Estimation of Biomass and Bio-fuel Production Potential by Afforestation in Arid Area of the Murchison Region, Western Australia

Despite recent studies on bio-fuels for carbon mitigation, biomass resource shortages in Japan continue to be a serious concern. To deal with this future problem, we evaluated whether the large amounts of biomass supplied from arid land afforestation in Western Australia could compensate for this biomass resource shortage, by estimating how much biomass as bio-fuel resource could be produced by this type of afforestation using arid areas. First, from ground truthing with tree measurement and allometirc equations, biomass production potential for bio-fuel resource was estimated at 70.5 Mg ha-1 in 30 years. Second, from remote sensing analysis (vegetation classification and biomass estimation), afforestation candidate areas with scarce natural vegetation were estimated at 5.41×104 ha. At the same time, the amount of potential biomass to be obtained from natural vegetation when creating afforestation areas was estimated at 6.47×104 Mg. Third, biomass production potential for bio-fuel by afforestation in arid areas of Murchison region was estimated at 3.37×108 Mg using the above estimated data and vegetation maps created from the Australian native vegetation assessment 2001 by the national land and water resources audit. From Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), assuming the use of this estimated biomass as bio-ethanol, bio-fuel production potential was estimated at about 1.07×108 m3 in 30 years (3.56×106 m3 year-1). Thus, our study suggests that there is a large potential for biomass production for bio-fuel using this approach.