{"id":22295,"date":"2014-09-01T03:20:41","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T01:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.azocleantech.com\/news.aspx?newsID=20677"},"modified":"2014-08-29T11:09:18","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T09:09:18","slug":"earth-can-sustain-terrestrial-plant-growth-previously-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/earth-can-sustain-terrestrial-plant-growth-previously-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth can sustain more terrestrial plant growth than previously thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass \u2013 the total material in leaves, stems, roots, fruits, grains and other terrestrial plant parts \u2013 than previously thought.\u00a0The study, reported in Environmental Science and Technology, recalculates the theoretical limit of terrestrial plant productivity, and finds that it is much higher than many current estimates allow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you try to estimate something over the whole planet, you have to make some simplifying assumptions,\u201d said University of Illinois\u00a0plant biology\u00a0professor\u00a0Evan DeLucia, who led the new analysis. \u201cAnd most previous research assumes that the maximum productivity you could get out of a landscape is what the natural ecosystem would have produced. But it turns out that in nature very few plants have evolved to maximize their growth rates.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLucia directs the\u00a0Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment\u00a0at the U. of I. He also is an affiliate of the\u00a0Energy Biosciences Institute, which funded the research through the\u00a0Institute for Genomic Biology\u00a0at Illinois.<\/p>\n

Estimates derived from satellite images of vegetation and modeling suggest that about 54 gigatons of carbon is converted into terrestrial plant biomass each year, the researchers report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis value has remained stable for the past several decades, leading to the conclusion that it represents a planetary boundary \u2013 an upper limit on global biomass production,\u201d the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n

But these assumptions don\u2019t take into consideration human efforts to boost plant productivity through genetic manipulation, plant breeding and land management, DeLucia said. Such efforts have already yielded some extremely productive plants.<\/p>\n

For example, in Illinois a hybrid grass,\u00a0Miscanthus x giganteus<\/em>, without fertilizer or irrigation produced 10 to 16 tons of above-ground biomass per acre, more than double the productivity of native prairie vegetation or corn. And genetically modified no-till corn is more than five times as productive \u2013 in terms of total biomass generated per acre \u2013 as restored prairie in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

Some non-native species also outcompete native species; this is what makes many of them invasive, DeLucia said. In Iceland, for example, an introduced species, the nootka lupine, produces four times as much biomass as the native boreal dwarf birch species it displaces. And in India bamboo plantations produce about 40 percent more biomass than dry, deciduous tropical forests.<\/p>\n

Some of these plants would not be desirable additions to native or managed ecosystems, DeLucia said, but they represent the untapped potential productivity of plants in general.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re saying this is what\u2019s possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The team used a model of light-use efficiency and the theoretical maximum efficiency with which plant canopies convert solar radiation to biomass to estimate the theoretical limit of net primary production (NPP) on a global scale. This newly calculated limit was \u201croughly two orders of magnitude higher than the productivity of most current managed or natural ecosystems,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not saying that this is even approachable, but the theory tells us that what is possible on the planet is much, much higher than what current estimates are,\u201d DeLucia said.<\/p>\n

Taking into account global water limitations reduced this theoretical limit by more than 20 percent in all parts of the terrestrial landscape except the tropics, DeLucia said. \u201cBut even that water-limited NPP is many times higher than we see in our current agricultural systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeLucia cautions that scientists and agronomists have a long way to go to boost plant productivity beyond current limits, and the new analysis does not suggest that shortages of food or other plant-based resources will cease to be a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be the guy that says science is going to save the planet and we shouldn’t worry about the environmental consequences of agriculture, we shouldn\u2019t worry about runaway population growth,\u201d he said. \u201cAll I’m saying is that we\u2019re underestimating the productive capacity of plants in managed ecosystems.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Energy Biosciences Institute, which funded this research, is a public-private collaboration funded with $500 million for 10 years from the energy company, BP, and includes researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new analysis suggests the planet can produce much more land-plant biomass – the total materi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[364,1699,2440,22751,150],"class_list":["post-22295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-energy-biosciences-institute","supplier-environmental-science-technology","supplier-lawrence-berkeley-national-laboratory","supplier-university-of-california-berkeley-uc-berkeley","supplier-university-of-illinois"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22295"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=22295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}