Short Rotation Forestry (SRF) Versus Rapeseed Plantations: Insights from Soil Respiration and Combustion Heat Per Area

Bioenergy crops may be an important contributor to mitigating global warming risks. A comparison between willow and poplar Short Rotation Forestry and rapeseed cultivation was designed to evaluate the ratio between soil respiration and the combustion heat obtained from the extracted products per hectare. A manual dynamic closed chamber system was applied to measure CO2 emissions at the SRF and rapeseed sites during the growing season. Our results show that poplar and willow SRF has a very low ratio compared to rapeseed. We thus recommend poplar and willow SRF as renewable sources for bioenergy over the currently prevalent rapeseed production.