Biomass is one of the two most common energy sources in the U.S. today, along with hydropower. Forms of biomass, such as wood, can be burned to produce heat and generate electricity.
Agricultural crops can be chemically converted into fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel. These are the only known renewable liquid energy sources, and may one day replace petroleum and fossil-fuel.
Biomass is can be used to produce biofuel that is made from this organic material.
It may be specified for a particular species; such as, earthworm biomass or for a general category; such as, herbivore biomass.
Estimates also exist for the entire global plant biomass and measurements of biomass can be used to study interactions between organisms, the stability of those interactions, and variations in population numbers.
Whenever dry biomass is measured, the material is dried to remove all water before weighing.
It should be noted that some so-called biomass waste also includes energy crops grown specifically for energy production, which would not normally be considered waste.
Just like an oasis in the desert, these toxic sites attract an entire peripheral fauna constituted of sessile crustaceans; such as, the vent barnacles, which resemble a flower, or mobile crustaceans, like spider crabs.
The concept of biomass allows people to express the idea of the abundance of animal presence in volume without having to use headcounts as is the case when speaking of density.
It is useful in that living organisms vary too broadly in size for density to be a meaningful measure.