The cultivation of bioenergy plants in fertile, arable lands increasingly results in new land use conflicts with food production and cannot be considered as sustainable. Marginal lands have been frequently considered as potential alternatives for producing bioenergy from biomass. However, clear definitions and assessment methods for selecting marginal lands and for calculating potentials are still widely missing.The project "SEEMLA" aims at triggering the exploitation of currently underused marginal lands for biomass production for energy purposes. Study sites have been selected in different European countries: Germany, Greece, and Ukraine. The selected sites represent a wide variety of different types of marginal lands. Based on a soil assessment set given by the Muencheberg Soil Quality Rating (SQR) system potentially "marginal" sites have been investigated. The SQR system allows for clearly distinguishing between soils of higher and lower quality. Soils with SQR scores below 40 are regarded as "marginal". They can be classified into different groups with regard to the importance of soil hazard indicators as evaluated by the SQR approach. The calculated SQR scores correlate significantly with biomass yields of bioenergy plants.Further, the SQR method was adapted for use in a GIS study on marginal-land potentials in Europe. Thus, 46 % of the investigated European area could be classified as "marginal" with SQR scores below 40. From that area 22.6 % can be considered as potentially suitable for producing renewable resources after eliminating protected sites or other places not suitable for any kind of land use. Taking the ecological demands of selected bioenergy plants into account it is possible to give first preliminary recommendations for regional crop cultivation.It can be concluded that Europe offers a large potential for renewable resources from marginal sites. However, the implementation into practice is often impeded by missing or varying policies and regulations. A proper implementation needs clear regulations and also incentives for farmers at the European level.
Abstract:The contribution of different anthropogenic source-sectors on ozone mixing ratios and PM2.5 concentrations over Europe is assessed for a summer month (July 2006) using the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Models-3 framework and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) anthropogenic emissions for 2006. Anthropogenic emission sources have been classified into 10 different Standard Nomenclature for Air Pollution (SNAP) categories. The road transport category, which is mainly responsible for NOX emissions, is estimated to have the major impact on Max8hrO3 mixing ratio suggesting an increase of 6.8% on average over Europe, while locally it is more than 20%. Power generation category is estimated to have the major impact on PM2.5 concentrations since it is the major source of SO2 emissions, suggesting an increase of 22.9% on average over Europe, while locally it is more than 60%. Agriculture category is also contributing significantly on PM2.5 concentrations, since agricultural activities are the major source of NH3 emissions, suggesting an increased by 16.1% on average over Europe, while in regions with elevated NH3 emissions the increase is up to 40%.
Abstract. Air quality over Europe using Models-3 (i.e., CMAQ, MM5, SMOKE) modelling system is performed for winter (i.e., January 2006) and summer (i.e., July 2006) months with the 2006 TNO gridded anthropogenic emissions database. Higher ozone mixing ratios are predicted in southern Europe while higher NO 2 levels are simulated over western Europe. Elevated SO 2 values are simulated over eastern Europe and higher PM 2.5 concentrations over eastern and western Europe. Regional average results suggest that NO 2 and PM 2.5 are underpredicted, SO 2 is overpredicted, while Max8hrO 3 is overpredicted for low mixing ratios and is underpredicted for the higher mixing ratios. However, in a number of countries observed and predicted values are in good agreement for the pollutants examined here. Speciated PM 2.5 components suggest that NO 3 is dominant during winter over western Europe and in a few eastern countries due to the high NO 2 mixing ratios. During summer NO 3 is dominant only in regions with elevated NH 3 emissions. For the rest of the domain SO 4 is dominant. Low OC concentrations are simulated mainly due to the uncertain representation of SOA formation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.