Monday, November 5, 2007 - 3:30 PM
49-5

Using Geospatial Data to Identify Critical Areas that should be Maintained in grass cover - CRP and Biofuel options.

Steve Depew and William Kuenstler. USDA-NRCS, 2655 Traceland Dr., Tupelo, MS 38801

Biofuel has gained in prominence in the last year. It has become more of a buzzword and is now elevated to daily fuel industry language. At the current time, numerous research efforts are moving forward to study how to increase production and efficiency of this more than emerging energy source. While lowering our dependency on foreign fuel sources and lower greenhouse emissions at the same time is a double positive, we have to be careful to do it without forfeiting soil health and water quality. 

For example, using corn stover as well as grain can give more biomass per crop, but doing so leaves the soil with low residue cover, making it susceptible to water erosion, and overall negative soil carbon accumulation. Perennial grasses that can be mowed, however, can produce large quantities of biomass with minimal soil disturbance and a positive soil carbon accumulation.

 The following is an effort to take existing USDA geodatabases and use them to develop a system to identify potential CRP land areas for biofuel production. The model uses USDA FSA CRP polygon maps to clip SSURGO soil information and rate CRP lands for there erositvity index (EI). Using the two databases together can identify CRP fields with grass and legume cover that have the lowest EI.


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