«Kirk routinely assumes the responsibility of liaison between cooperating programs and is responsible for data collections that range from soil sampling to
plant biomass sampling to taking physiological measurements with delicate instrumentation,» Xue said.
In order to characterize the biological properties of soil treated with biochar, the team incorporated torrefied
plant residual
biomass from the biodiesel crop Jatropha curcas into aridisol, a type of soil found in arid regions such as Botswana, and compared several soil properties with
samples that had not been treated.