Is bioenergy for the birds? An evaluation of alternative future bioenergy landscapes

摘要

Bioenergy production-either for fuels or electricity-is the most land intensive form of energy production (1). The conse quences of increased demand for land as sociated with bioenergy crops initially gained attention because of the impli cations for carbon emissions associated with land clearing (2, 3), but, more recently, the potential impacts of bioenergy's land demand on biodiversity have gained increased attention (4-6). The study by Meehan et al. (7) in PNAS provides a quantitative look at predicted landscape scale biodiversity impacts under alterna tive bioenergy cropping scenarios. Specif ically, the authors (7) predict impacts of either greatly expanded row crops or greatly expanded perennial grasses for bird communities in the Upper Midwest, making use of the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data to correlate bird species rich ness with landscape features at 265 sites across seven upper Midwestern states (Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio).