4.0.1 Sustainability and Management

Team Members and Roles

Phil Robertson, MSU project lead
Peter Hudy, MSU technician
Poonam Jasrotia, MSU post-doc
Megan Sarah Phillips, UW technician
Joe Simmons, MSU technician
Stacey Vanderwulp, MSU technician
Joshua Dykstra, MSU technician

4.1.1 Novel Production Systems

The long term goal of Project 4.1 is to create and develop biofuel cropping systems that are economically, environmentally, and agronomically sustainable. This goal aligns with the mission of the GLBRC and specifically addresses the GLBRC goal of evaluating the economic and environmental impacts of new bioenergy technologies, and using the results to guide research activities. 

Arguably, the most critical step in implementing a “biomass to biofuel” economy is gaining the general public’s and growers’ acceptance of novel bioenergy cropping systems. The focus of this project is to generate biophysical & biogeochemical, Life Cycle Analysis, and biorefinery data from a range of novel biofuel production systems that can be entered into the models being used in Project 4.6. The information generated by the two collaborating projects is expected to provide answers needed to ensure the creation and development of sustainable biofuel cropping systems.

The main objectives of Project 4.1 are to:

1. Compare productivity, efficiency, and ecosystem services provided by a spectrum of bioenergy cropping systems.
    
2. Evaluate annual and perennial bioenergy cropping systems for market flexibility, energy inputs, ecosystem services, productivity, synergy with rotational crops, and profitability.
    
3. Develop empirical modeling parameters for perennial warm-season grass stand establishment in the Great Lakes region, as well as for optimum nitrogen use rates in perennial warm-season grasses and for harvest timing strategies for perennial bioenergy crops.
    
4. Compare annual crop corn harvest systems of whole plant ensilage harvested at peak biomass to systems that separately harvest corn grain and stover after the plant reaches physiological maturity.
    
5. Develop recommendations for harvesting bioenergy crops. 

Team Members and Roles
Kurt Thelen, MSU Co-PI, project lead
Carolyn Malmstrom, MSU Co-PI, project lead
Randy Jackson, UW Co-PI, project lead
Josh Posner, UW Co-PI, project lead 
Juan Gao, MSU post-doc
Xinmei Hao, MSU post-doc
Gary Oates, UW post-doc
Gregg Sanford, UW technician
Leilei Qian, MSU graduate student
Abbie Schrotenboer, MSU graduate student
Kate Withers, MSU graduate student
Laura Smith, UW graduate student
Kateryna Ananyeva, MSU graduate student
Janet Hedtcke, UW technician
Megan Sarah Phillips, UW technician
Maddy Raudenbush, UW technician
James Tesmer, UW technician
John Wagner, UW technician
David Williams, UW technician
Pavani Tumbalam, UW technician

4.2.1 Microbial-Plant Interactions for Improved Biofuel Production

Productive plant communities require a supportive soil microbial community, which is especially important for sustainable, low-cost, biofuel production on marginal lands. Microbial communities fix nitrogen, enhance nutrient recovery, protect plants against bacterial pathogens, produce plant growth factors, aide soil structure, and provide for the overall promotion of plant growth. The working hypothesis is that key members of rhizosphere microbial communities (structure) provide the ecological support (function) for sustainable and productive biofuel ecosystems. Identifying key microbial species and defining what favors their growth and function is now tractable through molecular, genomic and genetic techniques.

This project is divided into three components:

1. Soil and rhizosphere communities of biofuel crops. The goal is to define the rhizosphere communities, including finding out to what extent the community structure is determined by different biofuel crops and by soil/climate attributes (geographic location), and to use this understanding to aid management for enhancing yield and sustainability.
    
2. Sustainability of bioenergy crops through symbiotic associations with Arbuscular Mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. Ecological and economical factors coupled with the need for improved sustainability make imminent the need for a better management of beneficial plant-microbe associations, including AM fungi, which is the most efficient symbiotic association for the uptake of nutrients and water from the soil, particularly in nutrient-limiting conditions. AM symbiosis contributes significantly in global phosphate and nitrogen cycling since large amounts of N and P would otherwise remain in soils due to inefficient recovery by the crops; in return for supplying nutrients and water, AM fungi obtain carbohydrates from host plants (approximately 5 billion tons of carbon per year is consumed by AM fungi worldwide), thus contributing to carbon cycling. The goal is to characterize the biochemical signals and genes controlling the development of AM in energy-relevant monocotyledonous crops.
    
