RESEARCH ARTICLE
Sustainability Indicators of Biomass Production in Agroforestry Systems
Naresh Thevathasan1, *, Andrew Gordon1, Jamie Simpson1, Xiaobang Peng2, Salim Silim3, Raju Soolanayakanahally4, Henry de Gooijer4
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2014Volume: 8
First Page: 1
Last Page: 11
Publisher ID: TOASJ-8-1
DOI: 10.2174/1874331501408010001
Article History:
Received Date: 03/02/2014Revision Received Date: 12/03/2014
Acceptance Date: 13/03/2014
Electronic publication date: 18/4/2014
Collection year: 2014
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Production of biomass for bioenergy will depend on the sustainability of the production resource-base: the soil, water, air and the diversity of the ecosystem as a whole. For soil, potential sustainability indicators, including soil nitrogen and phosphorus, total organic matter, components associated with soil erosion and bulk density are discussed. Indicators related to the water resource water quality, water availability index, nitrate levels in water and biological oxygen demand are also discussed. Greenhouse gases and their sequestration potentials are discussed for maintaining atmospheric air quality. For biodiversity, a biodiversity index and soil biota index were selected as potential indicators. In addition to the production resource-base, the paper also discusses the importance of economic and social sustainability indices. To summarize, we are suggesting that a common method of visualizing the above indicated indices is to generate amoeba diagrams. This paper also provides a review on the term ‘sustainability’ and specific indicators, with metrics where possible, are described as candidates for inclusion as potential indicators appropriate for agroforestry based bioenergy systems in Canada. Three agroforestry based bioenergy systems are described and specific indicators are discussed within the bounds of these systems.