Exploring forests vulnerable to over-logging to supply woody biomass to power plants in Mie, Central Japan
- PDF / 707,181 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 110 Downloads / 160 Views
Exploring forests vulnerable to over-logging to supply woody biomass to power plants in Mie, Central Japan Chisa Nakata1 • Akemi Itaya1
Received: 27 March 2020 / Revised: 30 September 2020 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 Korean Spatial Information Society 2020
Abstract The rapid increase of woody biomass power plants has given rise to concerns about the balance of supply and demand. The purpose of this study was to explore forests vulnerable to over-logging and show them visually in Mie Prefecture, central Japan when supplying woody biomass to power plants based on transportation distance and the time using a non-commercial road network. The destinations were the three biomass power plants and the origins were artificial forests divided by watersheds. Transportation distances and time between destinations and origins were estimated using the routesearch function in Google Maps. Forests vulnerable to over-logging were explored based on two thresholds: a one-way distance of 50 km and a travel time of 2.5 h. Our results show that many of the artificial forests in Mie Prefecture might be subject to high harvesting competition. In all, 55.07% of the forest plantations in Mie Prefecture were within 50 km of two or three biomass power plants and 87.11% were within 2.5 h one-way. It might be necessary to supply woody biomass from southern Mie Prefecture. The stakeholder should share logging plans and monitor over-logging while planning for the efficient use of woody biomass in the southern part of Mie Prefecture. Keywords Artificial forests Cost Driver’s work environment Google Maps Route-search function Transportation distance and the time & Akemi Itaya [email protected] Chisa Nakata [email protected] 1
Graduated School of Bioresources, Mie University, 1577 Kurimamachiya-cyo, Tsu-shi, Mie 514-8507, Japan
1 Introduction Renewable energy is necessary for sustainable development and can supply the energy needed for indefinite periods while producing far less overall pollution than fossil or nuclear fuels [1]. Among biomass resources, woody biomass is a promising renewable energy resource. The estimated available woody biomass in 2050 is 100–400 EJ/year, which could cover 10–40% of the world’s primary energy consumption in 2050 [2–4]. Therefore, interest in the use of woody biomass has increased dramatically worldwide [5]. In Japan, woody biomass has also attracted attention because of its abundance, since two-thirds of the nation’s land is forest and its energy use is expected to contribute to revitalizing forests and the forest-product industry, which has been depressed for the last 30 years [6]. A feed-in tariff was enforced in 2012, and subsequently 491 woody biomass power plants have been constructed as of 31 March 2017, with a generating capacity of about 12 million kW [7]. However, this hasty increase has raised concerns over the balance of supply and demand, ecological, economic, and social functions. The loss of tree cover due to over logging for fuel woods led to repeated downstream floods and
Data Loading...