3. Ecosystem implications of viruses in biofuel crops. A central issue in creating a sustainable biofuel economy is to mitigate any unintended negative ecological consequences that might arise as a result of broad planting of biofuel crops. Given the centrality of Poaceae (grass) species in crop and non-crop vegetation in the Midwest, the investigation is center around whether or not the establishment of perennial Poaceae biofuel crops will amplify virus and vector populations in working landscapes and increase disease pressure on Poaceae food crops (e.g., corn, wheat, oats, barley)? Perennial grasses have the potential to serve as long-term reservoirs of generalist Poaceae viruses that can be moved broadly across landscapes by many species of aphid vectors and reduce food crop yields. Given current societal concerns about negative consequences of biofuel crops on food production, the goal is to examine the potential for any such disease feedbacks and seek to mitigate or prevent their occurrence.

Team Members and Role
James Tiedje, MSU Co-PI, project lead
Carolyn Malmstrom, MSU Co-PI, project lead 
Jean-Michel Ané, UW Co-PI, project lead 
Teri Balser, UW project lead
Randy Jackson, UW project lead
Sang Hoon Kim, MSU professor/faculty
John Quensen, MSU professor/faculty
James Cole, MSU professor/faculty
Arijit Mukherjee, UW post-doc
Chao Liang, UW post-doc
Benli Chai, MSU technician
Harry Read, UW technician
Abbie Schrotenboer, MSU graduate student
Kevin Budsberg, UW technician
Erick Cardenas, MSU post-doc
Jiarong Guo, MSU graduate student
Aaron Garoutte, MSU graduate student

4.3.1 Biogeochemical Responses

Project 4.3 addresses the biogeochemical and hydrological implications of sustainability of bioenergy production systems with emphasis on field experiments and measurements. Of particular interest are water use efficiency and nutrient conservation, which regulate productivity and affect production costs, and global warming potential, which impacts decisions on energy policy. These aspects are addressed via field experiments at the MSU Kellogg Biological Station and at the UW Arlington Agricultural Research Station. Water use efficiency is likely to vary considerably across feedstock production systems, and even in relatively humid climates soil-water availability can limit biomass yield. Implications of biofuel cropping systems for hydrological cycles could include changes in landscape water balances and alteration of runoff patterns. Evaluation of the ecological sustainability of proposed cropping systems requires knowledge of soil fertility, nitrogen and phosphorus budgets, and potential off-farm movement of these nutrients via erosion or leaching.

The GLBRC experimental sites are dominated by subsurface water movement, as opposed to surface runoff, and in that case leaching of nitrate into groundwater and eventually to streams is of particular concern. Assessment of global warming potential requires a full accounting of energy inputs and yields from cultivation through harvest, processing, and distribution, together with field measurements of atmospheric exchanges of CO2, CH4, and N2O, as well as changes in soil carbon stores. Gas exchange estimation demands a temporally intensive measurement program to capture short-term dynamic changes in flux rates (e.g. when soils are rewetted after rain events) coupled to spatially intensive sampling to bound plot- and site-level variation. Changes in soil characteristics including carbon stocks that are caused by the imposition of a new cropping scheme are often gradual and take several years to document, and hence a measurement program must be maintained over at least several crop cycles.

