Research Spotlight: The ELUM project: Ecosystem Land-Use Modeling and Soil Carbon GHG Flux Trial

Abstract

There is increasing interest in the use of nonfood second-generation lignocellulosic feedstocks and a move away from food crops for bioenergy applications, but questions still remain on sustainability. Empirical data are needed to quantify the GHG balance of land-use transition to lignocellulosic bioenergy cropping systems, to inform lifecycle analyses and aid model validation. The aim of this project ‘Ecosystem Land Use Modeling and Soil Carbon GHG Flux Trial’ is to produce a framework for predicting the sustainability of bioenergy deployment across the UK. This GB£4m consortium project is commissioned and funded by the Energy Technologies Institute, UK.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the members of the ‘Ecosystem Land-Use Modeling and Soil Carbon GHG Flux Trial’ consortium project: G Alberti, E Bottoms, B Keane, A Massey, J McCalmont, M Pogson, M Tallis, S Yamulki, C Convery, J Drewer, J Dutch, D Elias, J Evans, A Keith, K Parmar, C Peters, R Marshall and E Vanguelova. We would also like to thank the Energy Technologies Institute for commissioning and funding this project and for the allied research projects Carbo-BioCrop (www.carbobiocrop.ac.uk; a Natural Environment Research Council funded project) and UK Energy Research Centre (funded as part of the flexible research fund of UK Energy Research Centre, Natural Environment Research Council) for providing field sites and yield data respectively.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Funding for this project was provided by the Energy Technologies Institute. The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Forest Research also directly funded elements of the ‘Ecosystem Land-Use Modeling and Soil Carbon GHG Flux Trial’ project. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.