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| Titel |
First results from the UK network to establish the greenhouse gas balance of land conversion to second generation bioenergy willow, Miscanthus and short rotation forestry |
| VerfasserIn |
Zoe M. Harris, Emily Bottoms, Alice Massey, Jon McCalmont, Sirwan Yamulki, Julia Drewer, Niall McNamara, Jon Finch, Ian Donnison, Mike Perks, Pete Smith, Gail Taylor |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2013
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 15 (2013) |
| Datensatznummer |
250084334
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| Zusammenfassung |
| ELUM is UK consortium project with 7 partners, funded by a joint incentive of public and
private investment from the Energies Technology Institute (ETI). The aim of this project is to
assess the impact of land conversion to second generation non-food bioenergy crops on
greenhouse gas balance for several land use transitions, including from arable and
grassland. A network of 6 sites has been established across the UK to assess these
processes underpinning GHG balance and to provide input data to a meta-model that
will be used as a tool to assess the sustainability of our land use transitions. The
planned outputs of this project include an assessment of our current understanding of
land use change and bioenergy cropping systems, the addition of greenhouse gas
(GHG) data to national inventories and development of novel technologies to monitor
GHG.
Here we focus on the results of the soil GHG flux data (CO2, N2O and CH4) which are being
collected at 5 sites and transitions, gaining good spatial coverage of the UK including
Scotland, Wales, northern and southern England. These sites cover the following transitions:
grassland to short rotation forestry, grassland to Miscanthus, arable to short rotation coppice
(SRC) willow, arable to Miscanthus and grassland to SRC willow. A year of data
capturing has been collected at these sites revealing the seasonal variability with
increased CO2 fluxes, representing total soil respiration, in the summer months,
irrespective of site. The importance of non-CO2 GHGs is also being considered
and monthly measurements of CH4 and N2O using static chambers, provide no
evidence that these gases contribute significantly to the overall carbon footprint of the
bioenergy crops, in contrast to recent reports on SRC poplar. There were, however,
some occasional large unexplained fluxes in these gases suggesting they may play
a lesser part in some bioenergy cropping systems and are more complicated to
evaluate.
As well as this experiment, data will be presented on an investigation into the difference in
soil GHG fluxes under different genotypes of Miscanthus. The preliminary results of this
experiment show that although there are differences in the genotype fluxes on a monthly basis
over a year, there are no significant trends in the flux data that can help identify which
genotype emits the most/least soil CO2. This will require further investigation into
phenotypic differences as well as environmental variables which could be affecting the fluxes
before one species can be chosen over another for cultivation for bioenergy and carbon
sequestration.
This work is based on the Ecosystem Land Use Modelling & Soil Carbon GHG Flux Trial
(ELUM) project, which was commissioned and funded by the Energy Technologies Institute
(ETI). |
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