Team Members and Roles
Phil Robertson, MSU Co-PI, project lead
Steve Hamilton, MSU Co-PI, project lead 
Stuart Grandy, MSU Co-PI, project lead 
Randy Jackson, UW Co-PI, project lead 
Chris Kucharik, UW Co-PI, project lead
Ajay Kumar Bhardwaj, MSU post-doc
Ilia Gelfand, MSU post-doc
Neville Millar, MSU post-doc
Gary Oates, UW post-doc
Laura Smith, UW graduate student
Michael Cruse, UW graduate student
Herika Kummel, UW graduate student
David Duncan, UW graduate student
Brianna Laube, UW graduate student
Kevin Kahmark, MSU technician
Gregg Sanford, UW technician
Iurii Shcherbak, MSU graduate student
David Weed, MSU technician
Jiquan Chen, University of Toledo professor/faculty
Ranjeet John, University of Toledo professor/faculty
Michael Deal, University of Toledo graduate student
Jianye Xu, University of Toledo graduate student

4.4.1 Biodiversity Responses

The transformation of agricultural landscapes to include cellulosic bioenergy crops poses a historic opportunity to seek breakthrough solutions for society and the environment. Agricultural landscapes provide humans with invaluable ecosystem services including food, fuel and fiber, natural pest control, nitrogen fixation, carbon sequestration, pollination, groundwater recharge and wildlife habitat. These services are modulated by the biodiversity present in the ecosystem, particularly of key taxa (arthropods, birds, plants, microbes) and functional groups therein (e.g. pest natural enemies, pollinators, GHG moderating microbes etc). Future biofuel crop choices, their management, and resulting landscape changes will influence these functional groups and their provision of ecosystem services/disservices. For example, overreliance on a single biofuel crop plant would likely reduce landscape diversity resulting in negative impacts on multiple ecosystem services.

The Biodiversity Responses Team utilizes cutting-edge ecological and genomic techniques to measure biodiversity and ecosystem services, and inform policies to support these services in cellulosic biofuel landscapes. Our goal is to understand the fundamental impacts of biofuel crop and landscape changes on biodiversity and resulting ecosystem services. This project collaborates closely with projects 4.1 (novel production systems), 4.2 (microbial plant interactions), 4.3(biogeochemistry), 4.5 (economics) and 4.6) biophysical modeling groups, as well as with the GLBRC as a whole to inform development of a sustainable bioenergy economy. Biodiversity areas: biocontrol services, pollination services, bird diversity, plant diversity and microbial diversity.

Team Members and Roles 
Doug Landis, MSU project lead
Thomas Schmidt, MSU project lead
Rufus Isaacs, MSU project lead
Claudio Gratton, UW project lead
Kay Gross, MSU project lead
Chris Sebolt, MSU technician, Biocontrol Services
Ben Werling, MSU post-doc
Tim Meehan, UW post-doc
Hanna Gaines, UW graduate student
Julianna Tuell, MSU post-doc
Keith Mason, MSU technician
Bruce Robertson, MSU post-doc
Carol Baker, MSU technician
Tracy Teal, MSU post-doc
Zarraz Lee, MSU graduate student
Collin Schwantes, UW technician
Ali Nelson, UW technician
Chase Fritz, UW technician
Emily Grman, MSU graduate student
Heidi Liere, UW post-doc
Lisa Stelzner, MSU graduate student

4.5.1 Economic Responses

One of the goals in the GLBRC roadmap is to “evaluate the economic and environmental impacts of these new [biofuel] technologies, and use the results to guide research activities.” Project 4.5 focuses on evaluating how farmers and foresters will respond economically to new biofuel technologies and policies and the demand that these create for new biomass feedstocks. At the landscape scale, the effects of bioenergy expansion in the United States depend upon the management decisions of hundreds of thousands of farmers and foresters. Their decisions tend to be driven by income generation concerns, which in turn are driven by relative prices of crops (including trees) that they could grow. How the land managers respond to new bioenergy technologies depends upon a) how new technology transforms biomass into fuel, b) demand for biofuels (which depends on both biofuel costs and prices of alternative fuel sources), c) supply of bioenergy feedstocks (which depends on the likely revenues and costs of alternative land use activities), and d) regulations governing the processes of bioenergy production, use and disposal.

