Recent Land Use Change to Agriculture in the U.S. Lake States: Impacts on Cellulosic Biomass Potential and Natural Lands.

ABSTRACT: Perennial cellulosic feedstocks may have potential to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by offsetting fossil fuels. However, this potential depends on meeting a number of important criteria involving land cover change, including avoiding displacement of agricultural production, not reducing uncultivated natural lands that provide biodiversity habitat and other valued ecosystem services, and avoiding the carbon debt (the amount of time needed to repay the initial carbon loss) that accompanies displacing natural lands. It is unclear whether recent agricultural expansion in the United States competes with lands potentially suited for bioenergy feedstocks. Here, we evaluate how recent land cover change (2008-2013) has affected the availability of lands potentially suited for bio

SUBMITTER: Mladenoff DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4750971 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature