Precision conservation for biofuel production

It is expected that large amounts of agricultural lands will be needed to meet desired bioenergy production goals. Considerable land-use changes associated with the biofuel production presents an unprecedented opportunity to develop sustainable landscape design plans that meet biofuel, environmental, and economic goals. Multiple sustainability indicators related to water availability, water quality, soil health, ecosystem services, and profitability are available that can be used to develop sustainable biofuel production strategies. Selection and placement of various biofuel crops considering these sustainability indicators will require either targeting of specific landscape positions or optimization in a watershed. While targeting bioenergy crops in specific landscape positions (e.g. perennial grasses grown in vegetated filter strips or highly erodible lands) provide a simple-to-use recommendation, targeting methods may not always result in optimal improvement in water quality. Complex landscape optimizations can be performed to meet one or more objective functions of land management and biofuel production; however, these methods are currently difficult to implement. There is a need to develop targeting methods that are derived from complex spatial optimization so that results are easy to implement and meet crop production and environmental and economic decision criteria. There is a need to develop precision conservation plans that meet desired sustainability and biofuel production goals.