Is 20 feet wide enough for bioenergy crops as streamside buffers?
Probably not. While there may be benefits to soil and water quality from establishing buffer strips 20′ (6 m) wide, 50 to 100′ strips (15-30 m) could provide greater benefits for water quality and stream temperature protection, because of the increased cover and area for filtering of nutrients and sediment before run-off water reaches the stream. It should also be recognized that harvesting the crop would remove the buffer until some regrowth took place, so the strip should really be wide enough to allow partial harvest.
