Quantifying Global Potential Marginal Land Resources for Switchgrass

Peiwei Fan, Mengmeng Hao, Fangyu Ding, Dong Jiang and Donglin Dong
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Peiwei Fan: Department of Geological Engineering and Environment, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing 100083, China
Mengmeng Hao: Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Fangyu Ding: Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Dong Jiang: Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Donglin Dong: Department of Geological Engineering and Environment, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing 100083, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-13

Abstract: Switchgrass ( Panicum virgatum L.) with its advantages of low maintenance and massive distribution in temperate zones, has long been regarded as a suitable biofuel feedstock with a promising prospect. Currently, there is no validated assessment of marginal land for switchgrass growth on a global scale. Although, on both regional and national scale there have been several studies evaluating the potential marginal lands for growing switchgrass. To obtain the first global map that presents the distribution of switchgrass growing in potential marginal land, we employed a boosted regression tree (BRT) modeling procedure integrated with released switchgrass records along with a series of high-spatial-resolution environmental variables. The result shows that the available marginal land resources satisfying switchgrass growing demands are mainly distributed in the southern and western parts of North America, coastal areas in the southern and eastern parts of South America, central and southern Africa, and northern Oceania, approximately 2229.80 million hectares. Validation reveals that the ensembled BRT models have a considerably high performance (area under the curve: 0.960). According to our analysis, annual cumulative precipitation accounts for 45.84% of the full impact on selecting marginal land resources for switchgrass, followed by land cover (14.97%), maximum annual temperature (12.51%), and mean solar radiation (10.25%). Our findings bring a new perspective on the development of biofuel feedstock.

Keywords: switchgrass; biofuel feedstock; environmental variables; BRT; relative contribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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