沙漠研究 24-1, 21-24 (2014)
Ἃ₍◊✲ 24-1, 21 - 24 (2014)
Journal of Arid Land Studies
Journal of Arid Land Studies－ DT11 Refereed Paper －㸫DT11 Refereed Paper㸫

Estimation of Biomass and Bio-fuel Production Potential by Afforestationin Arid Area of the Murchison Region, Western Australia
Hideki SUGANUMA*1), Hajime UTSUGI2), Nobuhide TAKAHASHI3), Kiyotaka TAHARA4),
Yasuyuki EGASHIRA5) and Toshinori KOJIMA1)
Abstract: 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 afforestationin 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 ofthis 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.
Key Words: Arid land afforestation, Eucalyptus camaldulensis, LANDSAT, Life cycle assessment, Vegetation map

1. Introduction
Over half of CO2 emissions in Australia were derived frompower generation, mainly coal fire power plants (Dicks et al.,2004), and the next largest CO2 emissions (around 20%) were
derived from the transportation sector (IEA, 2010). For Japan,
CO2 emissions from power generation also had the largest
proportion (around 40%), and that from the transportation
sector had the third largest proportion (IEA, 2010). In
addition, the total CO2 emissions derived from just thetransportation sector of Japan and Australia was 306 million
Mg year-1. To mitigate such huge amount of carbon emission,
fossil fuels should be replaced by renewable biomass as
Canadel and Raupach (2008) indicated that the use of bio-fuels
for the transportation sector could compensate for such large
amounts of CO2 emissions.
A recent investigation of bio-fuels in Japan raised theconcern that biomass resources were insufficient to support a
viable bio-fuels industry. According to a report by the
Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute of Japan A), evenutilizing all the biomass which has not yet been used for any
purpose, mainly forest residues, for bio-fuel production, the* Corresponding Author: h.suganuma.yf19.frx99@gmail.com

produced amount of such bio-fuels corresponds to less than 1%
annual petroleum consumption of Japan, which was reported
as 59 million m3 in 2010 by METI (2011). Thus, carbon
mitigation by using bio-fuels in Japan is considered
questionable under the present situation.
Fung et al. (2002) indicated that biomass from forests,
especially national forests, had become the most likely
renewable biomass supply, and their efficient utilization should
become key for carbon mitigation inside Australia. However,
due to situations like large reserves of accessible coal, natural
gas and oil, low cost of electricity generated in coal-fired
power plants, uncertain greenhouse and renewable energy
policies of Australian government, and lack of efficient
processes for producing bio-fuels, Australia has had minimal
incentives for carbon mitigation using renewable energy(Richardson et al., 2002; Raison, 2006; Yusaf et al., 2011).
Considering this situation, Yamada et al. (1999, 2003)
created a new afforestation method in arid lands of Western
Australia, and Kojima and Egashira (2011) improved theirlarge scale afforestation techniques, pointing to huge carbon
mitigation potential and/or renewable biomass production
potential.
As Raison (2006) work supports biomass
production in rural low rainfall areas, and Burrows et al. (2002)
㸦Received, September 14th, 2013; Accepted, December 27th, 2013㸧

3-3-1, Kichijoji-kitamachi, Musashino, Tokyo, 180-8633, JAPAN, Tel: +81-422-37-3750, Fax: +81-422-37-3871
1) Department of Materials and Life Science, Seikei University4) The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

2) Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute5) School of Engineering Science, Osaka University

3) Faculty of Textile Science and Technology, Shinshu University

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and CSIRO (2009) works also support the idea of carbon
mitigation in arid areas, large scale afforestation techniques inarid areas of Western Australia (Yamada et al., 1999, 2003;
Kojima and Egashira, 2011) were considered to cover ashortage of feasibility studies and empirical data inside
Australia, and also to cover the serious shortage of renewablebiomass production in Japan.
And this arid land afforestation was also considered toachieve the carbon mitigation target of Japan and Australia by
Kyoto protocol and future post-Kyoto protocols. In this study,
biomass production potential for bio-fuel, especiallybio-ethanol, of afforested arid lands in the Murchison region ofWestern Australia was estimated.

