Thursday, January 17, 2008

Map of the Week 108-Got Biomass?

OK - I couldn't resist the dopey cliche of stealing from milk commercials - everyone else is doing it!
The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado is working on an atlas of renewable resources for the USA. They have put together a bunch of maps showing potential development of Solar, Wind, Hydrogen, Biomass and Hydrogen as energy sources. Their color choices are a bit confusing but the patterns are clear enough. Here's a biomass map with their description below:

"These maps estimate the technical biomass resources available in the United States by county. Biomass feedstock data are analyzed both statistically and graphically utilizing geographic information systems (GIS). The following feedstock categories are considered for this study: crop residues, methane emissions from manure management, methane emissions from landfills and wastewater treatment facilities, forest residues, primary and secondary mill residues, urban wood waste, and dedicated energy crops."

Of course when you normalize it by population the results are slightly different - especially down in the Southwest where they suprsize their counties:

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