Biomass has been an intimate companion of humans from the dawn of civilization to the present. Its use as food, energy source, body cover and as construction material established the key areas of biomass usage that extend to this day. With the emergence of agriculture the soil productivity increased dramatically, especially with cultivation of new plant varieties and with emergence of intensive soil fertilization. In that context, the emergence and use of fossil fuels for energy and raw material in chemical industry is but a flick on the human history horizon. The amount of energy that humans used in the last two decades is roughly equal to the total amount of energy in the past. This enormous increase of energy use was made possible by extensive depletion of fossil reserves and is clearly unsustainable. Does it mean that once these reserves are depleted the amount of energy available to humans will be similar to the pre-fossil fuel era? Not necessarily. Currently, the total energy used by humanity amounts to 1/5500 fraction of the total solar energy incident on earth. In theory, significant percentage of that energy can be used for human needs, before it is let to complete the energy flow cycle (i. e. to be dissipated to space). Some of it can be harnessed and used as a direct solar energy, but other pathways uses natural photosynthesis to create biomass that can be seen as a form of chemically stored solar energy. Of course, biomass is also food and this brings about the key trade-off in biomass usage: the food vs. fuel controversy. Given these two primary uses of biomass the proper resolution of this tradeoff is essential for acceptable and beneficial biomass usage in the future. The glaring example of biomass for energy misuse is ethanol production from corn, a relatively inefficient conversion process that is also in a direct collision course with the corn as food pathway. Still, in 2009, about 15% of world corn production was converted into ethanol fuel. More subtle examples emerge when an inedible biomass is the energy source, but its production still competes with food supply chain. Recent world food price hikes, especially in 2008 have been blamed partly on diversion of food staples towards biomass fuel production. As humanity currently uses or appropriates (through deforestation and land use change) about 40% of land productive capacity, the accurate account of all existing and potential biomass usage pathways is critical for charting the way forward at the global scale, and in different regions.

Given the complexities of biomass as a source of multiple end products, food included, this volume sheds new light to the whole spectrum of biomass related topics by highlighting the new and reviewing the existing methods of its detection, production and usage. We hope that the readers will find valuable information and exciting new material in its chapters.

Since biomass means so many things to so many people, it is no wonder that the original book title, Remote Sensing of Biomass has attracted a wide range of papers, many of them very remote from the remote sensing theme. If there were few odd submissions that could not fit the theme at all, the choice would be simple. Check the quality of the paper and if it is good, suggest to the authors that it would be better to submit it elsewhere. InTech publishing is a wonderful open source publisher that published more than 180 volumes in 2010 alone, on such diverse topics as Virtual Reality, Biomedical Imaging or Globalization. Thus, an odd author who went astray could be stirred towards more suitable publication. And indeed, there were few that fell into that category. However, majority of submissions had a broad linkage to biomass, but not to its remote sensing. The wide range of themes, all related to biomass, prompted us to reconsider if the originally envisioned scope was perhaps understood by biologists and food scientists differently than by engineers? Is the simple act of examining biomass via a microscope a form of remote sensing? Is an indirect inference about details of physiological or genetic makeup of a subject biomass another form of remote sensing as well? Questions like these, and the desire to better reflect the scope and coverage of the book chapters led us to a new title, Biomass — Detection, Production and Usage. It reflects an even balance between these three areas of the biomass science and practice.

Dr. Darko Matovic

Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada