Final spatial and tabular poplar biomass estimates for Minnesota and Wisconsin, USA based on the approach for siting poplar energy production systems to increase productivity and associated ecosystem services

Short rotation woody crops such as Populus spp. and their hybrids (i.e., poplars) are a significant component of the total biofuels and bioenergy feedstock resource in the USA. We used available social (i.e., land ownership and cover) and biophysical (i.e., climate and soil characteristics) spatial data to map eligible lands suitable for establishing and growing poplar biomass for bioenergy crops across Minnesota and Wisconsin, USA. This package contains a polygon feature layer and tabular data produced for the 'An approach for siting poplar energy production systems to increase productivity and associated ecosystem services' (Zalesny et al. 2012). The polygon feature layer represents a coarse resolution (approximately 32-kilometer) polygon lattice framework. The associated tabular data includes the mean annual biomass for poplar as well as the SSURGO soil and NARR climate values that were used to generate the biomass values. The WTD_Avg_DM values represent the poplar productivity generated by the Physiological Processes Predicting Growth (3-PG) model. The additional ERDAS IMAGINE raster image contains the final spatial predictions of biomass productivity for hybrid poplar at a finer scale (30-meter resolution).
Production of dedicated energy crops may result in large-scale land conversion, which leads to questions about economic, logistic, and ecologic feasibility. To address such concerns, we used available social and biophysical spatial data to map eligible lands suitable for establishing and growing poplar biomass for bioenergy crops. While this novel approach was validated for Minnesota and Wisconsin, our methodology was developed to be useful across a wide range of geographic conditions, irrespective of intra-regional variability in site and climate parameters. Thus, this information is vital for siting poplar energy production systems to increase productivity and associated ecosystem services, and is widely applicable to woody biomass production systems worldwide.
Original metadata date was 10/19/2016. Metadata were updated on 10/24/2016 to include another reference. Minor metadata updates on 12/16/2016.