A multi-criteria land suitability assessment of field allocation decisions for switchgrass

L. Michael Griffel, Ange Lionel Toba, Rajiv Paudel, Yingqian Lin, Damon S. Hartley, Matthew Langholtz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

With the goal of evaluating biomass resource availability in certain regions in the United States, the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, national laboratories, and Forest Service research laboratories, together with academic and industry collaborators, performed a resource analysis study, 2016 Billion-Ton Report: Advancing Domestic Resources for a Thriving Bioeconomy, Volume 1: Economic Availability of Feedstocks, using POLYSYS model to estimate biomass potential. The study provided county- and state-level biomass potential projections, with biomass feedstock production estimates and suitability assessment of lands acreage likely to transition to energy crops. For this analysis, we estimate biomass supply by year 2028, more specifically, lands acreage transition to switchgrass in the Midwest of the United States, across 50 counties in 3 states (Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado). We propose a multi-criteria site suitability framework, to determine the potential acreage and production for switchgrass, at the field level. Site selection criteria span agronomic and ecosystem services such as previous land cover, crop rotation, soil water holding capacity, crop productivity, field efficiency, topography, soil organic matter, soil leaching propensity, distance to surface water bodies, and soil erosivity. Efficient agricultural field selection for dedicated energy crops field allocation is critical to evaluate biomass resource availability, and it is our position that estimation at the field level would provide a more accurate and useful estimation to support an emerging bioeconomy. Using field suitability scores and county-level assessments, we model land allocation decision for energy crop in the future, estimating the spatial distribution of dynamics of energy crop adoption with priority to fields scoring the highest. Compared with POLYSYS results from the report mentioned above, our method shows good performance overall, with about 2% and 1.2% of difference in switchgrass acreage allocation and crop production, respectively.

Original languageEnglish
Article number108617
JournalEcological Indicators
Volume136
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2022

Funding

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Energy. This manuscript has been authored by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC07-05ID14517 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.

FundersFunder number
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies OfficeDE-AC07-05ID14517
United States Government
U.S. Department of Energy

    Keywords

    • Bioenergy
    • Integrated landscape management
    • Land suitability assessment
    • Multi-criteria decision making
    • Switchgrass

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