Implications of altering land use for biofuel production on carbon and water cycling in the central US

Increasing demand for ethanol, biodiesel, and food has resulted in competing pressures on land use strategies in agricultural regions of the world. This will have spatially and temporally varying environmental impacts on these regions. These Land-Use Land-Cover (LULC) changes alter not only the surface landscape but also regional carbon and water cycling. In this study, we will assess the ecosystem level responses of changing landcover for biofuel production across the Kansas River Basin, which is used for a wide variety of agricultural uses (i.e. maize, soy, Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), grazing etc.) and natural landcovers. The objectives of this study are 1) to assess the phenological changes across the basin, and relate these to local versus regional climate influences; 2) quantify the impacts to carbon storage and water cycling of changing land use and 3) simulate the landcover changes for biofuel productions in conjunction with future climate change (the IPCC A1B scenario). This will be done using a combination of a 22-years time series of NDVI and precipitation data and a process-based biophysical model for assessing carbon and water cycling (BIOME-BGC). The result will show the distributions of phenology across the basin. Of specific interest is quantifying the local vs. regional climate control on different land use types which will be assessed as a function of location along the mean precipitation gradient, as well as spatial trends which are governed by microclimatic impacts (i.e. LULC) and regional climate forcing. Since the local changes may dramatically alter the impacts of global climate change, we will have a better idea about the effects of these changes for the central United States. Moreover, the issue of biofuel production and its influence on the local/regional changes on LULC and ecosystem functioning are important for accurately assessing future predictions of climate change.