Biomass resources in environmental and socio-economic analysis of fuel-wood consumption

Abstract

Energy is said to be potentially at the core of modern civilization right from industrial revolution, where technology has modified and redefined the way in any individual or a group that uses the energy, but the technological advancement in all spheres continues to be dependent on its use. The prevailing trend has triggered the need for alternative, renewable and sustainable energy sources which are now being considered extensively and pursued globally to turn aside the possibility of climate change at the range of attaining a state of irreversibility. A versatile raw material, biomass, can be used for the generation of energy by means of heat production, transport fuels and many essential bio-products which directly or indirectly contributes for the current growing demands of energy. When produced and used on a sustainable basis, the biomass-based energy production acts as a carbon-neutral carrier and thus contributes for the reduction of large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, thereby finding its way for the prevention of global warming. In most developing countries, the quantitative information available on woody biomass resources, at scales related to the procurement area. Based on the growing demands of woody biomass for energy production in the current and near future, the present report is therefore aimed to provide an in-depth information about various agencies linked to biomass resources, leading economic factors of woody biomass, methods available for the estimation of costs associated with bioenergy, etc. Further, we also discussed about the methods to estimate biomass in forest ecosystems by means of destructive sample, microwave remote sensing-based assessment, woody vegetation indices and also provided the investigation methods during the estimation of error budgets.