METHODS FOR ASSESSING BIOENERGY POTENTIALS: THEIR PROSPECTIVE MANAGEMENT, ENERGY EFFICIENCY REQUIREMENTS AND ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS IN RURAL LANDSCAPES

The development of the discipline of landscape ecological planning is traced through 1960-1980 which is considered a period of reform associated with the rapid growth and wide global acceptance of the environmental movement; a movement which has subsequently lost its earlier momentum.; Directions for further development of the discipline are suggested and center on the need to combine holistic planning concepts with the reductionisms of longer established scientific disciplines. More penetrative assessments and syntheses derived from interpreting available knowledge, drawn from the findings of many disciplines are proposed.; Emphasis is, however, placed on the role that plant-derived bioenergies have as a renewable resource of global implication. Bioenergy resources have greater universal and lower cost availability than other renewables. Plant biomass also represents the one known, energy efficient mechanism for withholding the likely increased effects of environmental degradation under entropy. Projected world populations and the likely global stresses associated with the dimunition of fossil fuels in the century ahead make consideration of bioenergies and land use relationships an imperative for today.; A descriptive methodology which uses computer-assisted mapping techniques is described and validated for assessing both existing and potential resource supplies as governed by the abiotic parameters of the environment. Biotic and anthropic variables act as conflicts and constraints for graphic matrices and reduce the likelihood of maximizing resource supplies in real-world situations.; A provisional predictive methodology for determining the impact of five bioenergy scenarios on existing regional ecosystem health and landscape patterns utilizes a concept of indices applied to each land use of a compartmental classification system. Indices account for the percentage of land uses in protective phases, the effect of transactions between compartments and regional boundary effects.; The two methodologies are interconnected at detailed land management, rather than planning levels and are framed for the formulation of positive rural planning policies.