. J., Wardle, D. A., & van Groenigen, J. W. (2015) · GCB Bioenergy · doi:10.1111/gcbb.12132 · Cited by 305 · see citing works
Self-citationA meta‐analysis on pyrogenic organic matter induced priming effect
Maestrini, B., Nannipieri, P., & Abiven, S. (2015) · GCB Bioenergy · doi:10.1111/gcbb.12194 · Cited by 267 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Joseph, S., Cowie, A. L., Van Zwieten, L., Bolan, N., Budai, A., Buss, W., Cayuela, M. L., Graber, E. R., Ippolito, J. A., Kuzyakov, Y., et al. (2021) · GCB Bioenergy · doi:10.1111/gcbb.12885 · Cited by 1,090 · see citing works
Biochar in climate change mitigation
Lehmann, J., Cowie, A., Masiello, C. A., Kammann, C., Woolf, D., Amonette, J. E., Cayuela, M. L., Camps-Arbestain, M., & Whitman, T. (2021) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/s41561-021-00852-8 · Cited by 970 · see citing works
Self-citationIppolito, J. A., Cui, L., Kammann, C., Wrage-Mönnig, N., Estavillo, J. M., Fuertes-Mendizabal, T., Cayuela, M. L., Sigua, G., Novak, J., Spokas, K., et al. (2020) · Biochar · doi:10.1007/s42773-020-00067-x · Cited by 927 · see citing works
Self-citationBorchard, N., Schirrmann, M., Cayuela, M. L., Kammann, C., Wrage-Mönnig, N., Estavillo, J. M., Fuertes-Mendizábal, T., Sigua, G., Spokas, K., Ippolito, J. A., et al. (2019) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.060 · Cited by 592 · see citing works
Self-citationPokharel, P., Ma, Z., & Chang, S. X. (2020) · Biochar · doi:10.1007/s42773-020-00039-1 · Cited by 390 · see citing works
Role of biochar toward carbon neutrality
Wang, L., Deng, J., Yang, X., Hou, R., & Hou, D. (2023) · Carbon Research · doi:10.1007/s44246-023-00035-7 · Cited by 195 · see citing works
Pyrogenic carbon capture and storage
Schmidt, H., Anca‐Couce, A., Hagemann, N., Werner, C., Gerten, D., Lucht, W., & Kammann, C. (2019) · GCB Bioenergy · doi:10.1111/gcbb.12553 · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Self-citationWang, C., Shen, J., Liu, J., Qin, H., Yuan, Q., Fan, F., Hu, Y., Wang, J., Wei, W., Li, Y., et al. (2019) · Soil Biology and Biochemistry · doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2019.05.012 · Cited by 152 · see citing works
Restoring Abandoned Farmland to Mitigate Climate Change on a Full Earth
Yang, Y., Hobbie, S. E., Hernandez, R. R., Fargione, J., Grodsky, S. M., Tilman, D., Zhu, Y.-G., Luo, Y., Smith, T. M., Jungers, J. M., et al. (2020) · One Earth · doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.019 · Cited by 133 · see citing works
Lu, X., Li, Y., Wang, H., Singh, B. P., Hu, S., Luo, Y., Li, J., Xiao, Y., Cai, X., & Li, Y. (2019) · Agricultural and Forest Meteorology · doi:10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.03.001 · Cited by 111 · see citing works
Policy support for biochar: Review and recommendations
Pourhashem, G., Hung, S. Y., Medlock, K. B., & Masiello, C. A. (2019) · GCB Bioenergy · doi:10.1111/gcbb.12582 · Cited by 105 · see citing works
Biogeochemical potential of biomass pyrolysis systems for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C
Werner, C., Schmidt, H.-P., Gerten, D., Lucht, W., & Kammann, C. (2018) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aabb0e · Cited by 69 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Jeffery, S., Verheijen, F. G. A., Kammann, C., & Abalos, D.
- Affiliations
- Harper Adams University (GB)
- Centro de Estudos do Ambiente e do Mar (PT)
- Hochschule Geisenheim University (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Jeffery, Simon
- Venue
- Soil Biology and Biochemistry
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-10
- Volume
- 101
- Pages
- 251-258
- ISSN
- 0038-0717 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2515693163
- Cited by
- 413
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 52 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 61 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 46 · 2020: 40 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 22 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 2.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- erratum (2017-02-01)
- Open access
- green
- research.wur.nl
- Locations
- Soil Biology and Biochemistry (publishedVersion)
- Harper Adams University Repository (GuildHE Research) (acceptedVersion)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Horizon 2020 (2020)
- Wageningen UR
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BPD/74108/2010)
- Marie Curie
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Peatlands and Wetlands Ecology
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
- Keywords
- biochar, methane emissions, soil methane flux, paddy fields, flooded soil, soil acidity, soil carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, agricultural soils, upland soil, climate change mitigation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
