Biochar: Ten Years After

This is an excerpt from Kelpie Wilson's blog. It shows an example of looking back on biochar that was created 10 years ago, the decision of what to cut in the forest, and using community resources to help fight forest fires and retain a lovable forest section.
John S
PDX OR


I made my first biochar burn piles in the woods ten years ago. The site was a forest plantation with some merchantable timber on the federal land next to our small rural community in Southwest Oregon. The US Forest Service was planning a timber sale there, and the community was opposed to any logging on the site. A popular community trail ran through this forest, and it was right next to many homes.

At that time, we had a district ranger who was interested in working with us to come up with a better alternative that the community could support, so we began a series of meetings to design what we called the Page Creek Project.

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We met for over a year, often out in the forest, to hear from forest ecologists, Forest Service managers, and community members. We talked about forest health, soil impacts of logging, ladder fuels, canopy closure, live fuel moisture, fire resilience, and the possibility of a commercial timber sale.

We all agreed that some trees should come out. The Page Creek Forest was in an unnatural condition. The most common practice of commercial forestry is clear cut logging and replanting with mostly mono-cultures like Douglas fir. The resulting even-aged plantations are not something often seen in nature. Even after a severe fire, what comes back has more diversity.

In the picture below of one of our field trips, you can see how closely the trees are spaced and how the many branches could serve as ladder fuels to carry a fire up into the canopy. A natural forest has more openings and a greener understory with larger trees spaced farther apart. This forest, so close to so many homes, was far more flammable than a primary, un-logged forest.


A community field trip to discuss options for the Page Creek Forest.

The question for our Page Creek Project was how much to take. A key objective for the Page Creek Forest was to maintain canopy closure to keep the understory shaded, cool, and moist. Our long summer droughts are stressful for trees. Keeping the soil moist translates to higher live fuel moisture during the critical summer fire season, and reduces tree mortality from drought stress.

We went through and marked the trees that we thought should be cut. Grayback Forestry did the logging and yarded the small trees out to a neighboring field where we held a pole sale. A year later, as we looked at the result, we decided it was still too thick and marked more trees for another sale.


Buyers bid on the poles we yarded out of the Page Creek Forest. Local folks often use poles to build barns and other outbuildings.

Even after our second cutting of trees, the canopy still looks good and the forest stays cool and shady underneath.


Ten years later, after two logging entries, the canopy is still closed, providing shade for the understory.

While a closed canopy is desirable for shade, on the other hand, too many trees, too close together, will compete with each other for water, and more trees will succumb to drought. In the end, we all felt great about the project, concluding that we did a good job of balancing logging with forest health and fire resilience.

We even started a new group to share the lessons learned, called IV-FROG, the Illinois Valley Fire Resiliency Oversight Group. IV-FROG is now a dynamic community organization, helping local landowners access funding and other resources to do fuels reduction work and expand our Firewise USA neighborhoods.


The Page Creek Forest ten years later. Much better in every way!

I went back to the forest the other day, to take some pictures and have a closer look at the burn piles we lit ten years ago to take care of the leftover logging slash — all the limbs, brush, small logs and and other flammable material left behind after we removed the poles.

I brought a soil corer to see what the soil profile under the burn piles looks like after ten years. We did two kinds of burn piles - conventional piles that burn down to ash until they go out on their own, and biochar burn piles where we quench the piles with water at the glowing coal stage to save the biochar. Most of the biochar we made was left on the ground right where it was made.

I wanted to compare the conventional burns with the biochar burns to see what the soil looks like today. I took a photo of the undisturbed ground and then took a soil core, followed by digging a hole with my trowel to get a look at roots and other material in the soil. I also did this in the ground adjacent to each pile to see what it looked like without any burn pile. Here are the pictures showing what I found:


Biochar Burn Pile #1: Top row is the biochar burn pile. Bottom row is the adjacent, unburned ground. The char was very thick in this pile and it was full of tree roots and mycelium. The adjacent soil was brown with natural forest humus, but also had some clay and lots of tree roots.


Biochar Burn Pile #2: Top row is the biochar burn pile. Bottom row is the adjacent, unburned ground. The char was less thick in this pile. The adjacent soil was brown with natural forest humus.


Biochar Burn Pile #3: Top row is the biochar burn pile. Bottom row is the adjacent, unburned ground. The char was full of tree roots. The adjacent soil was brown and somewhat compacted.


Conventional Burn Pile #1: Top row is the burn scar. Bottom row is the adjacent, unburned ground. There is an inch or so of decomposing fir needles on top, with understory plants growing in it, but underneath is mineral soil with not much in it. The unburned ground was full of tree roots and mycelium


Conventional Burn Pile #2: Top row is the burn scar. Bottom row is the adjacent, unburned ground. You can see a layer of ash in the burn scar core, with mostly mineral soil underneath. The adjacent soil has a lot more humus.

Here are some short video clips that give you a closer look at what I found:

It’s interesting to go back after ten years and see the impact of biochar burn piles on the forest soil. Different sites will look different depending on the soil type, vegetation type, and the thickness of the char layer.

Overall, it seems to me that biochar burn piles are better for forest soils than burning to ash. There was less impact on the understory plants than I expected, but it’s not surprising that after ten years the organic layer would start to come back on a burn scar and support small understory herbs.

The surface appearance of the different kinds burn piles was not extremely different. I had to dig into the ground to determine whether it had been a conventional or a biochar burn by the presence or absence of biochar under the top two inches of needle fall.

The most significant impact is the clear presence of greater tree root density and mycelium in the biochar burn piles. After all, our goal was to support these young trees and help them grow back into a mature, old growth forest.

They say a community becomes great when the elders plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in. But planting trees is not enough. We must also care for them until they can grow into a great community of their own that no longer needs us.

For now, our forests need us, and they need biochar!


The Page Creek Community Forest today.

Please, if you want to learn more about practical biochar tips and tricks for growing your own food, or you are interested in stewardship biochar for restoring natural ecosystems and biodiversity, check out some of my links below:

The Biochar Handbook at Amazon.com

The Biochar Handbook at Bookshop.org

Purchase Kelpie’s Practical Biochar Course

Order your Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln®: RingofFire.earth

Check out my YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@KelpieWilson

Biochar On Site network for practitioners of stewardship biochar

You can also find me on Linked In and Instagram

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© 2026 Kelpie Wilson
PO Box 1444, Cave Junction, OR 97523
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