Research Activities

This project brings together experts from the fields of crop science, biodiversity and ecology, hydrology, social science and geography and rural economics, and will provide an integrated, interdisciplinary scientific evaluation of the implications of land conversion to energy crops, focussing on short rotation coppice (SRC) willow (Figure 1a) and miscanthus grass (Figure 1b).

The proposal reflects the range of disciplines needed to undertake a comprehensive evaluation and will ensure that the consequences of any major changes in land use towards biomass production are properly and fully understood in advance. These outputs will be used to update DEFRA Best Practice Guides for SRC and miscanthus, and to provide the scientific tools to underpin the conduct of EIAs, SEAs or SAs involving projects, policies or programmes where increased planting of energy crops is proposed or anticipated. The innovative research approach taken here also allows for greater stakeholder involvement in defining options for energy crops.

We will use existing data and generate new data, where there are gaps in existing knowledge, by specific research activities in the disciplines outlined above.

We have chosen two contrasting farming systems typical of different regions of the UK as study areas (i) The arable cropping dominated system of the Midlands and Eastern Counties of England and; (ii) A grassland-dominated system more typical of the South West of England. Both have been classified as being within contrasting geographic, farming and Environmental Zones. They also contain some of the greater densities of existing energy crop plantings and are likely to see new plantings in the near future.

Figure 1a. SRC willow landscape

Figure 1b. Planted fields of miscanthus

We aim to study biodiversity and hydrology in established sites. Given the length of time crops are in the ground, more land use will be under established crops cf. establishment phase. The establishment phase is also a period of change, and this will ensure that plant and insect species associated with the new crop, rather than a previous land-use are monitored. In contrast, for social acceptance, the greater landscape change will occur in the establishing phase (years 1 – 4) and this will therefore be the focus for these studies. The economic appraisal will encompass all phases of the crop, from the pre-planting decision making process through to the long term financial viability and will look at the effects on the whole rural economy. To maintain credibility within the agricultural context for all studies and to avoid edge effects in the biodiversity and hydrology studies, actual field sites chosen will have a minimum size of 3 ha.

To assess the public acceptability of landscape impacts we will use GIS-based 3D landscape visualisations within a framework of stakeholder consultations and focus groups. These visualisations have considerable advantages over conventional 2D maps or photomontages as means of representing landscape change, not least the ability to combine feature detail with an interactivity where viewpoints can be changed at will. UEA researchers have used these techniques in several recent studies of landscape change scenarios and have specialist display equipment (including a portable Elumens VisionStation) (Figure 2) that will be utilised in the research (see http://www.uea.ac.uk/zicer/ssevrel/).

Figure 2. Portable Elumens VisionStation

The research on hydrology will take measurements in SRC willow and miscanthus fields (Figure 3) for use in a physically-based, numerical model, the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES), which is an initiative of CEH and the Meteorological Office, to predict the impact of land cover change resulting from planting energy crops on river flows. The model is spatially distributed and incorporates an integrated description of the energy, water and carbon balances of the land surface with a rainfall-runoff model. The land surface description is based on previous work. JULES is grid-based, with mosaicing of the vegetation cover within each grid cell, and runoff represented by a probability distribution model and flow routing. A feature of this model, essential for this project, is the description of the land surface which is physically-based and fully integrated so that the vegetation growth and therefore its structure, e.g. leaf area index, canopy height etc., are dynamically calculated by the model. The model is also generic and consistent in how it handles the different land cover types; an important feature for predicting the impacts of land use change.

Figure 3. Instrumentation for hydrological measurements

Research on impacts on farmland biodiversity will be evaluated using the approach developed for the Farm Scale Evaluations (FSE) of genetically modified, herbicide-tolerant crops. The FSEs developed techniques that can be applied in a wide variety of cropping situations using repeatable sampling protocols. Employing these sampling protocols in this study will allow direct comparison of measures of biodiversity (Figure 4), associated with energy crops, with arable crops for the first time, which is a major benefit of the proposed study since it will be possible to start to explore how different mixtures and rates of adoption of these crops might influence biodiversity across farms or regions.

Figure 4. Invertebrate (a) and weed (b) abundance and diversity in the two energycrops will be studied using the protocols developed for the farm-scale evaluations

The economic assessment will encompass both farm-level and wider rural economy impacts, and will be closely integrated with other areas of the research programme through being informed by and, in turn, informing work modules in other disciplines. The initial construction of farm economic models will utilise information from the GIS, bio-diversity and hydrology areas to build case-specific models; these will later be validated and augmented by the extended dataset derived from the farm survey work. The models will compare baseline and alternative scenarios to estimate the implications of change on the wider rural economy, the outcomes for which will be used in completing the scientific conclusions.

