Biomass production on marginal land and its impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services

To address the challenges and opportunities linked to production of agricultural biomass for bioenergy in Sweden, the multidisciplinary research project Land4Biomass was initiated. One of the core questions of the project is where to grow this biomass, and to answer this integrated data analysis of marginal or abandoned land will be done. Remote-sensing in combination with databases, ground truthing, and stakeholder surveys will be used to assess the current potential of biomass production (sub-project 2). This information will be
combined a literature review of the latest knowledge on biodiversity impacts from biomass production on agricultural land (sub-project 1) to design an empirical study where biodiversity and ecosystem services are surveyed for high and low productivity and density of feedstock-producing land-uses (sub-project 3). Based on different bioenergy policy options, biodiversity impacts will be assessed through spatially-explicit models linking land use to crop pollination and/or species abundance (sub-project 4). In this way we can understand the impacts of bioenergy-related land-used changes for above-ground biodiversity and associated ecosystem services on local- and landscape-level.

In this thesis I aim to locate and quantify land that is potentially available for increased cultivation of agricultural biomass for bioenergy in Sweden, and what impacts this possible land use-change could have on above-ground biodiversity and associated ecosystem services