Overview
- Deals with an assessment of the sustainability of agriculture and water resources on the Plains and their vulnerability to climate change
- Includes 'primers' on climate, soils and vegetation, and on global warming and climatic change
- The role of biomass production in maintaining productivity of the land and improving the region’s economy
- Contribution that biomass can make to mitigation of global warming
Part of the book series: Advances in Global Change Research (AGLO, volume 27)
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About this book
WHY THIS BOOK? This book is an exploration of the possibility that a significant portion of the North American Great Plains (NAGP), now primarily in rangeland, corn, soybean, and small-grain production, can be converted to the production of biomass-energy crops. Biomass can be used as a substitute for some of the fossil fuels the use of which is now increasing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO ) 2 and contributing to global warming and climatic change. Such a land use change to biomass could lead not only to a global good but also to specific economic and environmental benefits for the NAGP region. This analysis is prompted by the following facts and trends: The emission of CO from fossil fuel combustion and tropical deforesta- 2 tion and the rising concentrations of other greenhouse gases make global warming a virtual certainty in this century; indeed the evidence is strong that a warming is already discernible. Global warming will lead to climatic change and, while the geographic d- tribution of this change is not yet known, most general circulation models (GCMs) suggest that midcontinental regions in the northern hemisphere (such as the NAGP) are likely to become drier as well as warmer. NAGP, one of the world’s major breadbaskets, is subject to periodic droughts and other climatic stresses that may worsen with global wa- ing.
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Keywords
Table of contents (7 chapters)
Reviews
From the reviews:
"In A Biomass Future for the North American Great Plains, Norman Rosenberg, an agricultural meteorologist with degrees in soil physics and meteorology, sets out to examine the potential for the North American Great Plains as a major source of biomass for producing cellulosic ethanol. … This book presents a comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and timely treatment of the topic. … The book is appropriate for upper-level students and other individuals interested in sustainable agriculture, agroecology, bioenergy, and related topics." (Steven L. Fales, Great Plains Research, Vol. 19 (1), Spring, 2009)
About the author
The author is Regent's Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Meteorology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Laboratory Fellow Emeritus at the Joint Global Change Research Institute, a collaboration of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland-College Park.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: A Biomass Future for the North American Great Plains
Book Subtitle: Toward Sustainable Land Use and Mitigation of Greenhouse Warming
Authors: Norman J. Rosenberg
Series Title: Advances in Global Change Research
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5601-7
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4020-5600-0Published: 23 February 2007
Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-7405-8Published: 25 November 2010
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4020-5601-7Published: 15 February 2007
Series ISSN: 1574-0919
Series E-ISSN: 2215-1621
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 200
Topics: Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Renewable and Green Energy, Landscape/Regional and Urban Planning, Agriculture, Environmental Engineering/Biotechnology