Descripción del proyecto
El futuro del cálculo de la huella ecológica
Es importante cuantificar con precisión y reducir las huellas ecológicas. Sin embargo, los cálculos de dicha huella ecológica a menudo se ven obstaculizados por la escasez de datos fundamentales sobre el uso de energía y materiales a lo largo del ciclo de vida de un producto. Además, los métodos existentes tienden a pasar por alto el papel crucial que desempeñan los atributos de los servicios ecosistémicos de la biodiversidad, basándose, por el contrario, en un número limitado de especies bien conocidas. En este contexto, el equipo del proyecto SIZE, financiado con fondos europeos, introducirá un marco innovador basado en principios de escalado unificadores que incorporan el tamaño del producto y el tamaño corporal de las especies. Este método tratará de predecir características vitales de la producción de biocarburantes, como el rendimiento energético de la inversión, las necesidades de suelo, las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero e indicadores con repercusión global como los riesgos de extinción de especies. La investigación se centrará en la producción de biocombustibles líquidos a partir de diversas materias primas.
Objetivo
There is a major scientific and societal challenge in quantifying and reducing ecological footprints of products. Ecological footprint calculations suffer severely from a limited availability of data, such as the amount of energy and materials associated with the production, use and disposal of products. Furthermore, ecological footprints pertaining to biodiversity are typically biased towards a limited number of well-known species with a focus on relative species richness, leaving out ecosystem service attributes of biodiversity. As it is virtually impossible to collect all the empirical data required for all species, there is an urgent need to develop an operational framework to derive representative ecological footprints with limited data requirements. I propose to develop a novel framework based on a set of unifying scaling principles related to the production size of products and the body size of species. These scaling principles will be developed to predict key characteristics of biofuel production, such as energy return of investment, agricultural land requirements and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as global impact indicators, such as species extinction risks. The focus of the research is on (1) liquid biofuel production (bioethanol and biodiesel) from various first and second generation feedstock as an important but controversial renewable energy source (2) vascular plant diversity, as the common basis of all terrestrial ecosystems, and (3) habitat destruction and climate change, as important drivers of global change. Together with the PI, two PhD students, two Postdocs and a technical assistant will work on different components of the new predictive models, substantially enhancing the scientific understanding of how to provide reliable ecological footprints in practice.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringcarbon capture engineering
- engineering and technologyindustrial biotechnologybiomaterialsbiofuels
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesforestry
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitución de acogida
6525 XZ Nijmegen
Países Bajos