2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Research area
The research area of this study is Sturt Meadows (2840’S,
12058’E) near Leonora, located about 600 km from Perth, theprovincial capital of Western Australia. The range of ourresearch area is approximately 45 km east and west, and 50 km
north and south. The annual rainfall was calculated as 211
mm (Yasuda et al., 2001), and potential evapo-transpiration
was observed as 3400 mm y-1 (Yamada et al., 1999). This
research area belongs to the Murchison region of Interim
Biogeographic Regionalization of Australia (IBRA) Version
5.1 (Environment Australia, 2000).
The Murchison
environment was described as having Mulga (Acacia aneura)
low woodlands, often rich in ephemerals, on outcrop hardpan
wash plains and fine-textured quaternary alluvial and eluvial
surfaces mantling granitic and greenstone strata (Environment
Australia, 2000).
2.2. Estimation procedure for biomass production potential
First, to estimate biomass production potential per unit area
(Mg ha-1), the measurement data (2000 to 2012 period) of 76
Eucalyptus camaldulensis trees, deemed as the appropriate tree
species for arid land afforestation method invented by Yamada
et al. (1999, 2003), and allometric equations (Suganuma et al.,2006) were used to estimate the mean annual increment (Mgha-1 year-1) of their trunk and branches, parts which can be used
for bio-ethanol production.
For the calculation, threeassumptions were set as follows. 1) Afforestation was a
monoculture of E. camaldulensis trees, 2) an afforestation
period, or tree production cycle, was 30 years, and 3) felling
loss was set as 10%.
Second, to estimate afforestation candidate areas andobtained biomass from natural vegetation inside the researcharea, vegetation classification results and biomass estimation
results of Suganuma et al. (2010), who used four LANDSAT

Water
harvestingmound

Surface runoff
Plantation area (A ha)

Water harvesting area (B ha)

Fig. 1. Afforestation site layout. Ratio of A : B was set as 1 : 3.

5TM/7ETM+ images (path 110, row 80), were used.
Afforestation candidate areas were chosen from three land
cover types (Acacia woodland, bare ground and their transitionarea) with biomass value of less than 130 Mg ha-1.
This biomass criteria (less than 130 Mg ha-1) was smaller
than the biomass production value of E. camaldulensis in 30
years by afforestation method of Yamada et al. (1999, 2003),
and also smaller than the maximum observed biomass value ofnatural forest of E. camaldulensis inside the research area
(Suganum et al., 2006).
The actual tree plantation area was 25% of the total
afforestation candidate areas, with the other 75% left asoriginal land cover, used for water harvesting (Fig. 1). By
applying the afforestation methods of Yamada et al. (1999,
2003), original vegetation inside the research area had to beclear cut before creating the plantation areas. Trunk andbranches parts from the cleared biomass provided an estimateof biomass from natural vegetation.
Third, the combined data from these first two procedures
were used to estimate the biomass production potential forbio-fuel inside the research area.
Fourth, to estimate the biomass production potential forbio-fuel in the Murchison region, the vegetation maps made by
National Land and Water Resources Audit (2002) were used
for extracting vegetation distribution areas, which contained
vegetation types similar to those in the research area. Twoassumptions were also made. Assumption 1 was theenvironmental conditions in the Murchison region were nearly
the same as those of the research area, this assumption was
supported by on-site ground observations and meteorological
data B). Assumption 2 was the Murchison region had thesame proportion of afforestation candidate area and biomass
distribution to the research area. This was consideredreasonable because the research area was located inside
Murchison region and both areas have almost the same
vegetation and climate conditions. By calculating how manytimes larger the extracted vegetation distribution area wascompared to the research area, biomass production potential
for bio-fuel in the Murchison region was directly estimated.
Last, to estimate the amount of potential bio-ethanol
production from the Murchison region, above mentioned
results and life cycle assessment (LCA) results by Tahara et al.
(2009) and Kojima et al. (2012) were used. Bio-ethanol
production per unit biomass (L Mg-1) was calculated from23

these results. As bio-ethanol production per unit biomass canbe very variable due to many conditions, such as fuelconversion methods and utilization methods, average data
were used for this study.
This value was multiplied by the potential biomass
production for bio-fuel in the Murchison region estimated by
the previous procedure, and thereby the potential bio-ethanol
production in this region was estimated.
The first, second and third procedures were based on theauthors’ works of field measurement and analyses, and thefourth and last procedures were simple estimations based on
the data from other earlier works.

