Over the last 10 years, large areas of land in Europe have been abandoned, often because of its marginality for production of food and animal feed. This marginality is characterised by interacting socio-economic, political, and biophysical constraints which make food production on the land no longer suitable. These abandoned marginal lands may, however, offer new and viable opportunities for producing biomass for chemical, fuel, material and energy products, thus contributing to biobased economies without compromising food security. A major challenge to realise this potential starts with identifying and mapping these marginal lands. The next step is linking information to each parcel concerning its current use and ownership, what led to its abandonment, and what potential it offers for growing non-food biomass crops. This information will allow a European-wide assessment of lands that can be used in a sustainable and efficient way for biomass production.
We mapped, characterised and analysed marginal lands in a Europe-wide expert workshop with around 30 participants. In preparation to this workshop, the QUICKScan modelling environment was populated with existing data that was collated on the socio-economic and biophysical constraints, environmental threats and challenges, and ecosystem services.
In the workshop spatially explicit expert rules were developed for mapping marginal land based on socio-economic and biophysical constraints for agricultural production. We used spatially-explicit tools such as QUICKScan, which enabled participation in constructing, analysing, evaluating and refining expert rules. Afterwards the initial rules were iteratively refined by the project team and experts during the post-workshop mapping process. The end result was the spatial identification and classification of marginal lands according to different constraints driving the marginality of each land parcel. Understanding these different types of marginality will allow us to improve agronomic practices for producing non-food biomass with limited input-requirements for resource-efficient and sustainable cropping options.
Our work on mapping and characterising marginal lands in Europe is used and refined in follow-up, collaborative projects building a shared understanding of the extent and potential of marginal and abandoned land to contribute to the sourcing of new biobased activities. Many field trials have been set-up in marginal lands to test the best cropping systems under different marginal constraints. With the involvement of land owner groups and biobased industrial partners, biomass delivery chains are being designed as well as the financial feasibility.