Monetizing ecosystem services of perennial wild plant mixtures for bioenergy

Abstract

The transition to a sustainable biobased economy promises to free the economy from its dependence on finite fossil resources by replacing them with biomass derived primarily from agricultural production. However, this often threatens the ecosystem services on which its very existence depends, such as climate regulation, erosion mitigation, and biodiversity conservation. A major challenge is that biomass provision is usually the only ecosystem service directly priced in markets. While there are several studies estimating the monetary value of a wider range of ecosystem services for common food and biomass crops, there is limited information for novel bioenergy cropping systems such as perennial wild plant mixtures (WPM). Therefore, this study assesses the monetary value of key ecosystem services of WPM, i.e. nursery services, recreational value, moderation of extreme events, climate regulation, nutrient cycling, erosion prevention, and the provision of biomass. In addition, three contrasting land use scenarios; parking lot, silage maize (Zea mays L.) cultivation for biogas production; and pristine forest; were used for comparison. While parking lot (0.15 €/ha*yr.) and pristine forest (1691.57 €/ha*yr.) yielded the minimum and maximum values, WPM cultivation (624.82 €/ha*yr.) performed surprisingly well compared to silage maize (653.61 €/ha*yr.). Thus, monetization of ecosystem services other than biomass provision made silage maize and WPM cultivation economically comparable by almost fully compensating for the lower biomass provision of WPM. Consequently, using such information to better reward farmers for more social-ecologically sound bioenergy cropping systems could help policymakers improve agricultural sustainability in the long run.