Robin L. Graham

Biomass as Feedstock for A Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are both strongly committed to expanding the role of biomass as an energy source. In particular, they support biomass fuels and products as a way to reduce the need for oil and gas imports; to support the growth of agriculture, forestry, and rural economies; and to foster major new domestic industries--biorefineries--making a variety of fuels, chemicals, and other products. As part of this effort, the Biomass R&D Technical Advisory Committee, a panel established by the Congress to guide the future direction of federally funded biomass R&D, envisioned a 30 percent replacement of the current U.S. petroleum consumption with biofuels by 2030. Biomass--all plant and plant-derived materials including animal manure, not just starch, sugar, oil crops already used for food and energy--has great potential to provide renewable energy for Americas future. Biomass recently surpassed hydropower as the largest domestic source of renewable energy and currently provides over 3 percent of the total energy consumption in the United States. In addition to the many benefits common to renewable energy, biomass is particularly attractive because it is the only current renewable source of liquid transportation fuel. This, of course, makes it invaluable in reducing oil imports--one of our most pressing energy needs. A key question, however, is how large a role could biomass play in responding to the nations energy demands. Assuming that economic and financial policies and advances in conversion technologies make biomass fuels and products more economically viable, could the biorefinery industry be large enough to have a significant impact on energy supply and oil imports? Any and all contributions are certainly needed, but would the biomass potential be sufficiently large to justify the necessary capital replacements in the fuels and automobile sectors? The purpose of this report is to determine whether the land resources of the United States are capable of producing a sustainable supply of biomass sufficient to displace 30 percent or more of the countrys present petroleum consumption--the goal set by the Advisory Committee in their vision for biomass technologies. Accomplishing this goal would require approximately 1 billion dry tons of biomass feedstock per year.

Indices of landscape pattern

Landscape ecology deals with the patterning of ecosystems in space. Methods are needed to quantify aspects of spatial pattern that can be correlated with ecological processes. The present paper develops three indices of pattern derived from information theory and fractal geometry. Using digitized maps, the indices are calculated for 94 quadrangles covering most of the eastern United States. The indices are shown to be reasonably independent of each other and to capture major features of landscape pattern. One of the indices, the fractal dimension, is shown to be correlated with the degree of human manipulation of the landscape.

U.S. Billion-ton Update: Biomass Supply for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry

The Report, Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply (generally referred to as the Billion-Ton Study or 2005 BTS), was an estimate of “potential” biomass within the contiguous United States based on numerous assumptions about current and future inventory and production capacity, availability, and technology. In the 2005 BTS, a strategic analysis was undertaken to determine if U.S. agriculture and forest resources have the capability to potentially produce at least one billion dry tons of biomass annually, in a sustainable manner—enough to displace approximately 30% of the country’s present petroleum consumption. To ensure reasonable confidence in the study results, an effort was made to use relatively conservative assumptions. However, for both agriculture and forestry, the resource potential was not restricted by price. That is, all identified biomass was potentially available, even though some potential feedstock would more than likely be too expensive to actually be economically available. In addition to updating the 2005 study, this report attempts to address a number of its shortcomings

A geographic information system-based modeling system for evaluating the cost of delivered energy crop feedstock.

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for understanding the geographic context of bioenergy supplies is discussed and a regional-scale, GIS-based modeling system for estimating potential biomass supplies from energy crops is described. While GIS models can capture geographic variation that may influence biomass costs and supplies, GIS models are not likely to handle uncertainty well and are often limited by the lack of spatially explicit data. The presented modeling system estimates the costs and environmental implications of supplying specified amounts of energy crop feedstock across a state. The system considers where energy crops could be grown, the spatial variability in their yield, and transportation costs associated with acquiring feedstock for an energy facility. The modeling system was used to estimate potential switchgrass costs and supplies in eleven US states. Transportation costs increased with increased facility demand and were lowest in Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota and highest in South Carolina, Missouri, Georgia, and Alabama. Farmgate feedstock costs were lowest in Alabama, North Dakota and South Dakota and highest in Iowa and Nebraska. Across the eleven states, delivered feedstock costs ranged from

Assessing ecological risk on a regional scale

33 to

Ecological Risk Assessment at The Regional Scale

55/dry tonne to supply a facility requiring 100,000 tonne/yr. Delivered feedstock costs for a 630,000 tonne/yr facility ranged from

Critical factors to bioenergy implementation

36 to

Interactions among bioenergy feedstock choices, landscape dynamics, and land use

58/dry tonne.

How Increasing CO2 and Climate Change Affect Forests

Society needs a quantitative and systematic way to estimate and compare the impacts of environmental problems that affect large geographic areas. This paper presents an approach for regional risk assessment that combines regional assessment methods and landscape ecology theory with an existing framework for ecological risk assessment. Risk assessment evaluates the effects of an environmental change on a valued natural resource and interprets the significance of those effects in light of the uncertainties identified in each component of the assessment process. Unique and important issues for regional risk assessment are emphasized; these include the definition of the disturbance scenario, the assessment boundary definition, and the spatial heterogeneity of the landscape.

A technique for extrapolating and validating forest cover across large regions - Calibrating AVHRR data with TM data

Ecological risk assessments are used by policy makers and regulatory agencies for balancing and comparing ecological risks associated with environmental hazards. An approach for regional-scale ecological risk assessment is described and demonstrated by modeling environmental risks associated with elevated ozone in a forested region. The demonstration illustrates (1) how a regional-scale risk assessment might be done, (2) the importance of spatial characteristics in considering regional-scale risk, and (3) the necessity of considering terrestrial and aquatic linkages. Generic problems often encountered when doing regional assessments, the foremost of which is the frequent lack of region-specific information and spatial data, are also highlighted. In the demonstration, two levels of elevated ozone and five different at-risk regional features are considered (forest cover, forest edge, forest interior, landscape pattern, and lake water quality). The mechanism for impacts on these features is ozone-induced stress in coniferous trees, patches of which can then be killed by bark beetle attacks. A stochastic spatial model of land-cover change is developed to evaluate the risks or probabilities of significant changes in the selected ecological features as a consequence of these ozone-triggered beetle attacks. Risk to regional water quality of lakes is evaluated by linking the land-cover output from the spatial stochastic model to an empirical water-quality model that is sensitive to land-cover changes within a lakes watershed. The risk analysis shows that those environmental features that are sensitive to the location of coniferous forest (such as forest edge) are at risk of a significant change due to ozone-induced conifer mortality even though overall coniferous forest cover is only slightly affected. The analysis also suggests a high probability of changes in regional water quality of lakes as a consequence of location-specific forest-cover change.