Evan DeLucia at EBI Energy Farm in Illinois

Evan DeLucia:

Reviving Depleted Agricultural Land – Biofuel Bonus?

Biofuels are often touted as a solution to rising oil prices and global climate change—but they could also help solve agricultural problems caused by centuries of land abuse. That possibility is being put to the test in the latest EBI research by University of Illinois Professor Evan DeLucia, who is heading an investigation of the impact and sustainability of feedstock production. “I am hopeful,” says DeLucia, “that not only will biofuel crops provide sustainable energy, but that they will diversify and improve the health of our agricultural ecosystem.”

Such an improvement is long overdue. Years of corn-soybean rotation in the Midwest have eroded soil, polluted water, and disrupted carbon and nitrogen cycles. Continuing that cycle could spell disaster for farmland, while introducing new, low-maintenance crops like miscanthus or switchgrass could replenish the nutrients that have been leached from the soil.

DeLucia's team is trying to turn these hypotheticals into hard facts. They have planted plots of four biomass crops at Illinois' new EBI Energy Farm -- corn, miscanthus, switchgrass, and mixed restored prairie grass. “This is the first time that side-by-side comparisons of the ecology of different biofuel feedstocks will be conducted under realistic field conditions,” says DeLucia. As the crops continue to grow over their three-year establishment period, high-tech machines will carefully monitor the plants' effects on the environment.

And that effect is complex, to say the least. To provide a full sense of the crops’ impact, tests range from soil carbon measurements to energy exchange readings to analysis of arthropod activity. The variety of data requires researchers with all kinds of specialties: the EBI team includes ecologists, entomologists, physiologists, and many others. Their program reflects the unique interdisciplinary nature of EBI research. DeLucia, a plant biologist, calls working with scientists from such diverse fields “invigorating and exciting” and says this breadth of experience can “provide deep insight into the sustainability of biofuel crops.”

This isn’t the first foray into environmental research for DeLucia, who has spent his career studying global carbon cycles, climate change, forest preservation, and pollution. His previous research has shown him the pressing need for sustainable biofuels, and now he hopes that biofuels could solve more than one environmental problem.