An Integrative Modeling Framework to Evaluate Productivity and Sustainability of Bioenergy Production Systems in the US Great Lakes Region.

This presentation will describe a spatially-explicit approach to identify land within the 10-state North Central Region of the US that could be considered "marginal" for crop production but "well suited" for the production of perennial biofuel crops. The approach, developed by researchers at the DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, uses a combination of high resolution land cover/land use information, soil survey, and interpretive classification to identify lands that can be considered "marginal" for the production of field crops used for food and fiber production thereby avoiding land use competition issues between these crops and those used for biofuel production.