WSC-Category 3 Collaborative: Impacts of Climate Change on the Phenology of Linked Agriculture-Water Systems

WSC-3 类协作：气候变化对相关农业-水系统物候的影响

• 批准号: 1360345
• 负责人: Damian Brady
• 金额: $ 12.38万
• 依托单位: University of Maine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1360345&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: WSC; Category; Collaborative; Impacts; Climate

1360415 (Ball), 1360345 (Brady), 1360424 (Ortiz-Bobea), and 1360395 (Wainger). This research will create an integrated trans-disciplinary system of data-driven econometric and numerical simulation models to test scientific hypotheses on how farmers adapt to climate change and how these altered practices are processed through a watershed to affect downstream estuarine ecosystem health (e.g., water quality, hypoxia). An overarching hypothesis is that climate-induced adaptive changes in agricultural practices and ecosystem processes will cause large indirect phenologic effects that propagate through watersheds to estuary. For this work, the ecological concept of phenology is extended beyond its usual meaning of seasonal life-cycle events (e.g., tree flowering) to seasonal events in water system processes. The project approach involves simultaneous collaborative and integrated activities by three research teams: Economics and Policy, Watershed, and Estuary. The Economics and Policy Team includes agricultural and environmental economists, whose empirical models feed and constrain the simulation models that are to be developed and linked by the Watershed and Estuary Teams. The Chesapeake Water System (CWS) is used as the study site because of its rich and long-term record of data. Synthesis of these data with models will enable comparative analyses to reveal broad relationships between human and natural drivers and processes that extrapolate well to water systems worldwide. This research will advance knowledge of: 1) how climate changes influence the timing and type of agricultural practices; 2) how temporal and spatial scales of watershed models influence simulated effects on nutrient delivery; 3) how direct influences of climate change on ecosystems compare to indirect influences that cascade through the watershed; and 4) how alternative management policies - with different rules and incentives - affect farming behavior and thus ecologic health. The effort will also advance understanding of how best to link economic and policy modeling approaches and scales with those of watershed and estuary simulation, as related to maintaining water system sustainability under climate change. Agricultural models of farmer adaptation will empirically demonstrate how spatial and temporal distributions of practices are altered by climate change, allowing transformation of the modeling approach and improving the observational grounding of the models. Further, this work will advance ability to test policies aimed at managing nutrient emissions from agriculture by characterizing conditions at scales relevant for understanding adoption/compliance. The Watershed Team will use process understanding - synthesized from data across multiple watersheds - to assess structural uncertainties in conventional models that are typically ignored in policy applications. The Estuary Team's data synthesis will search for climate-related shifts in timing and amounts of nutrient loading and use numerical simulation models to quantify effects on Bay health. The Economics and Policy Team will apply a novel state-contingent pollution-control approach that incorporates uncertainty. Through the development and linkage of these models, this project will help transform climate-change impact assessment and response, tackle basic knowledge gaps in the understanding of long-term sustainability of estuarine water systems, and develop new tools and understanding that are applicable to other water bodies influenced by agricultural land use. The areas of broader impact for this project include: 1) workforce recruitment and training; 2) transfer of tools and knowledge to environment management agencies; 3) enhanced public understanding and K-16 science education. In the first regard, the project will recruit, train and mentor 8-12 MS and PhD students toward careers in ecology, economics, hydrology, oceanography and engineering with foci on water quality, agricultural sustainability, environmental policy analysis, and climate change. Secondly, the team will continue to work very closely with investigators in USDA, USEPA, USGS, and other federal and state agencies working with the Chesapeake Bay Program to develop better integrated modeling tools for modeling support of environmental management. Interactions with the Bay management community will include regular meetings with collaborators, presentations of findings at CBP meetings and collaborative workshops. Thirdly, K-16 education will be improved through integration of products into a highly successful ongoing NSF COSEE program, including a new workshop for training 15 high school teachers.

1360415(球)、1360345(布雷迪)、1360424(奥尔蒂斯-波比亚)和1360395(瓦格尔)。这项研究将建立一个由数据驱动的计量经济学和数值模拟模型组成的综合跨学科系统，以检验关于农民如何适应气候变化以及如何通过分水岭处理这些改变的做法以影响下游河口生态系统健康(例如，水质、缺氧)的科学假设。一个重要的假设是，气候引起的农业实践和生态系统过程的适应性变化将导致大量的间接物候效应，这些效应通过流域传播到河口。在这项工作中，物候学的生态学概念超越了其通常意义上的季节性生命周期事件(例如，树木开花)，扩展到水系过程中的季节性事件。项目方法涉及三个研究小组同时开展的协作和综合活动：经济与政策、流域和河口。经济学和政策团队包括农业和环境经济学家，他们的经验模型补充和约束了将由流域和河口团队开发和链接的模拟模型。切萨皮克水系(CWS)因其丰富和长期的数据记录而被用作研究地点。将这些数据与模型相结合，将使比较分析能够揭示人类与自然驱动因素和过程之间的广泛关系，从而很好地推断世界各地的水系统。这项研究将促进以下方面的认识：1)气候变化如何影响农业措施的时间和类型；2)流域模型的时间和空间尺度如何影响养分输送的模拟效应；3)气候变化对生态系统的直接影响如何与通过流域的间接影响进行比较；以及4)具有不同规则和激励的替代管理政策如何影响农业行为，从而影响生态健康。这项工作还将增进人们对如何最好地将经济和政策建模方法和尺度与流域和河口模拟联系起来的理解，这些方法和尺度与在气候变化下保持水系可持续性有关。农民适应农业模型将经验性地展示气候变化如何改变实践的空间和时间分布，从而改变建模方法并改进模型的观测基础。此外，这项工作将通过描述与了解采用/遵守有关的规模的条件，提高测试旨在管理农业养分排放的政策的能力。流域团队将使用从多个流域的数据合成的过程理解来评估传统模型中的结构性不确定性，这些不确定性通常在政策应用中被忽视。河口团队的数据合成将寻找与气候有关的营养物质负荷量和时间的变化，并使用数值模拟模型来量化对海湾健康的影响。经济和政策团队将应用一种新的、结合了不确定性的国家应急污染控制方法。通过这些模型的开发和联系，该项目将有助于改变气候变化影响评估和应对措施，解决河口水系长期可持续性理解方面的基本知识空白，并开发适用于受农业土地利用影响的其他水体的新工具和理解。对该项目有更广泛影响的领域包括：1)劳动力招聘和培训；2)向环境管理机构转让工具和知识；3)加强公众了解和K-16科学教育。首先，该项目将招聘、培训和指导8-12名硕士和博士生，从事生态学、经济学、水文学、海洋学和工程学方面的工作，重点是水质、农业可持续发展、环境政策分析和气候变化。其次，该团队将继续与美国农业部、美国环保局、美国地质调查局和其他联邦和州机构的调查人员密切合作，与切萨皮克湾项目合作，为环境管理的建模支持开发更好的集成建模工具。与海湾管理界的互动将包括与合作者的定期会议、在CBP会议上介绍调查结果和合作讲习班。第三，通过将产品整合到一个非常成功的正在进行的NSF COSEE计划中，包括一个新的培训15名高中教师的研讨会，将改善K-16教育。