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The ongoing debate about costs and benefits of wood-pellet based bioenergy production in the southeastern United States (SE USA) requires an understanding of the science and context influencing market decisions associated with its sustainability. Production of pellets has garnered much attention as US exports have grown from negligible amounts in the early 2000s to 4.6 million metric tonnes in 2015. Currently, 98% of these pellet exports are shipped to Europe to displace coal in power plants. We ask, 'How is the production of wood pellets in the SE USA affecting forest systems and the ecosystem services they provide?' To address this question, we review current forest conditions and the status of the wood products industry, how pellet production affects ecosystem services and biodiversity, and what methods are in place to monitor changes and protect vulnerable systems. Scientific studies provide evidence that wood pellets in the SE USA are a fraction of total forestry operations and can be produced while maintaining or improving forest ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are protected by the requirement to utilize loggers trained to apply scientifically based best management practices in planning and implementing harvest for the export market. Bioenergy markets supplement incomes to private rural landholders and provide an incentive for forest management practices that simultaneously benefit water quality and wildlife and reduce risk of fire and insect outbreaks. Bioenergy also increases the value of forest Bioenergy (2017Bioenergy ( ) 9, 1296Bioenergy ( -1305Bioenergy ( , doi: 10.1111 land to landowners, thereby decreasing likelihood of conversion to nonforest uses. Monitoring and evaluation are essential to verify that regulations and good practices are achieving goals and to enable timely responses if problems arise. Conducting rigorous research to understand how conditions change in response to management choices requires baseline data, monitoring, and appropriate reference scenarios. Long-term monitoring data on forest conditions should be publicly accessible and utilized to inform adaptive management.

Throughout the past two decades, numerous studies characterized the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and net energy balance of corn ethanol production in the USA. A wide range of reported values resulted from differences in the vintage of the data used to evaluate the ethanol conversion technology and the agricultural practices of corn production, which evolved substantially during the rapid growth phase of the industry. Methodological differences in life cycle assessments also caused the reported values to vary widely. With corn dry mills growing from 30% of total installed ethanol production capacity in 1990 to 80–90% from 2006 to 2011, we document the evolution of this industry using vintage‐specific data to analyze selected energy and environmental metrics, including GHG emissions, fossil energy use, direct land use, and GHG emissions reduction per hectare of land harvested for ethanol production. Our estimates indicate that production and use of corn ethanol emitted 44% fewer GHG emissions, consumed 54% less fossil energy and required 44% less land in 2010 compared to 1990 (on a life cycle basis). Our review and analysis point to strategies for reducing the carbon footprint of the corn dry mill industry by building on the progress already achieved. Using biomass (e.g. residues from corn production) for process heat or combined heat and power is one such strategy. Additional environmental benefits are projected from the adoption of integrated gasification combined cycle technology (using corn residues), which leads to energy‐self‐sufficient mills or net electricity producers depending on the power system configuration. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

With recent national emphasis on increasing biofuel development for reducing dependency on foreign oil and reducing carbon emissions from energy production and consumption, the agricultural land cover and land use patterns in the United States and many other regions of the world are expected to change in the coming years. Although remote sensing data analysis is a well recognized approach for addressing bioenergy sustainability, biomass monitoring over large geographic regions using remote sensing images poses several scientific and technical challenges.Data Challenges. There is great need for continuous coverage of high-temporal data with moderate to fine spatial resolution. Panel will discuss data challenges in monitoring biomass at regional and global scales, takes a view on current and future satellite programs.Analytical Challenges: Conventional techniques are either inadequate or do not scale well for continuous biomass monitoring over large geographic regions. Panel will discuss the recent advances in spatiotemporal data mining, especially the techniques that exploit the subtle multidimensional signals through the joint use of high temporal resolution (MODIS) data and moderate-and fine-spatial resolution satellite images for extracting multi-temporal biomass change information, including crop types and their conditions. Computational Challenges: Scaling spatiotemporal data mining techniques for large geographic regions is a computationally challenging task. Panel will discuss the challenges in embracing modern computing infrastructure, especially distributed and cloud computing for biomass and bioenergy monitoring and simulation needs.In addition, this panel discusses recent government programmatic initiatives in the area of biomass and bioenergy.

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