Simulating and evaluating best management practices for integrated landscape management scenarios in biofuel feedstock production: Evaluating Best Management Practices for Biofuel Feedstock Production
- Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont IL 60439 USA
Sound crop and land management strategies can maintain land productivity and improve the environmental sustainability of agricultural crop and feedstock production. This study evaluates the improvement of water sustainability through an integrated landscaping management strategy, where landscaping design, land management operations, crop systems, and agricultural best management practices (BMPs) play equal roles. The strategy was applied to the watershed of the South Fork Iowa River in Iowa, with a focus on implementing riparian buffers and converting low productivity land to provide cellulosic biomass while benefiting soil and water quality. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was employed to simulate the impact of integrated landscape design on nutrients, suspended sediments, and flow on the watershed and subbasin scales. First, the study evaluated the representation of buffer strip as a vegetative barrier and as a riparian buffer using trapping efficiency and area ratio methods in SWAT. For the riparian buffer, the area ratio method tends to be more conservative, especially in nitrate loadings, while the trapping efficiency method generates more optimistic results. The differences between the two methods increase with buffer width. The two methods may not be comparable for the field-scale vegetative barrier simulation because of limitations in model spatial resolution. Landscape scenarios were developed to quantify water quality under (1) current land use, (2) partial land conversion to switchgrass, and (3) riparian buffer implementation. Results show that when low productivity land (15.2% of total watershed land area) is converted to grow switchgrass, suspended sediment, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and nitrate loadings are reduced by 69.3%, 55.5%, 46.1%, and 13.4%, respectively, in the watershed surface streams. The reduction was less extensive when riparian buffer strips (30 m or 50 m) were applied to the stream network at 1.4% of total land area in the watershed. At the subbasin level, the degree of nutrient and suspended sediment reduction varies extensively, ranging from a few percent up to 55%. Results indicate that effective landscape design on current agricultural land can potentially bring marked improvements in water quality and soil erosion control while producing food and fuel feedstock in the South Fork Iowa River watershed. The concept can be integrated with other watershed management programs to improve sustainability of land, water, and the ecosystem.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1392095
- Journal Information:
- Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining, Vol. 9, Issue 6; ISSN 1932-104X
- Publisher:
- Wiley
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Recognizing economic value in multifunctional buffers in the lower Mississippi river basin: The value proposition of multi-functional riparian buffers
|
journal | August 2018 |
Diverse lignocellulosic feedstocks can achieve high field-scale ethanol yields while providing flexibility for the biorefinery and landscape-level environmental benefits
|
journal | July 2018 |
Similar Records
Land management strategies for improving water quality in biomass production under changing climate
Selecting Metrics for Sustainable Bioenergy Feedstocks