Short-rotation woody crops are an integral component of regional and national energy portfolios, as well as providing essential ecosystem services such as biomass supplies, carbon sinks, clean water, and healthy soils. We review recent USDA Forest Service Research and Development efforts from the USDA Biomass Research Centers on the provisioning of these ecosystem services from woody crop production systems. For biomass, we highlight productivity and yield potential, pest susceptibility, and bioenergy siting applications. We describe carbon storage in aboveground woody biomass and studies assessing the provision of clean and plentiful water. Soil protection and wildlife habitat are also mentioned, in the context of converting lands from traditional row-crop agriculture to woody production systems.

Soil erosion, loss of productivity potential, biodiversity loss, water shortage, and soil and water pollution are ongoing processes that decrease or degrade provisioning (e.g., biomass, freshwater) and regulating (e.g., carbon sequestration, soil quality) ecosystem services. Therefore, developing environmental technologies that maximize these services is essential for the continued support of rural and urban populations. Genotype selection is a key component of these technologies, and characteristics of the species used in short rotation woody biomass systems, as well as the silvicultural techniques developed for short rotation woody crops are readily adapted to environmental applications. Here, we describe the development of such woody crop production systems for the advancement of environmental technologies including phytoremediation, urban afforestation, forest restoration, and mine reclamation. The primary goal of these collective efforts is to develop systems and tools that can help to mitigate ecological degradation and thereby sustain healthy ecosystems across the rural to urban continuum. Abbreviations B B o r o n C C a r b o n Cl Chloride Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

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Over the past two decades, the United States government conducted detailed analyses of the potential of a biobased national energy strategy that produced four unified studies, namely the 2005-2016 US Billion-Ton Study and updates. With each effort, better perspective was gained on the biophysical potential of biomass and the economic availability of these resources on a national scale. It was also apparent that many questions remained, including crop yields, logistical operations, and systems integration across production and harvest. These reports accentuated the need for improving geospatial performance metrics for biomass supply chains. This study begins to address these problems by developing spatially specific data layers that incorporate data on soils, climatology, growth, and economics for short-rotation woody biomass plantations. Methods were developed to spatially assess the potential productivity and profitability of four candidate species Pinus taeda L., Populus deltoides W. Bartram ex Marshall and Populus hybrids, Eucalyptus grandis Hill ex Maiden, and Eucalyptus benthamii Maiden et Cambage for biomass plantations in the eastern United States. Productivity was estimated using the process-based growth model 3PG (Physiological Processes Predicting Growth) parameterized at the resolution of the United States 5-digit zip code tabulation area (ZCTA). Each ZCTA is unique in terms of species suitability, cost, and productive potential. These data layers make available dedicated energy crop analyses for practitioners interested in facility siting scenarios in conjunction with a species growth potential at a particular location. Production systems for SRWC are extremely regionalized given key biophysical and economic factors that determine the potential for acceptable growth and profitability. This analysis points to the return on invested capital being dependent on the site location of a species within its operable range. Large-scale biomass plantation systems are feasible in regions with higher potential internal rate of return. The higher the potential return, the more desirable it is to plant the specific species on the site. Increasing the available feedstock by lowering cost, increasing productivity, and stabilizing logistics would have a similar effect as higher feedstock prices. The modeled growth can be used for further economic evaluation, carbon sequestration studies, and sustainability research.