woody biomass

Understanding how large-scale bioenergy production can affect biodiversity and ecosystems is important if society is to meet current and future sustainable development goals. A variety of bioenergy production systems have been established within different contexts throughout the Pan American region, with wide-ranging results in terms of documented and projected effects on biodiversity and ecosystems. The Pan American region is home to the majority of commercial bioenergy production and therefore the region offers a broad set of experiences and insights on both conflicts and opportunities for biodiversity and bioenergy. This paper synthesizes lessons learned focusing on experiences in Canada, the United States, and Brazil regarding the conflicts that can arise 6between bioenergy production and ecological conservation, and benefits that can be derived when bioenergy policies promote planning and more sustainable land-management systems. We propose a research agenda to address priority information gaps that are relevanLive t to biodiversity concerns and related policy challenges in the Pan American region.

The Bioenergy Technologies Office hosted a workshop on Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs on June 24-26 in partnership with Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Landscape design offers a promising means for sustainably increasing bioenergy production while maintaining or enhancing other ecosystem services. This workshop convened multi-disciplinary experts to discuss how landscape design can assist in the deployment and assessment of sustainable bioenergy, and how to move forward in a manner that best serves industry, decision makers, and producers, while achieving environmental goals. The workshop focus was on bioenergy systems that utilize agricultural biomass as feedstocks. See below for the presentations from the workshop and a link to the Center for Bioenergy Sustainability page for more information.

The Bioenergy Technologies Office hosted two workshops on Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs with Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories. The first workshop focused on forestry landscapes and was held in New Bern, NC, from March 4-6, 2014. The second workshop focused on agricultural landscapes and was held in Argonne, IL, from June 24-26, 2014. Landscape design offers a promising means for sustainably increasing bioenergy production while maintaining or enhancing other ecosystem services. The workshops convened multi-disciplinary experts to discuss how landscape design can assist in the deployment and assessment of sustainable bioenergy, and how to move forward in a manner that best serves industry, decision makers, and producers, while achieving environmental goals. See the "Related Content in the KDF" below for links to the individual workshop pages on the KDF, which include presentations, and the link to the Center for Bioenergy Sustainability workshop page.

The Bioenergy Technologies Office hosted a workshop on Incorporating Bioenergy into Sustainable Landscape Designs on March 4-6 in partnership with Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories. Landscape design offers a promising means for sustainably increasing bioenergy production while maintaining or enhancing other ecosystem services. This workshop convened multi-disciplinary experts to discuss how landscape design can assist in the deployment and assessment of sustainable bioenergy, and how to move forward in a manner that best serves industry, decision makers, and producers, while achieving environmental goals. The workshop focus was on bioenergy systems that utilize forest biomass as feedstocks. See below for the presentations from the workshop and a link to the Center for Bioenergy Sustainability page for more information.

The database summarizes a very broad set of old and new standing biomass data from plantation-grown hardwoods and softwoods established under a wide range of conditions across the United States and Canada. The WCYP database, together with this document, is being published to disseminate information on what is available in the literature with respect to yield evaluations and to inform people that not all yield data in the open literature are suitable for evaluation of “potential” regional yields. It has also been presented with the hope that much more information will be collected and added to the WCYP database. The current set of data in the WCYP database is derived from 41 unique reference sources describing 79 experiments in the United States or southern Canada with a total of 473 different treatments.

A woody crop yield potential (WCYP) database was created containing yield results with as much associated information as was available concerning the sites, soils, and experimental treatments. The database summarizes a very broad set of old and new standing biomass data from plantation-grown hardwoods and softwoods established under a wide range of conditions across the United States and Canada. The WCYP database, together with this document, is being published to disseminate information on what is available in the literature with respect to yield evaluations and to inform people that not all yield data in the open literature are suitable for evaluation of “potential” regional yields. It has also been presented with the hope that much more information will be collected and added to the WCYP database.