Landscape design has been embraced as a promising approach to holistically balance multiple goals related to environmental and resource management processes to meet future provisioning and regulating ecosystem services needs. In the agricultural context, growing bioenergy crops in specifi c landscape positions instead of dedicated fi elds has the potential to improve their sustainability, provide ecosystem services, and minimize competition with other land uses. However, growing bioenergy crops in sub-productive or environmentally vulnerable parts of a fi eld implies more complex logistics as small amounts of biomass are generated in a distributed way across the landscape. We present a novel assessment of the differences in production and logistic costs between business as usual (BAU, dedicated fi elds), and distributed landscape production of shrub, or short-rotation willow for bioenergy within a US Midwestern landscape. Our fi ndings show that regardless of the mode of cropping, BAU or landscape design, growing shrub willows is unlikely to provide positive revenues (-$67 to -$303 ha -1 yr -1 at a biomass price of $46.30 Mg wet -1 ) because of high land rental costs in this agricultural region. However, when translated into a practice cost per unit of N removed at the watershed scale (range: $1.8-37.0 kg N -1 yr -1 ), the net costs are comparable to other conservation practices. The projected opportunity cost of growing willows instead of corn on underproductive areas varied between -$14 and $49 Mg wet -1 . This highlights the potential for willows to be a cost effective choice depending on the intra-fi eld grain productivity, biomass price and desirable concurrent ecosystem services.
The world is faced with a difficult multiple challenge of meeting nutritional, energy, and other basic needs, under a limited land and water budget, of between 9 and 10 billion people in the next three decades, mitigating impacts of climate change, and making agricultural production resilient. More productivity is expected from agricultural lands, but intensification of production could further impact the integrity of our finite surface water and groundwater resources. Integrating perennial bioenergy crops in agricultural lands could provide biomass for biofuel and potential improvements on the sustainability of commodity crop production. This article provides an overview of ways in which research has shown that perennial bioenergy grasses and short rotation woody crops can be incorporated into agricultural production systems with reduced indirect land use change, while increasing water quality benefits. Current challenges and opportunities as well as future directions are also highlighted. WIREs Energy Environ 2018, 7:e275. doi: 10.1002/wene.275
This article is categorized under:
Bioenergy > Climate and Environment
Bioenergy > Systems and Infrastructure
As the global population increases and becomes more affluent, biomass demands for food and biomaterials will increase. Demand growth is further accelerated by the implementation of climate policies and strategies to replace fossil resources with biomass. There are, however, concerns about the size of the prospective biomass demand and the environmental and social consequences of the corresponding resource mobilization, especially concerning impacts from the associated land-use change. Strategically integrating perennials into landscapes dominated by intensive agriculture can, for example, improve biodiversity, reduce soil erosion and nutrient emissions to water, increase soil carbon, enhance pollination, and avoid or mitigate flooding
Agricultural landscape design has gained recognition by the international environmental and development community as a strategy to address multiple goals in land, water, and ecosystem service management; however, field research is needed to quantify impacts on specific local environments. The production of bioenergy crops in specific landscape positions within a graincrop field can serve the dual purpose of producing cellulosic biomass (nutrient recovery) while also providing regulating ecosystem services to improve water quality (nutrient reduction).The effectiveness of such a landscape design was evaluated by the strategic placement of a 0.8-ha short-rotation shrub willow (Salix miyabeana Seemen) bioenergy buffer along marginal soils in a 6.5-ha corn (Zea mays L.) field in a 6-yr field study in central Illinois. The impact of willow integration on water quality (soil water, shallow groundwater leaching, and crop nutrient uptake) and quantity (soil moisture and transpiration) was monitored in comparison with corn in the willow's first cycle of growth. Willows significantly reduced nitrate leachate in shallow subsurface water by 88% while maintaining adequate nutrient and water usage. Results suggest that willows offer an efficient nutrient-reduction strategy and may provide additional ecosystem services and benefits, including enhanced soil health. However, low values for calculated willow biomass will need to be readdressed in the future as harvest data become available to understand contributing factors that affected productivity beyond nutrient availability.
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