Evaluating the suitability of marginal land for a perennial energy crop on the Loess Plateau of China
Liu, Yanmei; Chen, Shaolin; von Cossel, Moritz; Xu, Bingcheng; Gao, Huanlin; Jiang, Rui; Faaij, Andre
(2021) GCB Bioenergy, volume 13, issue 9, pp. 1388 - 1406
(Article)
Abstract
With a large marginal land area, the Loess Plateau in China holds great potential for biomass production and environmental improvement. Identifying suitable locations for biomass production on marginal land is important for decision-makers from the viewpoint of land-use planning. However, there is limited information on the suitability of marginal land
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within the Loess Plateau for biomass production. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the suitability of the promising perennial energy crop switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) on marginal land across the Loess Plateau. A fuzzy logical model was developed and validated based on field trials on the Loess Plateau and applied to the marginal land of this region, owing to its ability of dealing with the continuous nature of soil, landscape variations, and uncertainties of the input data. This study identified that approximately 12.8–20.8 Mha of the Loess Plateau as available marginal land, of which 2.8–4.7 Mha is theoretically suitable for switchgrass cultivation. These parts of the total marginal land are mainly distributed in northeast and southwest of the Loess Plateau. The potential yield of switchgrass ranges between 44 and 77 Tg. This study showed that switchgrass can grow on a large proportion of the marginal land of the Loess Plateau and therefore offers great potential for biomass provision. The spatial suitability maps produced in this study provide information to farmers and policymakers to enable a more sustainable development of biomass production on the Loess Plateau. In addition, the fuzzy-theory-based model developed in this study provided a good framework for evaluating the suitability of marginal land.
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Keywords: biomass production, fuzzy-theory-based models, land suitability, Loess Plateau, marginal land, perennial crops, switchgrass, Forestry, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Agronomy and Crop Science, Waste Management and Disposal
ISSN: 1757-1693
Publisher: Wiley-VCH Verlag
Note: Funding Information: This study was supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) and partially supported by the National Key Project of Intergovernmental Cooperation in International Scientific and Technological Innovation (2018YFE0112400 to SC). We would like to acknowledge the expert's knowledge from Danielle Cooney, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and John Clifton-Brown, Institution of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University. We also acknowledge the data support from the Loess Plateau Data Center, National Earth System Science Data Sharing Infrastructure, and National Science & Technology Infrastructure of China (http://loess.geodata.cn). Special thanks go to M.Sc. Eva Lewin for improving the language quality of the manuscript. Funding Information: This study was supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) and partially supported by the National Key Project of Intergovernmental Cooperation in International Scientific and Technological Innovation (2018YFE0112400 to SC). We would like to acknowledge the expert's knowledge from Danielle Cooney, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign and John Clifton‐Brown, Institution of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), Aberystwyth University. We also acknowledge the data support from the Loess Plateau Data Center, National Earth System Science Data Sharing Infrastructure, and National Science & Technology Infrastructure of China ( http://loess.geodata.cn ). Special thanks go to M.Sc. Eva Lewin for improving the language quality of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. GCB Bioenergy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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