Landscape Biomass Project Overview
Summary - The Landscape Biomass Project worked to develop, refine, and implement a portfolio of sustainable bioenergy feedstock production systems that together contribute significantly to reducing dependence on foreign oil; have net positive social, environmental, and rural economic impacts; and are compatible with existing agricultural systems. We achieve this through research, education, and outreach on the agronomic, economic, and environmental performance of biomass cropping systems.
Experiment - Through experimentation, the project team developed several alternative biomass cropping systems that represent a variety of crop intensification strategies. The experiment included the following alternative cropping systems because of their potential to provide:
- High biomass yields (Continuous Corn, Triticale/Sorghum);
- Some biomass yield while mitigating some negative environmental impacts (Corn-Soy-Triticale/Soy and Corn-Switchgrass); or
- Some short-term biomass yield and superior long-term yield while strongly mitigating negative environmental impacts (Triticale-Aspen).
As crop performance is strongly tied to site factors, the project team evaluated these biomass cropping systems across various landscape positions. The experimental plots shown above were located at the Committee for Agricultural Development Uthe Farm, located in central Iowa, shown above (photo credit: Tom Schultz).
After answering initial research questions at this site, the team moved to test our hypotheses over watershed scales, which will more easily allow us to close soil, nutrient, and water budgets. We are now in the process of establishing new research sites. The goal of testing a portfolio approach to bioenergy feedstock production remains the same: to allow for optimized bioenergy feedstock production across agricultural landscapes.
Sponsors - The Landscape Biomass Project was generously funded by the USDA Agricultural and Food Research Initiative's Managed Ecosystems program, ISU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the National Science Foundation, and the US Forest Service Northern Research Station, with in-kind support from ArborGen and the Committee for Agricultural Development.
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Because it is unlikely a single cellulosic biomass cropping system will satisfy multifunctional performance criteria in all agroecosystems, we are comparing the performance of corn, switchgrass, sorghum/triticale, triticale/soybean and trees/triticale over five landscape positions. Biomass samples are collected to represent the production of different feedstocks across the site.
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Evaluating the water quality impacts of biomass production systems will allow us to assess the potential differences in dissolved nutrient loss and associated environmental impacts among the cropping systems. Systems with lower fertilizer input requirements and or longer periods of plant growth are expected to have lower concentrations of dissolved nutrients.
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By measuring the enzyme activity of microbes we can determine the environmental benefits (e.g. carbon storage and nutrient retention and recycling) of different management practices. As part of the Landscape Biomass Project, we are interested in how microbes interact with different biomass cropping systems to influence carbon storage and nutrient cycling.
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As concerns about global climate change have increased, the need to assess the relative contribution of agricultural soils to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has grown in importance. The GHG issue has become of increasing concern as researchers strive for sustainable methods to produce biomass crops for biofuel production. The production of these gases is highly dependent on soil properties and plant-microbe interactions occurring below ground.
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We sought to inform the development of the 2G crop portfolio by assessing the profitability of alternative biomass cropping systems that mitigate negative effects of grain crops on environmental quality. We also sought to compare these systems to corn production under the same conditions, as the relative performance of alternative crops compared to the corn baseline constrains their implementation.