Four of the ELUM network sites were used to improve our understanding of the underlying processes and mechanisms determining changes in soil carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions following land use change to bioenergy cultivation.
These four paired sites in Lincolnshire, East Sussex, Aberystwyth and East Grange in Fife, included transitions from arable and grassland to Miscanthus, short-rotation coppice Willow and Short Rotation Forestry. At these sites we:
- Quantified the effects of direct land use change on soil carbon dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions under different energy crops using static chambers and eddy covariance techniques.
- Generated a mechanistic understanding of land use change impacts on soil carbon dynamics and storage
- Generated empirical data on greenhouse gas emissions which facilitated the development and evaluation of the Ecosystem Land Use meta-model and quantified uncertainty of up-scaled measurements in commercial bioenergy plantations.
