Sustainability
Identify attributes of high-performance cellulosic cropping systems and agronomic practices that are most valuable and likely to win farmer acceptance.
Test a range of model crops and management intensities likely to be involved in cellulosic and grain-based biofuel cropping systems.
Identify key microbial species and assess favorable growth conditions.
Use new genomic approaches to better understand plant-microbe interactions, and manipulation of microbial communities to optimize ecosystem services.
Identify biophysical constraints and limitations for ecological intensification; achieve carbon neutrality, and soil and water conservation.
Study the water, carbon and nutrient footprints of diverse grain-based and cellulosic biofuel production systems, and model the responses at field, landscape and regional scale.
Study effects of increased biofuel production on biodiversity and impacts on ecosystem services.
Identify changes in plant, insect, and bird diversity by focusing on a specific species population in various cropping systems.
Evaluate potential supply of bioenergy crop production systems and associated ecosystem services.
Bioeconomic modeling of land use change, trade-off analysis of associated changes in ecosystem services, econometric forecasts of market responses, and choice modeling of land owner intentions.
Estimate environmental responses of growing biofuels at large scale from landscape to regional.
Use biophysical models and life cycle analysis to simulate and predict responses to biofuel cultivation at various scales. Identify possible alternative scenarios to optimize biophysical responses and environmental benefits.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Planting perennial biofuel crops such as switchgrass could increase the number of beneficial insects on the landscape and reduce the need for insecticides, which Midwestern farmers now spray on an extra 3.5 million acres to combat an uptick in crop pests. The increase in pests is the result of the ongoing conversion of natural habitat to farmland planted in annual crops, a trend called “landscape simplification.”
- The carbon costs of converting Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands to corn and soybeans is high – even when using no-till cultivation practices. Growing grasses rather than corn or soybeans on the existing 30 million acres of CRP land could maintain climate, wildlife and other conservation benefits indefinitely while providing a valuable bioenergy feedstock.
- A study confirmed that in order for farmers to start growing dedicated bioenergy crops, their net earnings from biomass crops would need to meet or exceed those from conventional crops and include a risk premium to account for the transition.
