Spatial analysis of United States ethanol production infrastructure vulnerability to flooding
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Abstract
Early-growing season, long duration floods are harmful to the cultivation of maize, the source of 80% of the US bioethanol fuel. Due to the centrality of this industry to US government efforts to bolster domestic energy production, Midwest flooding has implications for US energy production. This paper uses spatial statistics to characterize the spatial distribution of ethanol plants relative to maize production in twelve Midwestern US states which account for approximately 90% of US corn production. County-based territories are delineated for each of the 176 plants in these states, and the total maize production and average annual production are summed for each plant. Multi-decadal flooding data from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (1982-2007) are used in conjunction with data from the US Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistical Service to derive flood risk levels for each plant, and for total production capacity in the region.
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2014. Spatial analysis of United States ethanol production infrastructure vulnerability to flooding. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e394v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.394v1Author comment
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Competing Interests
There are no competing interests
Author Contributions
Yingying Chen conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables.
Nicholas Cuba conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the paper, prepared figures and/or tables, reviewed drafts of the paper.
Funding
There was no funding source The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