Our focus has been on liquid biofuels, specifically on the prospects for cellulosic ethanol. In trying to analyze likely economic responses before a cost-effective liquid biofuel technology has been commercialized, we examine the fundamental drivers of private land use decisions related to biomass production with the following objectives:

1. Aggregate crop area change forecast. Predict how much land would change crop/tree in response to a) prices of alternative fuels, b) costs of alternative bioenergy processes, and c) prices and yields of alternative crop commodities.
2. Spatially explicit land use change forecast. Predict where crop area changes will occur, in order to evaluate likely environmental change effects.
3. Economic valuation of likely ecosystem service changes. Estimate environmental-economic trade-offs and their potential value to different economic actors in response to scenarios developed under landscape models of environmental consequences of alternative land uses predicted under Objective 1. 4. Policy analysis for sustainability. Evaluate the types and levels of policy tools that could shape more sustainable land use patterns.

Team Members and Roles
Scott Swinton, MSU Co-PI, project lead
Bruce Babcock, ISU Co-PI, project lead 
Patrick Westhoff, UM Co-PI, project lead 
Aklesso Egbendewe, MSU post-doc
Laura James, MSU graduate student
Noel Hayden, MSU graduate student
Kanlaya Barr, ISU post-doc

4.6.1 Modeling

The objective of project 4.6 is to conduct regional scale analyses to support the introduction of cellulosic biofuel cropping systems in the most sustainable fashion to the U.S. Midwest. As described in the GLBRC roadmap, cellulosic biofuels will serve the dual function of reducing petroleum dependence while reducing overall greenhouse gas emission, enhancing habitat for wildlife, improving soil and water quality, and reducing pressure to clear new land through stabilizing global land-use. To accomplish this, the modeling efforts have been organized around three sub-areas: 4.6.1 Biophysical and Biogeochemical Modeling, 4.6.2 Life Cycle Analysis, and 4.6.3 Biorefinery Modeling. The modeling activities are fully integrated with the rest of research activities of the Sustainability group (Thrust 4), including project 4.1 Novel Production Systems, 4.3 Biochemical Responses, 4.4 Biodiversity Responses, and 4.5 Socioeconomic Responses.

1. Life Cycle Analysis. The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) requires cellulosic fuels to have 60% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum fuels, and further mandates life-cycle assessment (LCA) to demonstrate compliance with this benchmark. The LCA project provides strategic value to the GLBRC mission, by accounting for environmental impacts of the biofuel systems of interest, in conformance with emerging regulatory standards for alternative fuels.
    
2. Biorefinery Modeling. The biorefinery modeling has 2 components. The first one focuses on the effects of indirect land use changes (iLUC) in the bioethanol fuel system, which have been investigated and results to date show that cropping managements could reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with iLUC, and that the current practices in iLUC are scenario-oriented and produce large uncertainties. The second one is the regional variations in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with biobased products, which according to current research are significant and form a major justification for our focus on regionally intensive modeling areas (RIMAs).

Team Members and Roles
Cesar Izaurralde, PNNL Co-PI, project lead
Mac Post, ORNL Co-PI, project lead
Bruce Dale, MSU Co-PI, project lead
Paul Meier, UW Co-PI, project lead
Doug Reinemann, UW Co-PI, project lead
Tom Gower, UW professor/faculty
Allison Thomson, PNNL investigator
Tris West, PNNLinvestigator
David Manowitz, PNNL post-doc
Jeffrey Nichols, ORNL post-doc
Natalie Hunt, UW graduate student
Julie Sinistore, UW graduate student
Varaprasad Bandaru, PNNL post-doc
Leon Clarke, PNNL scientist
Shujiang Kang, ORNL post-doc
Seungdo Kim, MSU professor
Mary Lipton, PNNL professor
Scott Peckham, UW technician
Steven Smith, PNNL scientist
Bryan Bals, MSU post doc
Dali Wang, ORNL scientist

4.6.3 Design and Testing of Drop-in Replacement Biofuels for Gasline Based on Biofuel Componenets Derviced from Levulinic Acid

Team Members and Roles

David Rothamer, UW project lead

4.6.4 Process Synthesis and Technoeconomic Evaluation Studies for Biomass-to-Fuels Technologies

Team Members and Roles

Christos Maravelias, UW project lead