DISCOVERY AND AWARENESS OF ANTHROPOGENIC AMAZONIAN DARK EARTHS (TERRA PRETA)

DISCOVERY AND AWARENESS OF ANTHROPOGENIC AMAZONIAN DARK EARTHS (TERRA PRETA)
William M. Denevan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
William I. Woods, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

“Somewhere, Something Incredible Is Waiting To Be Known”
Words of a brilliant and wise man, Carl Sagan. And indeed, some of the things
we will be talking about over the next two days are incredible and have only recently
become known. Amazonian dark earth is incredible for its own sake, but even more so
because of its implications for sustained cultivation, energy generation, global
warming, and forest survival. In the Brazilian Amazon these anthropogenc soils are
called terra preta do indio, or black soil from the Indians, mostly created by them
hundreds, even thousands, of years ago.
Our task is to review the history of the discovery, awareness, and early research
on Amazonian dark earths. However given that I am the first presenter, I will begin with a brief introduction to what these soils are.