Overview of Marginal Lands in Henan Province, China and Evaluation of Development Potential of Biomass-To-Liquid Fuels

Developing marginal lands to plant energy crops and then develop biomass-to-liquid fuels is an effective way to ease the energy crisis, promote greenhouse gas emission reduction, and protect the natural ecological environment. Taking Henan Province, China as a research object, the research obtained spatial distributions and areas of marginal lands in the province by processing remote-sensing data for land use using software ArcGIS. Marginal lands in Henan Province were classified into the first-class, second-class, and third-class ones by selecting key natural conditions including the soil thickness, slope, soil texture (sand volume fraction), accumulated temperature above 10 degrees C, organic matter content, and total annual precipitation as indices. The research showed that the total area of marginal lands in the province is 1.68 x 10(4) km(2), including 0.6x 10(4) km(2) of first-class marginal lands, 0.83 x 10(4) km(2) of second-class marginal lands, and 0.23 x 10(4) km(2) of third-class Copyright: American Scientific Publishers marginal lands. Taking production of bioethanol with sugar grass as an example, 8.92 x 10(7) t of Delivered by Ingenta sugar grass can be harvested on the marginal lands in Henan Province, which can be converted into 5.80 x 10(6) t of bioethanol, equivalent to 6.96 x 10(6) t of standard coal. The research can provide reference for realizing energy structure optimization and consolidating energy security in Henan Province.