The impact of large scale biomass production on ozone air pollution in Europe

Abstract

h i g h l i g h t s < Future poplar biomass plantations may significantly impact ozone levels in Europe. < Growing poplar on 5% of European farmland enhances isoprene emissions by 45%. < Ozone indicators for human health and vegetation increase by up to 25% and 40%. < Air pollution mitigation strategies should consider land use management. a b s t r a c tTropospheric ozone contributes to the removal of air pollutants from the atmosphere but is itself a pollutant that is harmful to human health and vegetation. Biogenic isoprene emissions are important ozone precursors, and therefore future changes in land use that change isoprene emissions are likely to affect atmospheric ozone concentrations. Here, we use the chemical transport model LOTOS-EUROS (dedicated to the regional modeling of trace gases in Europe) to study a scenario in which 5% of the crop-and grass-land in Europe is converted into poplar plantations to be used for biofuel production. Although this scenario is rather conservative, our simulations project that isoprene emissions are substantially increased by an average of 45% over the simulated domain. As a consequence, ozone peak values are expected to increase by up to 6%, and ozone indicators for damage to human health and vegetation by up to 25% and 40%, respectively. Finally, we show that after the change in land use NO x emission reductions of 15e20% in Europe would be required to restore the ozone levels to current values. Because biomass production is expected to increase throughout Europe in the coming decades, we conclude that careful consideration of the tree types and regions to be used is required to constrain the concomitant air pollution to a minimum.

Curriculum vitae of the LOTOS–EUROS (v2.0) chemistry transport model

“…Also land use change scenarios have been explored with LOTOS-EUROS. The potential impact of future widespread biomass plantations on ozone distributions was highlighted by Beltman et al (2013). A recent scenario study for ozone showed that the impact of climate policies largely dominates over the concurring impact of land use change and that climate change might counterbalance the impacts of energy policies for ozone (Hendriks et al, 2016a).…”

“…Emissions of NO from soils are included using the parameterization depending on soil type and soil temperature from Novak and Pierce (1993). For the emissions of isoprene and terpene the MEGAN routine is available (Guenther et al, 2006), but for Europe a slightly different approach is taken using a tree species database, as described in Beltman et al (2013). LOTOS-EUROS calculates online dust emissions based on the sand blasting approach by Marticorena and Bergametti (1995) based on the concept that large sand particles, that are transported horizontally by the wind, hit the ground and then release small dust aerosol particles that are then taken up higher in the atmosphere and contribute to the dust load.…”

Land cover change impacts on atmospheric chemistry: simulating projected large-scale tree mortality in the United States

“…While we find changes in dry deposition velocity to be an important (and in the majority of cases overriding) factor in our simulation of O 3 change, other hypothetical simulations where European crop-and grasslands were converted to poplar plantations for biomass production found that changes from altered dry deposition velocity were an order of magnitude lower than the change in biogenic emissions (Beltman et al, 2013). Dry deposition rates can depend strongly on the choice of model (Hardacre et al, 2015;Park et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2011), making predictions that depend on this uncertain.…”

“…For example, large-scale deforestation of the Amazonian rainforest, the expansion of oil palm plantations in Asia, and cultivation of biofuel feedstocks can significantly alter BVOC emissions, with various implications for secondary pollutants (Ashworth et al, 2012;Beltman et al, 2013;Ganzeveld, 2004;MacKenzie et al, 2011). In the eastern US, harvest practices and forest management have likely resulted in a net increase in BVOC emissions since the 1980s, counteracting successful anthropogenic emission reductions (Purves et al, 2004).…”

Assessing the Sensitivity of the OMI-NO2 Product to Emission Changes across Europe

“…Previous versions of the model have been used for the assessment of (particulate) air pollution [23][24][25][26]. LOTOS-EUROS produces operational forecasts of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter within the MACC (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate) project ensemble [27].…”