Marginal Agricultural Land for Bioenergy Production: a Decision Supporting Tool for Dynamic Identification and Environmental Impact Assessments.

Global interest in biofuels has grown rapidly in recent years largely due to its dual role of enhancing energy security and mitigating climate change. Marginal and/or abandoned agricultural land is often considered as potential ideal source of land for biofuel crop production. However, lack of accurate identification of specific land and assessment of consequential economic, social and environmental impacts hinders our ability to implement such recommended land-management strategies. This study develops a decision supporting tool, using remote sensing, soil survey, climate, census, and modeling data, that dynamically identifies locations of specific type of marginal agricultural land based on scenarios to meet goals of biofuel production and/or criteria (and acreages) of desired marginal land and provides assessments on the consequential impacts on carbon pools as well as on food production.