Greenhouse gases balance for bioenergy production and indirect pastureland intensification

Abstract

The present proposal of visiting postdoctoral fellowship (BEPE) is a part of a thematic project that is proposed focused on global-scale geospatial analysis relevant to bioenergy. This 3-year thematic project, conceived as a contribution to the Global Sustainable Bioenergy (GSB) initiative, is structured into three tasks with objectives corresponding to targeted papers with tentative titles as follows: Task I. Potential for Pasture Intensification and Subsequent Energy Crop Production; I.1. Ground truth analysis of pasture performance gap estimation using climate binning; I.2. The impact of soil, seasonal variability of precipitation, and climate change on pasture performance gap estimation using climate binning; I.3. Development of a global yield model for agave; I.4. Development and preliminary application of a multi-crop global energy crop yield model on pasture land. Task II. Sustainability of Pasture Intensification and Subsequent Energy Crop Production; II.1. Development of global scale biogeochemical model for pasture systems; II.2. Modeling of scenarios for intensified pastureland. Task III. Geospatial Analysis, Remote Sensing and Modeling; III.1. Geospatial analysis of pasture-based livestock productivity increases in Brazil; III.2. Mixed crop-livestock detection/mapping using remote sensing. The present visiting postdoctoral fellowship (BEPE) project involves the task II.2. Modeling of scenarios for intensified pastureland. The C balance from different scenarios of pasture intensification and conversion to bioenergy production will be evaluated, including the quantification of CO2 intensity of livestock product and the payback time for ethanol. The aim of this study is to simulate different scenarios of bioenergy production and pastureland intensification using Daycent biogeochemical process model. The results will substantially advance understanding of the potential of global pasture intensification, conversion to bioenergy crops, and the related environmental impact.