Mapping land suitability at worldwide scale for fuelwood plantations
Locating potential tree-planting based on biogeophysically assessment of the range of potential yield of woody biomass is introduced. Three genera of trees have been identified as relevant to energy plantations: Acacia , Eucalyptus and Pinus . The interest of the results lies in the use of a spatial analysis at 1 km resolution . This approach uses georeferenced data as input for rainfall, temperatures and soil types. In a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment, bioclimatic envelopes are generated. The result is a global combination of mean daily maximum temperature of the warmest month, mean daily minimum temperature of the coldest month and mean annual rainfall which seem to have impact on the distribution of species. These criteria are retained for each species when considering edaphic constraints which adversely affect biomass productivity. At a worldwide scale, for selected species, the potential tree-planting areas are about 253 million hectares (Mha) for Acacia species, 441 Mha for Eucalyptus species and 560 Mha for Pinus species. Maps at worldwide scale are provided with a yield of 6-9 tons of dry matter per hectare and per year. The total of the areas available for plantations is about 600 Mha (6 million km²) of potential tree canopy cover. The limit of databases affects the validity of results and further studies are needed to refine these estimations with a mix between land use and land cover categories.