Climate Benefits of Increasing Plant Diversity in Perennial Bioenergy Crops

Yi Yang, Evelyn C. Reilly, Jacob M. Jungers, Jihui Chen, Timothy M. Smith

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

Bioenergy from perennial grasses mitigates climate change via displacing fossil fuels and storing atmospheric CO2 belowground as soil carbon. Here, we conduct a critical review to examine whether increasing plant diversity in bioenergy grassland systems can further increase their climate change mitigation potential. We find that compared with highly productive monocultures, diverse mixtures tend to produce as great or greater yields. In particular, there is strong evidence that legume addition improves yield, in some cases equivalent to mineral nitrogen fertilization at 33–150 kg per ha. Plant diversity can also promote soil carbon storage in the long term, reduce soil N2O emissions by 30%–40%, and suppress weed invasion, hence reducing herbicide use. These potential benefits of plant diversity translate to 50%–65% greater life-cycle greenhouse gas savings for biofuels from more diverse grassland biomass grown on degraded soils. In addition, there is growing evidence that plant diversity can accelerate land restoration.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)434-445
Number of pages12
JournalOne Earth
Volume1
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 20 2019

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