Growing farms and groundwater depletion in the Kansas High Plains
Growing farms and groundwater depletion in the Kansas High Plains
复制标题
DOI：
10.1088/1748-9326/ac1816
复制
发表时间：
2021-08-01
影响因子：
6.7
通讯作者：
Marston, Landon T.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ao, Yufei Z.;Hendricks, Nathan P.;Marston, Landon T.
在过去的三十年里，美国的平均农场规模增加了一倍多，改变了农业产业和农村农业社区。然而，尚不清楚这种普遍存在的趋势如何影响环境，特别是对粮食生产至关重要的地下水资源，以及如何受到环境的影响。在这里，我们利用一个独特的几十年的数据集，水井水位地下水抽取的作物灌溉超过堪萨斯高平原含水层，以确定地下水枯竭和不断增长的农场之间的相互作用。保持关键的技术，管理和环境变量固定，我们表明，加倍农场的灌溉耕地减少地下水提取2%-5%，这取决于最初的农场规模。然而，大型农场相应地转向不同的灌溉技术，抵消了地下水使用量的减少，导致地下水使用总量略有增加。我们发现地下水枯竭增加了农田被出售给更大农场的可能性，放大了地下水枯竭和农田整合的循环。
The average farm size has more than doubled within the United States over the last three decades, transforming the agricultural industry and rural farming communities. It is unclear, however, how this ubiquitous trend has affected and is affected by the environment, particularly groundwater resources critical for food production. Here, we leverage a unique multi-decadal dataset of well-level groundwater withdrawals for crop irrigation over the Kansas High Plains Aquifer to determine the interactions between groundwater depletion and growing farms. Holding key technological, management, and environmental variables fixed, we show that doubling a farm's irrigated cropland decreases groundwater extractions by 2%-5% depending on the initial farm size. However, a corresponding shift by larger farms to different irrigation technologies offsets this reduction in groundwater use, leading to a slight increase in overall groundwater use. We find groundwater depletion increases the likelihood farmland is sold to a larger farm, amplifying the cycle of groundwater depletion and the consolidation of farmland.