(Harper et al., 2007), 75% of this area was conserved asoriginal land cover, and E. camaldulensis was the native
species to this research area, this afforestation method (Yamada
et al., 1999, 2003; Kojima and Egashira, 2011) can reduce theenvironmental impact to this area to a minimum.
Potential biomass production for bio-fuel from thisresearch area was estimated at 3.91×106 Mg, which was quite alarge amount.
From the vegetation map created by the National Land andWater Resources Audit (2002), 1.97×107 ha of the Murchison
region was judged to have the same vegetation as in the
research area, and corresponded to 86 times larger area than theafforestation candidate plot in our research area. The
potential biomass production for bio-fuel in the Murchison
region was estimated at 3.37×108 Mg.
From estimated potential biomass of 3.37×108 Mg andbio-ethanol conversion from biomass estimated by Tahara et al.
(2009) and Kojima et al. (2012), potential bio-ethanol
production from Murchison region was estimated at 1.07×108m3 in 30 years (0.71~1.46×108 m3), which was equivalent to
3.56×106 m3 year-1. This potential bio-ethanol production isquite a large value, however, it is not a sufficient production
compared to the petroleum consumption amount of Japan andAustralia. The Japanese annual petroleum consumption wasreported as 5.9×107 m3 (METI, 2011), and the Australian one
was estimated at 1/3 of that in Japan (IEA, 2010). Thus, thepotential bio-ethanol production in the arid Murchison region
corresponds to about 4-5% of the combined Japanese andAustralian petroleum consumption.

3. Results and Discussion

4. Conclusion and Limitations

All the data from this study are summarized in Table 1.
The biomass production potential in 30 years from E.
camaldulensis monoculture plantation was estimated at 132.3
Mg ha-1. This potential biomass production value was lower
than the 149 Mg ha-1 observed as the maximum biomass valueof a E. camaldulensis natural forest (Suganuma et al., 2006), so
this potential value was considered feasible. From thispotential biomass, the trunk and branches biomass to be used
for bio-fuel production was estimated at 70.5 Mg ha-1.
The afforestation candidate area was estimated at 2.17×105
ha, and which was classified as Acacia woodland, bare groundand their transition area (Suganuma et al., 2010), and 25% of
this candidate area was estimated as plantation area (5.41×104
ha). This meant that most of the area inside the research area
excluding the salt lake and Eucalyptus forests can be used forafforestation. In addition, biomass (trunk and branches) fromnatural vegetation was estimated at 6.47×104 Mg. Since
afforestation has less offset impact to surrounding environment

From this study, a large potential for biomass andbio-ethanol production was estimated for the arid region of
Murchison, Western Australia. Although this potential
bio-ethanol production was sufficient for E3 petroleum, thisproduction was not considered sufficient for substantial carbon
mitigation of the transportation sectors of Japan and Australia.
Improvements in afforestation methods and combinations ofcarbon mitigation methods are necessary for actual and futurecarbon mitigation practices.
In addition, future application of large scale arid landafforestation should have some negative impact to the naturalenvironment, such as water quality derived from water balancechange, species composition of native vegetation and wildlife,and so on. And biomass could be used for not only
bio-ethanol but also power generation and other liquid type
fuels. Moreover, there is some uncertainty regarding policy
making of Australian government. Thus, further studies in
the future are necessary, such as assessing negative impact toTable 1. Summary of results.
Tree species

Eucalyptus camaldulensis

Tree density

178 trees ha
30 years

Afforestation period-1

Ratio of trunk and branches

4.41 Mg ha-1 year-1
0.533

Mean annual increment of trunk and branches

2.35 Mg ha-1 year-1

Mean annual increment

Research area

2.29×105 ha

Afforestation candidate area

2.17×105 ha

Plantation area

5.41×104 ha

Biomass of natural vegetation from plantation area
Ratio of trunk and branches

9.87×104 Mg
0.66

Trunk and branches biomass of natural vegetation

6.47×104 Mg

Potential biomass production inside research area

3.91×10 Mg

The samge vegetation distribution inside Murchison region

1.97×107 ha

Potential biomass production inside Murchison region

3.37×108 Mg

Bio-ethanol production (upper)

436 L Mg

Bio-ethanol production (lower)

213 L Mg -1

Bio-ethanol production (average)
Felling loss

320 L Mg -1
0.10

Bio-ethanol production potential inside Murchison region

1.07×108 m3

6

-1

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the natural environment of arid land afforestation andcalculating many carbon mitigation scenarios introducing
different bio-energy types.
NoteA)http://www.ffpri.affrc.go.jp/pubs/mori/documents/mori-170.
pdfB) http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/maps.shtml
Acknowledgement
This work was conducted under the support of JSPS
KAKENHI Grant number 25304004, the Mitsui & Co., Ltd.
Environment Fund, the Global Environment Research Fund of
The Ministry of Environment of Japan (GHG-SSCP project),
and the Core Research for Evolution Science and Technology
fund (CREST) of Science and Technology Agency of Japan.

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