Skip to main content
UMD College of Behavorial & Social Sciences UMD College of Behavorial & Social Sciences
MENU

Topbar Menu

  • About Us
  • People
  • Alumni and Giving
  • Diversity
  • Undergraduate
    • Prospective Students
    • Courses & Facilities
    • Advising
    • Special Programs
    • Graduation
    • Geography Club
  • Graduate
    • Prospective Ph.D. Students
    • Graduate Courses
    • Graduate Student Publications
    • Graduate Student Awards
    • Graduate Students
    • Master of Science and Graduate Certificate Programs
    • Combined BS/MS Program
  • Research
    • Research Areas
      • Geospatial-Information Science and Remote Sensing
      • Human Dimensions of Global Change
      • Land Cover and Land Use Change
      • Carbon, Vegetation Dynamics and Landscape-Scale Processes
    • Centers
      • Center for Geospatial Information Science
      • International Center for Innovation in Geospatial Analytics & Earth Observation
  • High School Hub
    • Program Overview
    • High School Awards
    • High School Internship Program
    • GIS Day
  • Resources
    • Graduate Student Organization
    • Student Life
    • Graduate School
    • Responsible Conduct of Research
    • Emergency Preparedness
    • Job Opportunities
    • Graduation
Search

Main navigation

  • Undergraduate
    • Prospective Students
    • Courses & Facilities
    • Advising
    • Special Programs
    • Graduation
    • Geography Club
  • Graduate
    • Prospective Ph.D. Students
    • Graduate Courses
    • Graduate Student Publications
    • Graduate Student Awards
    • Graduate Students
    • Master of Science and Graduate Certificate Programs
    • Combined BS/MS Program
  • Research
    • Research Areas
      • Geospatial-Information Science and Remote Sensing
      • Human Dimensions of Global Change
      • Land Cover and Land Use Change
      • Carbon, Vegetation Dynamics and Landscape-Scale Processes
    • Centers
      • Center for Geospatial Information Science
      • International Center for Innovation in Geospatial Analytics & Earth Observation
  • High School Hub
    • Program Overview
    • High School Awards
    • High School Internship Program
    • GIS Day
  • Resources
    • Graduate Student Organization
    • Student Life
    • Graduate School
    • Responsible Conduct of Research
    • Emergency Preparedness
    • Job Opportunities
    • Graduation
  • About Us
  • People
  • Alumni and History
  • Diversity

Search our site:

Grand Challenges: Monitoring Second-Generation Biofuel Crops to Inform Climate Mitigation Efforts

Breadcrumb

  • Home
  • Featured Content
  • Grand Challenges: Monitoring Second-Generation Biofuel Crops To Inform Climate Mitigation Efforts
Grand Challenges Grants

Geographical sciences researcher combines satellite analysis with field data collection for study.

Climate change, and how to mitigate and adapt to it, is one of the grandest challenges currently facing our society. Land use will play a critical role in climate mitigation efforts. Many socio-economic models project unprecedented biofuel crop expansion, coupled with carbon capture and sequestration, in order to achieve 2 degrees warming targets. Unlike the first-generation of biofuel crops that displaced food crops and led to increased food prices, new second-generation biofuel crops, such as switchgrass, are able to grow on marginal lands. While biofuel crops offer the potential to significantly improve our climate mitigation efforts, the large-scale land-use change involved also has the potential to negatively impact biodiversity, water cycles, and food security. 

For her University of Maryland Grand Challenges Grant funded project on “Climate Mitigation and Land-use: Detection and Monitoring of Second-Generation Biofuel Crops in the USA,” Associate Research Professor of Geographical Sciences Louise Chini is seeking to address these concerns by developing sophisticated modeling, detection, and monitoring technologies for switchgrass. 

“We are developing a methodology for detecting switchgrass cultivation using satellite data and have already made a lot of progress on this algorithm but needed to train and validate our method with direct observations of switchgrass,” said Chini.

Louise Chini headshot
Louise Chini

Chini and a former graduate student recently completed a trip to gather data on the exact locations of switchgrass crops in Crawford County, PA. They spent a day in that region driving to specific locations to confirm whether the existing datasets of switchgrass cultivation are accurate. They chose Crawford County, PA because the USDA Cropland Data Layer (CDL) dataset indicated that there was a significant amount of switchgrass being grown there, so it presented an ideal candidate for a study area. 

“We were able to document over 20 different switchgrass sites and were also able to speak with local farmers about recent switchgrass farming practices,” said Chini. 

Now that this data has been collected, the next step is to incorporate the observations into the model training algorithm and use that model to detect other areas of switchgrass growth. A detection and monitoring method based on satellite data will be useful for climate mitigation decision-making because it will help determine whether these crops are replacing food crops, whether they are being grown in areas of high or low biodiversity, whether they are using significant amounts of water, etc. The new dataset that was collected will help to inform that process. 

“This field trip was a real highlight of this project so far and will provide a valuable dataset of where these potential second-generation bioenergy crops are currently being grown,” said Chini.

To Chini’s knowledge, there are no other ground-observation datasets of this kind that are able to point to specific locations where switchgrass is being grown.

As a next step, Chini and her colleagues are considering the possibility of expanding this approach to visit more sites in other states or regions. They are also considering a return visit to the same location next summer to document which land-use conversions had happened during the previous year and develop a multi-year dataset of switchgrass cultivation for that location.

Read more about this Grand Challenges project

This article was originally published by UMD's Division of Research

Published on Mon, 11/11/2024 - 15:16

College of Behavorial & Social Sciences
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
  • Zenfolio

Department of Geographical Sciences

2181 Samuel J. LeFrak Hall, 7251 Preinkert Drive,
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-4050

Join Our Newsletter

Contact Us

Links
  • UMD Land Acknowledgement
  • UMD Staff Directory
  • Give to GEOG
  • UMD Web Accessibility
  • Alumni
© 2025 College of Behavorial & Social Sciences. All Rights Reserved.
Login