Global Agriculture Biomass Flows 2010

An interesting Sankey diagram on Global Biomass Flows 2010 can be found on the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency website.


(Author: PBL, published under Creative Commons License CC BY 3.0)

This is from a research report ‘Integrated analysis of global biomass flows in search of the sustainable potential for bioenergy production’ published 2014 (available here) that estimates the worldwide biomass flows. It explains: “The biomass flows in the agro complex are presented in ExaJoules in the Sankey diagram (…). Using energy density data for all common commodities, the mass data have been converted to energy data. The energy content depends on the moisture content. In this study, the commonly referred weight–energy ratio’s were used.”

Basically, the diagram is made up from two main strands or pathways for biomass that are interlinked: In the top half the food production from agricultural soils (both crops and livestock breeding). In the lower half the grassland/meadows.

This is exclusively for the agricultural sector. The forestry sector is covered in a separate Sankey diagram (in one of my upcoming posts).

Note that small flow quantities (<3 EJ) are not to scale but rather have a minimum arrow width to keep them visible.