A Sustainability Appraisal (SA) approach will be used to provide an integrated assessment of the implications of greater energy crop planting. SA is an environmental assessment methodology that systematically examines the extent to which the implementation of a plan or strategy would achieve sustainable development. Under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act of 2004 SAs are mandatory for several types of land use plans (e.g. Regional Spatial Strategies) in the UK. The ODPM has recently issued a consultation document which outlines how SAs can be conducted to meet the requirements of both the EU SEA Directive (2001/42/EC) and the 2004 Act. Several recent SAs of RSSs have included consideration of the extent and location of energy crop planting. The SA approach has been chosen here because it: (i) encompasses social, economic and environmental objectives (ii) is suitable for landscape scale evaluations (iii) can be adapted to compare the implications of different planting scenarios (iv) is currently being used in a range of regional and local planning frameworks (v) utilises much existing work on sustainability indicators (e.g. see http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk) but permits some flexibility in the measures employed.

Although we have selected the East Midlands and South West regions as a focus of our research, elements of the project will take a national level into account. Information from existing data sets will be reviewed and based on these a scoping exercise will be conducted to identify objectives, targets and indicators for the SA. GIS will be used to identify potentially suitable land for energy crops and a number of planting scenarios will be defined. These scenarios will supply the basis for first pass surveying and modelling studies on social acceptance, landscape sensitivity, hydrological and economic impacts. Biodiversity and hydrological measurements will be conducted at field sites on farms in these regions where energy crops are already established. These farms will be included in the economic modelling and visualisations of the sites used in the social acceptance surveys. Information from these different research activities will be used to refine the land suitability maps and to assess likely changes in indicators for the different scenarios. Subsequently, the scenarios will be compared on sustainability indicators (e.g. rivers classed as good or fair quality, trends in bird populations or plant biodiversity) and the most appropriate outcome (relative to sustainability objectives) identified. Scientifically-based recommendations will be drawn up and discussed with stakeholders, planners and those involved in conducting environmental assessments. The direct involvement of the Regional Development Agencies for the two selected areas and inputs from DEFRA will add important strength to our capacity to carry out this approach.

RELU-Biomass provides a comprehensive platform upon which to assess the implications of increasing land use under energy crops. However, whilst RELU-Biomass embraces the main priority areas in need of consideration, it was not possible to cover all aspects under the funding resources available. Biodiversity assessments using the FSE protocols are particularly resource-intensive and, with the resources available, focus was placed on a comparison of miscanthus and SRC willow with arable and, to a lesser extent, grassland, for established crops at the smaller field scale. It was also not possible to include bird studies within the RELU-Biomass budget, although the intention was to model impacts of weed and invertebrate abundance in SRC on some farmland bird species, based on the bird data available so far, and to use a similar approach for miscanthus, should bird data become available during the life time of the project.

Subsequent to RELU-Biomass starting, Defra have provided additional support to compliment the biodiversity research covered by the RELU biomass project so that some of the areas we were not able to study can now be investigated. Click here for more information.

Biodiversity research in the farmscale evaluations (FSE) of genetically modified herbicide tolerant crops has shown that the management systems employed can affect changes in biodiversity, and that these management systems should be optimised to assure the highest biodiversity attainable. For biomass crops, management systems that will affect biodiversity include the scales of growing, within a landscape, and temporal effects including the crop age, time in the cutting cycle and timing of cutting. Presently there is only limited evidence upon which to draw up guidelines on these management systems and, given the rate at which plantings are increasing, it is clear that such data are urgently required. The Defra project extension to RELU-Biomass aims to expand the evidence base on biodiversity in energy crops for policy development by determining how the biodiversity of miscanthus and SRC willow is affected by the spatial scale, structuring and management of the plantings. This will be done by extending the sampling for abundance and diversity of weeds and invertebrates using FSE-standard methods to cover these aspects. The suitability of SRC willow and miscanthus crops for birdlife will also depend on the size of a continuous planted area and the structure of the crop, and the Defra project extension we also enable us to investigate the use of both biomass crops by birds in relation to cropping scale.

More information on stakeholder engagement in RELU-Biomass can be found here