Gillianne Bowman

Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL | WSL · Forest Resources and Management Research Unit

Agricultural biogas production is subject to various spatial restrictions including legislation, biomass availability, transport, and the distribution of final energy products. This study introduces a geographic information system (GIS)-based approach for a comprehensive techno-spatial assessment of the above-mentioned factors, which was tested for...

Today, biomass is one of many countries most important renewable energy sources. Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a promising alternative to treating organic wastes from both energy and nutrient perspectives. Here, we develop a material flow model to assess the current utilization of wet biomass in industrial AD installations from mass, energy, and nutr...

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, countries need to transform their energy system by increasing the share of renewable energies. For years, the use of fossil fuels meant devoting little land area to energy provision. As renewables require much more space, the relationship between renewable energy and land area becomes highly relevant. In this con...

Biomass transport represents a significant share of the final price of biomass for energy, and transport itself requires fuel, whose combustion adds to greenhouse gas emissions. We conducted a techno-economic analysis of biomass transport for the main forest wood products in Switzerland (firewood and woodchips), as well as for solid and liquid manu...

The concept of symbiosis, a mutually beneficial relationship, can be applied to food and energy systems. Greenhouse systems and biogas plants are interesting technologies for food–energy symbiosis, because both are usually based in rural areas and offer opportunities for the exchange of materials (e.g., biomass waste from the greenhouse as input to...

In the energy sector, decisions and technology implementations often necessitate a mid- to long-term perspective. Thus, reliable assessments of future resource availability are needed to support the decision-making process. In Switzerland, similarly to other countries, only a limited part of the available wet biomass feedstock is currently used for...

Livestock farming generates animal manure as a by-product. In comparison to in some countries, manure is hardly used for energy production in Switzerland. A growing awareness of renewable energy needs, resource depletion, and climate challenges make the huge untapped potential of livestock manure very attractive, particularly regarding biogas techn...

Biomass resource assessment constitutes the foundation for integrated bioenergy planning in order to evaluate the sustainable feasibility and to estimate the additional bioenergy potential. Its spatial distribution is an essential criterion to facilitate the exploitation of the untapped bioenergy potential by guiding industry and decision-making pr...

In a mixed-ploidy population, strong frequency-dependent mating will lead to the elimination of the less common cytotype, unless prezygotic barriers enhance assortative mating. However, such barriers favouring cytotype coexistence have only rarely been explored. Here, an assessment is made of the mechanisms involved in formation of mixed-ploidy pop...

1. Introduced plants have the potential to rapidly evolve traits of ecological importance that may add to their innate potential to become invasive. During invasions, selection may favour genotypes that are already pre-adapted to conditions in the new habitat and, over time, alter the characteristics of subsequent generations. 2. Spotted knapweed (...

Ecological, evolutionary and physiological studies have thus far provided an incomplete picture of why some plants become invasive; therefore we used genomic resources to complement and advance this field. In order to gain insight into the invasive mechanism of Centaurea stoebe we compared plants of three geo-cytotypes, native Eurasian diploids, na...

Measurements of plant performance and life-cycle traits for C. stoebe geo-cytotypes, statistical values. C. stoebe plants were grown from seed in a common greenhouse environment. Plants were measured for leaf length and leaf number while in rosette form, and these values were multiplied to obtain an early indicator of biomass. After bolting, stem h...

Housekeeping gene expression profiles of C. stoebe geo-cytotypes. Standards used to create normalization factors for analysis of genes of interest. For each sample, total RNA (ng/ul) was estimated using the appropriate standard curve and a normalization factor was calculated based on the geometric mean of all three standards, as suggested in Vander...

Summary 1. Habitat fragmentation and variation in habitat quality can both affect plant performance, but their effects have rarely been studied in combination. We thus examined plant performance in response to differences in habitat quality for a species subject to habitat fragmentation, the common but declining perennial herb Lychnis flos-cuculi....

Many examples of plant-insect interactions have shown that selection from herbivores can act on flowering and fruiting phenology. In Ulex europaeus (Fabaceae), escaping seed predation resulted in extended, but variable flowering periods, with some plants flowering from autumn until spring and others flowering only in spring. The present study aims...

Reproductive phenology of gorse (Ulex europaeus L., Genisteae, Fabaceae) is unusual in that the onset and duration of flowering vary greatly among individuals within populations: some plants initiate flowering in autumn or winter and continue flowering through spring, others initiate flowering in early spring. To understand the origin of this diver...