Development of a GIS-based spatial model for the estimation of sustainable biomass potentials in different regions of North West Europe

Abstract

Within the EU-project BioenNW a GIS-based spatial model for the estimation of the amount and the spatial distribution of different biomass residues, originating e.g. from agriculture, forestry and municipal waste, is being developed using the integrated development environment Eclipse together with the programming language Python and the software ArcGIS. This study presents the model structure and exemplary results for the estimation of residue potentials from cereals and root crops cultivation on arable land in the district Dueren (Germany). Besides to theoretical potentials, so called sustainable potentials are estimated assuming different types of ecological and techno-economic restrictions. The sustainable residue potentials are estimated for the EEA reference grid (1 km) including maps data on land cover, protected areas, soil erodibility and soil organic carbon content together with statistical data on land use and crop yields for the year 2010.