Abstract
As energy policies mandate increases in bioenergy production, new research supports growing bioenergy feedstocks on marginal lands. Subsequently there has been an increase in published work that uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map the availability of marginal land as a proxy for bioenergy crop potential. However, despite the similarity in stated intent among these works a number of inconsistencies remain across studies that make comparisons and standardization difficult. We reviewed a collection of recent literature that mapped bioenergy potential on marginal lands at varying scales, and found that there is no common working definition of marginal land across all of these works. Specifically, we found considerable differences in mapped results that are driven by dissimilarities in definitions, model framework, data inputs, scale and treatment of uncertainty. Most papers reviewed here employed relatively simple GIS overlays of input criteria, distinct thresholds identifying marginal land, and few details describing accuracy and uncertainty. These differences are likely to be major impediments to integration of studies mapping marginal lands for bioenergy production. We suggest that there is future need for spatial modeling of bioenergy, yet further scholarship is needed to compare across countries and scales to understand the global potential for bioenergy crops.
Highlights
As energy demands increase globally, there is a growing pressure for renewable energy sources to help meet requirements and simultaneously mitigate for climate change
Through this lens we developed a framework to evaluate the other work based on several factors: we first examined the various definitions of marginal land given, investigated how each working definition is implemented in spatial models through model choice, data selection, scale, and treatment of uncertainty
We examined a collection of recent literature that describes the mapping of bioenergy potential across space and scale
Summary
As energy demands increase globally, there is a growing pressure for renewable energy sources to help meet requirements and simultaneously mitigate for climate change. Energy policies around the world are progressively mandating increases in bioenergy production, and most are targeting second generation non-food biofuels that promise to be more environmentally sustainable than first generation crop-based biofuels (e.g., corn and soy) if they can be designed and managed appropriately [4,5,6,7]. In 2007 China’s policies proclaimed a shift to non-food biofuels, which are expected to exceed 12 million tons by 2020 [9] As these ambitious policies mandating biofuel production are implemented, they often come ahead of the provision of reliable and accountable information on the extent of lands available for such a purpose [10]. In the United States alone, somewhere between 16 million and 21 million hectares (Mha) of non-crop land would be needed to meet the EISA target for cellulosic ethanol by
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