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Summary
This scoping study assesses the contribution that woody biomass could make to feedstock supply for an aviation biofuel industry in Queensland. The inland 600–900 mm rainfall zone, including the Fitzroy Basin region, is identified as an area that is particularly worthy of closer study as it has potential for supply of woody biomass from existing native regrowth (brigalow and other species) as well as from new plantings. New analyses carried out for this study of Corymbia citriodora subsp. variegata trials suggest biomass plantings could produce harvestable yield of aboveground dry mass of about 85 t ha−1 over a 10-year rotation at relatively low-rainfall (600–750 mm mean annual precipitation) sites and about 115 t ha−1 at medium-rainfall (750–900 mm) sites. Estimates of productivity for native regrowth suggest potential productivity should be around 40 t ha−1 during the initial decade after clearing when systems are managed for bioenergy rather than grazing. In this paper, potential production systems are described, and sustainability issues are briefly considered. It is concluded that more detailed studies focused particularly on biomass production would be worthwhile, and further research requirements are briefly discussed.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the Boeing Company and the CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship for supporting this research. The Boeing Company was involved with setting project objectives, representatives commented on the draft manuscript and approved the submission of this paper for publication. Don Butler (Queensland Herbarium) provided useful data as well as general information about regrowth stands. Keryn Paul kindly provided allometric equations for E. grandis trials to enable estimates of total aboveground biomass to be made from measurements from the Lee et al. trials. We are also very grateful to our CSIRO colleagues Chris Beadle, Chris Harwood, Jim Smitham, Phil Polglase and Sadanandan Nambiar for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to Michael Lakeman (Boeing) for his comments and to this journal’s anonymous reviewers.
