$2.5 million DOE grant to help MSU researchers measure benefits of growing trees for biofuel
Contact: Vanessa Beeson
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擜 $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy will benefit 亚洲色吧视频 researchers in the university鈥檚 Forest and Wildlife Research Center studying the economic and ecological benefits of growing trees for biofuel production.
The DOE funding will help MSU scientists study how to produce better, hardier hybrid poplars and eastern cottonwoods harvested for biomass energy. The team also will quantify the ecosystem services these fast-growing trees provide.
Assistant Professor Heidi Renninger in MSU鈥檚 College of Forest Resources is the project鈥檚 principal investigator.
鈥淪hort rotation hybrid poplar and eastern cottonwood trees grow fast as woody crops used to produce biomass energy,鈥 Renninger said. 鈥淭hese trees can grow between 20-40 feet in two to three years, at which time the trees are then coppiced, or cut back. The cut trees are harvested and used in the creation of biofuel while a new crop re-sprouts from the coppiced stumps.鈥
She said the team will develop an economic model that landowners can use to determine if short rotation woody crop production for bioenergy is right for them.
鈥淲e hope to find ways to make utilizing these trees for renewable energy more profitable for landowners and the emerging biofuel industry alike,鈥 Renninger said. 鈥淚n order to do that, we need resilient trees that can grow on different landscapes under different circumstances.鈥
While Renninger focuses on growing bigger, hardier trees, Courtney Siegert, associate professor of forestry, seeks to determine exactly how the trees help the ecosystem as a whole. 聽
鈥淲e will measure the ecosystem services the trees provide so landowners may be able to cooperate in ecosystem exchange services in the future, which will lower the price of bioenergy to make it more competitive with fossil fuels,鈥 Siegert said.
The team will use remote sensing to compile a detailed snapshot of poplar and cottonwood plantations across the Mid-South leveraging existing sites and planting new ones in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. Data will be collected via LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging, and uses lasers to measure variable distances. Hyperspectral imaging, which analyzes a wide spectrum of light, also will be used.
Qin Ma, assistant professor in the forestry department, explained how the data will be collected and used to build the economic model.
鈥淲e鈥檒l cover the crown by collecting data with UAVs fitted with LiDAR and hyperspectral imaging capabilities; then we鈥檒l walk the forest with a backpack that is equipped with the same technology,鈥 Ma explained. 鈥淭he data shows us how fast the trees are growing, how much water and nutrients they鈥檙e using, how much carbon they鈥檙e storing and much more. It gives us a complete picture from production and ecosystem service standpoints.鈥
Ma said the team then will use algorithms to match both data sets accurately so they can estimate the physical and spectral aspects of the trees from above and below.
鈥淎ll of this will be used in an economic model to better estimate both the productivity of the trees while also quantifying the ecosystem services they provide,鈥 she added.
Other MSU researchers on the project include Austin Himes, assistant professor of forestry, and Ray Iglay, assistant professor of wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture. Collaborators also include the University of Tennessee and Louisiana Tech University. Oregon鈥檚 GreenWood Resources Inc. is providing access to the company鈥檚 hybrid poplar cuttings. 聽
For more information on MSU鈥檚 College of Forest Resources, visit . For more on the Forest and Wildlife Research Center, visit .
MSU is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at .