Scale-Relevant Impacts of Biogas Crop Production: A Methodology to Assess Environmental Impacts and Farm Management Capacities

The cultivation of biogas crops can affect nature and landscapes in different ways. The increasing loss of permanent grassland, changes within cultivated crops, crop rotations and their spatial allocation within the landscape may have serious impacts on natural assets and commercial ecosystem services. Beneficial or impairing impacts occur at the level of interference (farm level) as well as on broader spatial and/or temporal scales. Governance problems often occur when impacts cross farm boundaries, since farmers have no interest in maintaining a service or avoiding impairments. This is due to the beneficiaries on regional and higher scales often not compensating farmers for the costs of the service at the farm level. Environmental governance should therefore deal with the discrepancies between farm activities that have transboundary relevance and administrative/property borders. Our research questions are: (i) What kinds of transboundary impacts does biogas crop cultivation have on natural assets or ecosystem services? (ii) How can the harmful or beneficial impacts on different spatial scales or governance levels be assessed? Where do costs and benefits occur? (iii) Which biomass production impacts require individual and/or collective responses and which precautionary measures could be implemented to avoid possible impacts?