Hydrologic and water quality responses to biomass production in the Tennessee river basin

Gangsheng Wang; Henriette I. Jager; Latha M. Baskaran; Craig C. Brandt

doi:10.1111/gcbb.12537

Hydrologic and water quality responses to biomass production in the Tennessee river basin

Gangsheng Wang, Henriette I. Jager, Latha M. Baskaran, Craig C. Brandt

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

Reducing dependence on fossil-based energy has raised interest in biofuels as a potential energy source, but concerns have been raised about potential implications for water quality. These effects may vary regionally depending on the biomass feedstocks and changes in land management. Here, we focused on the Tennessee River Basin (TRB), USA. According to the recent 2016 Billion-Ton Report (BT16) by the US Department of Energy, under two future scenarios (base-case and high-yield), three perennial feedstocks show high potential for growing profitably in the TRB: switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus), and willow (Salix spp.). We used the Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to compare hydrology and water quality for a current landscape with those simulated for two future BT16 landscapes. We combined publicly available temporal and geospatial datasets with local land and water management information to realistically represent physical characteristics of the watershed. We developed a new autocalibration tool (SWATopt) to calibrate and evaluate SWAT in the TRB with reservoir operations, including comparison against synthetic and intermediate response variables derived from gage measurements. Our spatiotemporal evaluation enables to more realistically simulate the current situation, which gives us more confidence to project the effects of land-use changes on water quality. Under both future BT16 scenarios, simulated nitrate and total nitrogen loadings and concentrations were greatly reduced relative to the current landscape, whereas runoff, sediment, and phosphorus showed only small changes. Difference between simulated water results for the two future scenarios was small. The influence of biomass production on water quantity and quality depended on the crop, area planted, and management practices, as well as on site-specific characteristics. These results offer hope that bioenergy production in the TRB could help to protect the region's rivers from nitrogen pollution by providing a market for perennial crops with low nutrient input requirements.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	877-893
Number of pages	17
Journal	GCB Bioenergy
Volume	10
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.12537
State	Published - Nov 2018

Funding

This manuscript has been authored by UT‐Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE‐AC05‐00OR22725 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 non‐exclusive, paid‐up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy's Bioenergy Technology Program. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. We thank Tyler F. Baker at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for providing reservoir outflow data. We also thank Michelle Thornton for providing DAYMET data and David Gorelick and Jasmine Kreig for discussion on this study. We appreciate the help of Dr. Ingrid Busch in formulating and solving the optimization to downscale future landscapes using CPLEX solvers. In addition, we appreciate the insightful reviews of Drs. Shih-Chieh Kao and Sujithkumar Surendran Nair. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Funders	Funder number
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
Oak Ridge National Laboratory	DE-AC05-00OR22725
Tennessee Valley Authority

Keywords

SWAT
Tennessee River Basin
bioenergy crops
biomass production
spatiotemporal evaluation
water quality

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1111/gcbb.12537

Cite this

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abstract = "Reducing dependence on fossil-based energy has raised interest in biofuels as a potential energy source, but concerns have been raised about potential implications for water quality. These effects may vary regionally depending on the biomass feedstocks and changes in land management. Here, we focused on the Tennessee River Basin (TRB), USA. According to the recent 2016 Billion-Ton Report (BT16) by the US Department of Energy, under two future scenarios (base-case and high-yield), three perennial feedstocks show high potential for growing profitably in the TRB: switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus), and willow (Salix spp.). We used the Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to compare hydrology and water quality for a current landscape with those simulated for two future BT16 landscapes. We combined publicly available temporal and geospatial datasets with local land and water management information to realistically represent physical characteristics of the watershed. We developed a new autocalibration tool (SWATopt) to calibrate and evaluate SWAT in the TRB with reservoir operations, including comparison against synthetic and intermediate response variables derived from gage measurements. Our spatiotemporal evaluation enables to more realistically simulate the current situation, which gives us more confidence to project the effects of land-use changes on water quality. Under both future BT16 scenarios, simulated nitrate and total nitrogen loadings and concentrations were greatly reduced relative to the current landscape, whereas runoff, sediment, and phosphorus showed only small changes. Difference between simulated water results for the two future scenarios was small. The influence of biomass production on water quantity and quality depended on the crop, area planted, and management practices, as well as on site-specific characteristics. These results offer hope that bioenergy production in the TRB could help to protect the region's rivers from nitrogen pollution by providing a market for perennial crops with low nutrient input requirements.",

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author = "Gangsheng Wang and Jager, {Henriette I.} and Baskaran, {Latha M.} and Brandt, {Craig C.}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 The Authors. GCB Bioenergy Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.",

year = "2018",

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volume = "10",

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AU - Baskaran, Latha M.

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AB - Reducing dependence on fossil-based energy has raised interest in biofuels as a potential energy source, but concerns have been raised about potential implications for water quality. These effects may vary regionally depending on the biomass feedstocks and changes in land management. Here, we focused on the Tennessee River Basin (TRB), USA. According to the recent 2016 Billion-Ton Report (BT16) by the US Department of Energy, under two future scenarios (base-case and high-yield), three perennial feedstocks show high potential for growing profitably in the TRB: switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), miscanthus (Miscanthus × giganteus), and willow (Salix spp.). We used the Soil & Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to compare hydrology and water quality for a current landscape with those simulated for two future BT16 landscapes. We combined publicly available temporal and geospatial datasets with local land and water management information to realistically represent physical characteristics of the watershed. We developed a new autocalibration tool (SWATopt) to calibrate and evaluate SWAT in the TRB with reservoir operations, including comparison against synthetic and intermediate response variables derived from gage measurements. Our spatiotemporal evaluation enables to more realistically simulate the current situation, which gives us more confidence to project the effects of land-use changes on water quality. Under both future BT16 scenarios, simulated nitrate and total nitrogen loadings and concentrations were greatly reduced relative to the current landscape, whereas runoff, sediment, and phosphorus showed only small changes. Difference between simulated water results for the two future scenarios was small. The influence of biomass production on water quantity and quality depended on the crop, area planted, and management practices, as well as on site-specific characteristics. These results offer hope that bioenergy production in the TRB could help to protect the region's rivers from nitrogen pollution by providing a market for perennial crops with low nutrient input requirements.

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JF - GCB Bioenergy

IS - 11

ER -

Hydrologic and water quality responses to biomass production in the Tennessee river basin

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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