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. 2016 Aug 2:9:161.
doi: 10.1186/s13068-016-0586-y. eCollection 2016.

Sustainable bioenergy production with little carbon debt in the Loess Plateau of China

Wei Liu #  1 , Cheng Peng #  2 , Zhifen Chen #  3 , Yue Liu  4 , Juan Yan  5 , Jianqiang Li  5 , Tao Sang  1   6
Affiliations

Sustainable bioenergy production with little carbon debt in the Loess Plateau of China

Wei Liu et al. Biotechnol Biofuels. .

Abstract

Background: As a key strategy for mitigating global climate change, bioenergy production by reducing CO2 emissions plays an important role in ensuring sustainable development. However, land-use change by converting natural ecosystems into energy crop field could create a carbon debt at the beginning. Thus, the potential carbon debt calculation is necessary for determining a promising bioenergy crop production, especially in the region rich of marginal land.

Results: Here, we used high-resolution historical land-use data to identify the marginal land available and to evaluate the carbon debt of planting Miscanthus in the Loess Plateau, China. We found that there were 27.6 Mha for energy production and 9.7 Mha for ecological restoration, with total annual production of 0.41 billion tons of biomass. We also found that soil carbon sequestration and total CO2 mitigation were 9.3 Mt C year(-1) and 542 Mt year(-1), respectively. More importantly, the result showed that planting Miscanthus on marginal land in the Loess Plateau only took 0.97 years on average to repay the carbon debt.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that Miscanthus production in suitable marginal land in the Loess Plateau can offer considerable renewable energy and mitigate climate change with little carbon debt. These results suggested that bioenergy production in the similar arid and semiarid region worldwide would contribute to carbon sequestration in the context of rapid climate change.

Keywords: Bioenergy; Carbon debt; Climate change; Land-use change; Marginal land; Miscanthuslutarioriparius.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Map of the temporal change of land use in the Loess Plateau. For a given grid cell, its temporal change from 1980 to 2008 was calculated using the number of land-use types in 4 years. The value of temporal change ranged from 1 to 4
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Map of the average spatial change of land use in the Loess Plateau
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Map of the velocity of land-use change in the Loess Plateau
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Map of suitable marginal land for planting Miscanthus lutarioriparius in the Loess Plateau. NP, BP, and ER indicate not suitable for planting Miscanthus, suitable for bioenergy production, and suitable for ecological restoration, respectively
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Map of the yield potential (t/ha/year) of Miscanthus lutarioriparius in the Loess Plateau
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Map of the time to repay carbon debt (year) due to land-use change for planting Miscanthus lutarioriparius in the Loess Plateau
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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