A new study from U.S. and Brazilian scientists shows that the Amazon Basin could be even more adept at capturing carbon than experts previously realized via a highly nutrient- and carbon-rich soil called terra preta, or “dark earth.” “The ancient Amazonians put a lot of carbon in the soil, and a lot of that is still there today,” University of Miami’s Samuel Goldberg, co-author of a new study, said in a press statement at the time.

“That’s exactly what we want for climate change mitigation efforts. Maybe we could adapt some of their indigenous strategies on a larger scale, to lock up carbon in soil, in ways that we now know would stay there for a long time.”

In this new study, Goldberg and his colleagues set out to discover just how much of this soil might be spread throughout the entire 6-million-acre Xingu Indigenous Park by using satellite images. But because the Amazon’s tree canopy obscures the ground, scientists relied instead on the higher amounts of chlorophyll found in undisturbed trees growing on these ancient middens to indicate regions of dark earth.

Read the full article “Scientists Uncovered the Amazon’s Secret Dark Earth. What if it Saves the World?: This ancient soil buried deep in the forest might just be our greatest hope for the future.“ at PopularMechanics.com.

From Wikipedia:

“Terra preta owes its characteristic black color to its weathered charcoal content, and was made by adding a mixture of charcoal, bones, broken pottery, compost and manure to the low fertility Amazonian soil. A product of indigenous Amazonian soil management and slash-and-char agriculture, the charcoal is stable and remains in the soil for thousands of years, binding and retaining minerals and nutrients.