Woody biomass poster & presentation given at the annual ARI meeting

In September, Sintana Vergara and Cassidy Barrientos presented on bioenergy and biomass emissions at the annual CSU Agricultural Research Institute (ARI) meeting in Sacramento.

Sintana presented ongoing research on the environmental implications of using residual woody biomass — a timber industry byproduct — as an energy resource, specifically within California. Ongoing work to develop a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for evaluating the climate change implications of mobilizing woody biomass for electricity production has uncovered a potentially significant source of greenhouse gas emissions: storage of woody biomass. Current work, funded by ARI, is now focused on characterizing these emissions.

Cassidy assisted with Sintana’s talk, and also presented a poster synthesizing what we know about greenhouse gas emissions from woody biomass. This poster presented a literature review of published studies that directly measured carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) emissions from woody biomass stockpiles.