Perennial biofuel grasses could reduce local temperatures: study

March 18, 2011 |

In California, Stanford University has published an article about work done by David Lobell, assistant professor of environmental Earth system science and a center fellow at Stanford’s Program on Food Security and the Environment, Matei Georgescu of the Center for Environmental Fluid Dynamics at Arizona State University and Chris Field, professor of environmental Earth system science and of biology at Stanford.

Their study used a computer simulation to forecast the climatic impact of using Midwest farmland to grow bioenergy perennial grasses instead of soybeans and corn.  They found that doing this in a 12 state area would cause more water to be pulled from the soil and released into the atmosphere.  The simulation showed that the resulting water vapor would cause a 1.8 F drop in local temperatures.

The authors wrote, “Locally, the simulated cooling is sufficiently large to partially offset projected warming due to increasing greenhouse gases over the next few decades.”   Lobell states that an important issue is whether or not the water in the soil is replaced by rainfall, or whether the soil dries out, making the effort unsustainable.  The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and was funded by support from the Stanford Global Climate and Energy Project and a National Science Foundation grant at Arizona State University.

More on the story.

Category: Research

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