Bioprose Blog: Researchers Find Bioenergy Crops Provide Critical Ecosystem Services
December 12, 2017
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Author: M. Cristina Negri, Principal Agronomist/ Environmental Engineer (former Laboratory Relationship Manager), Argonne National Laboratory
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Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) in Argonne, Illinois, are examining innovative new agricultural landscapes that incorporate perennial bioenergy crops to provide environmental benefits, such as improved nutrient management and pollinator nesting. This work prioritizes economic output while simultaneously providing important services to the environment.
Through a collaboration with the University of Michigan, ANL researchers found that incorporating bioenergy crops—such as switchgrass, willow, and prairie grasses—into the landscape can not only improve water quality by managing nutrients, but also potentially improve wild bee habitats. Maintaining habitats for natural pollinators, like bees, is a critical factor in ensuring U.S. crop productivity. While not essential for corn and soybeans, natural pollinators are critical for the reproduction of around 80% of agricultural crops.
Bees have made headlines recently due to their rapidly declining populations, as they are currently under threat due to habitat reduction, potentially toxic chemicals, and pests. A recent assessment of the status of wild bees in the United States found that the bee population declined 23% from 2008 to 2013. In light of the rapidly declining bee populations, many organizations, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), are searching for strategies to enhance the habitat of these critical pollinators.
In the past year, ANL and its collaborators have published two peer-reviewed articles1 that examine potential benefits of incorporating perennial bioenergy crops in a midwestern agricultural landscape. Both papers provide a basis for evaluating additional benefits of bioenergy crops, both in nutrient management and in the improvement of wild bee nesting habitats. Both of these benefits are critical for resource management and economic sustainability. Fertilizers are expensive but necessary for farmers to maintain soil quality. Finding ways to efficiently manage soil nutrients can translate into economic benefits by reducing the need for fertilizer, while improved pollinator habitat is essential for crop productivity. These two studies, which examine two distinct environmental effects of the same landscape configuration, show that there are ways to proactively design bioenergy systems that benefit different stakeholders and the environment.
ANL’s research is a part of the Bioenergy Technologies Office’s sustainability portfolio, which is working to advance scientific knowledge and inform research and development strategies to improve the productivity and long-term viability of advanced bioenergy systems.
1John B. Graham, Joan I. Nassauer, William S. Currie, Herbert Ssegane, and M. Cristina Negri, “Assessing Wild Bee Abundance in Perennial Bioenergy Landscapes: Effects of Bioenergy Crop Composition, Landscape Configuration, and Bioenergy Crop Area,” Landscape Ecology 32, no. 5 (2017): 1023–1037, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-017-0506-y; Herbert Ssegane and M. Cristina Negri, “An Integrated Landscape Designed for Commodity and Bioenergy Crops in a Tile-Drained Agricultural Watershed,” Journal of Environmental Quality 45, no. 5 (2016): 1588–1596, doi:10.2134/jeq2015.10.0518.
M. Cristina Negri
During her more than 20 years at Argonne National Laboratory, M. Cristina Negri has conducted and directed laboratory- to full-scale multidisciplinary projects developing technologies and concepts for environmental remediation and stewardship, including soil remediation and water treatment. She has researched sustainable technologies for urban environmental improvement.
In addition, Cristina works on the integration of bioenergy within working agricultural landscapes to address the food, energy, water, and land nexus. Her work focuses on developing sustainable, multifunctional landscape concepts, which aim, by design, at the creation of ecosystems services. Her interests are in systems approaches where industrial ecology concepts are applied to water and land management and green infrastructure.
Cristina is a senior fellow with the Energy Policy Institute at the Harris School and a fellow of the Institute of Molecular Engineering, both at the University of Chicago. She is also a fellow of the Northwestern University—Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering. She earned her Dottore in Scienze Agrarie degree (Agricultural Sciences) at the University of Milan in Milan, Italy.
Prior to joining Argonne, Cristina worked in private industry in Italy as a research and development manager and as a liaison with universities and other Italian national research organizations. Her research focused on developing methods for the sustainable, beneficial reuse of industrial and urban waste and for pollution mitigation in agriculture. This work was in support of a state-of-the-art, innovative, large facility for the treatment and beneficial recovery of waste products in agriculture. She also served as the convener of a CEN (the European Standardization Organization) Working Group, leading experts from European Union nations toward the creation of European environmental standards for agricultural commodities.
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