Paulownia is a hardy tree that can be cultivated on marginal lands and has superior environmental and economic benefits for commercial, afforestation and bioremediation applications. This fast-growing tree is known for its exceptional ability to stabilize and restore highly eroded and contaminated land and is tolerant to harsh desert conditions, requiring minimal water and fertilizers. Moreover, Paulownia's large fuzzy leaves could serve as natural dust suppression to mitigate the harmful health conditions produced by increased toxic playa exposure from the receding Salton Sea and could also serve as habitat for the 375 species of migratory birds that visit the Salton Sea Region on their Pacific Flyway journeys.

As a woody nitrogen fixing species, Paulownia can play a valuable role in agroecological systems by converting atmospheric nitrogen to useable soil nutrients which would improve yield and productivity. Recent research of Paulownia’s nitrogen fixation rates, compared to synthetic ammonia fertilizer, showed in the first 10 years of a plantation system the uptake of nitrogen in a system with 445 trees per acre maximized at 500 pounds per acre per year and averaged 251 pounds per acre per year.

Trees used to bioremediate contaminated soils, known as "phytoremediation," offer promising economic and environmental advantages. Paulownia, possessing a deep root system and high tolerance for heavy metals, is highly suitable for the phytoremediation of contaminated soils according to experiments by researchers in Italy.

Therefore, the agroforestry benefits of Paulownia benefiting the Coachella Valley Agriculture Industry by increasing the carbon and nitrogen fixing and providing ecosystem services are promising.

Furthermore, there are two more benefits of Paulownia inherent in the term "Timber & Carbon Farms". As the fastest growing deciduous tree, Paulownia can produce as much timber volume as an oak in a tenth of the time. Moreover, while other trees can only be harvested once, Paulownia trees sprout back after being coppiced for harvesting every 5 years.

The other benefit is sequestering carbon from the atmosphere and soil. A single Paulownia tree can bind up to 77 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. This is up to 16 tons per acre - four times the CO2 capacity of a mixed forest which is attributed to its large leaves, which can reach a diameter of up to 4 feet. The CO2 remains bound in the wood making a lasting contribution to climate protection.

Paulownia trees require about 500,000 gallons of water per acre and the ideal planting scheme is 300 trees per acre. Therefore, a Paulownia Timber & Carbon Farm would require about 1.5-acre feet of water or about one-half the average California crop.

There are two other plants with potential for developing regenerative biomass farms for the Coachella Valley. Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on the planet reaching up to 36 inches in a day and its biomass can produce numerous sustainable and valuable products. In addition to lumber and pulp for paper and textiles, bamboo is emerging as a leading biomass for producing renewable biofuels. Moringa is the second fastest growing tree on the planet and called the "Miracle Tree" because it provides 7 times more vitamin C than oranges, 10 times more vitamin A than carrots, 17 times more calcium than milk, 9 times more protein than yoghurt, 15 times more potassium than bananas and 25 times more iron than spinach.

My previous blog, Sand to Soil ™ introduced the potential of bentonite clay for transforming desert soil into rich farmland. As a soil amendment, bentonite treatments have the potential to convert thousands of acres of marginal land in the Coachella Valley to productive biomass farms. Catalina BioTech has partnered with the Japan International Research Center for Agriculture Sciences (JIRCUS) to verify and validate the potential of biomass farms for regenerating the Salton Sea environmental battleground.

JIRCUS is a leading institution with extensive experience conducting pilot projects documenting the effect of bentonite for improving soil in silviculture and biomass applications. A team of JIRCUS scientists conducted research on teak seedlings (an important timber species) using bentonite and fertilizer on 2,016 square meters (1/2 acre) of sandy soil in Thailand from July 2014 to November 2015. They compared the growth, biomass, photosynthetic rate, leaf water potential, and concentration of elements in the plant organs among four treatments: control, fertilizer, bentonite and bentonite and fertilizer. The unique and important factor with this pilot project was the planted 520 teak seedlings were clones produced from tissue culture, thus, removing genetics as a variable.

The scientific results of this pilot project were published December 2020 in Forests, a peer-reviewed journal of forestry and forest ecology conﬁrming: 1) Bentonite had high retentivity of phosphorus in fertilizer for mitigating leaching and groundwater pollution. 2) Teak seedlings absorbed nutrients efﬁciently with the application of bentonite and fertilizer. 3) There was greater accumulation of potassium in roots with the application of bentonite. 4) The soil calcium concentration increased, and teak seedlings did not show a calcium deficiency without application of calcium.

The research also showed that water availability was increased and drought stress in the teak seedlings was mitigated with the application of bentonite. Based on the positive effects with the concurrent use of bentonite and fertilizer, teak seedlings showed markedly growth acceleration. In contrast, a single use of bentonite did not clearly accelerate the growth of teak seedlings because of the effect of phosphorus deﬁciency. The single use of fertilizer increased biomass and nutrients in the plant organs; however, the photosynthetic rate was decreased, and drought stress ensued. As a result, the use of fertilizer alone showed high mortality, and did not promote marked growth acceleration.

With a modicum of positive results, as compared to the benefits of bentonite as a soil amendment documented in China, bentonite as a soil amendment, has the potential for the Salton Sea Region to become the future "Biomass Capital of California".