INFEWS/T1: Intensification in the world's largest agricultural frontier: Integrating food production, water use, energy demand, and environmental integrity in a changing climate

在过去的20年里，巴西成为大豆和玉米的主要生产国和出口国，主要是通过扩大亚马逊雨林和稀树草原林地的种植。巴西现在仅次于美国，其目标是将农业产量翻一番，以满足日益增长的全球需求。该项目研究进一步的农业集约化如何影响和潜在地限制水和能源。该项目将由三个主要部分组成。第一部分将是农场规模的田间试验，以评估更密集的作物管理如何影响土壤、水质和溪流栖息地的温室气体排放，以及对能源的需求。第二部分将调查这一农业前沿地区的作物分布如何响应农场管理决策、政府政策、全球温室气体浓度和气候。最后一部分将使用计算机模型来研究粮食生产系统、水循环、能源使用和需求对气候变化和不同农业集约化潜在途径的潜在反应。这项提议解决了如何保护亚马逊森林和塞拉多林地丰富的生物多样性，维持稳定的气候，并为全球粮食安全做出贡献这一全球重要问题。它将提供有关大豆和其他作物集约化对区域气候、热带流域水和溪流栖息地质量以及能源生产影响的新知识。结果将通过以下方式传递给巴西的政策制定者和生产者：与州和联邦政府机构的直接沟通；为期10周的沉浸式政策实验室，在该实验室中，美国和巴西的研究生将使用该项目的科学知识来创建政策文件；以及与巴西一家主要大豆生产公司的直接互动，以研究作物管理选项。该项目评估了平衡粮食产量增加所固有的权衡？及其对水、能源和土地的相关需求？随着巴西亚马逊和塞拉多环境的保护，地球上现存最大的热带雨林和林地？S。最重要的问题是，能否通过在已经开垦的土地上迅速和持续地加强粮食生产来实现这种平衡。实现这一转型，同时避免其他地区集约农业带来的环境成本，并将气候变化的脆弱性降至最低，是世界上最大的挑战之一吗？S说，粮食、水和能源是最大的挑战。这个项目将对增加的粮食产量将如何影响和依赖水、养分和能源产生新的理解。它将推动热带气象学、生态学、水文学和作物种植的最新预报计算模式的发展，以分析森林砍伐、农业集约化和温室气体增加对中尺度对流、总降雨量和季节降雨量、地表、森林健康和作物生产温度的影响。这将导致对集约农业下游影响的更准确预测，这将适用于整个热带南美洲，那里目前获得的信息最少，地球上发生了最大的农业土地变化。该项目将有助于开发新的精细气候模型和社区土地模型5的热带作物版本，这是使用最广泛的陆地表面模型之一。该项目的数据将通过NSF和其他联邦机构为共享和移动大量数据而建立的网络基础设施广泛提供。它将促进人们对热带作物的气候阈值、作物对极端气候的脆弱性以及未来随着种植集约化和扩大而如何变化的理解。

During the last 20 years Brazil became a major producer and exporter of soybeans and corn mainly by expanding cropping into its Amazon rainforest and savanna woodlands. Brazil is now second only to the United States and its goal is to double agricultural production to meet increasing global demands. This project investigates how water and energy may be affected by, and potentially limit, further agricultural intensification. The project will consist of three main parts. The first part will be farm-scale field experiments to evaluate how more intensive crop management influences emissions of greenhouse gases from soils, water quality and habitats in streams, and demands for energy. The second part will investigate how the distributions of crops within this agricultural frontier region respond to farm management decisions, government policies, global greenhouse gas concentrations, and climate. The final part will use computer models to investigate the potential responses of the food production system, the water cycle, and energy use and demand to changing climate and different potential pathways of agricultural intensification. This proposal addresses the globally important issue of how to conserve the rich biodiversity of Amazon forests and Cerrado woodlands, maintain a stable climate, and contribute to global food security. It will provide new knowledge about the implications of the intensification of soybeans and other crops for regional climate, the quality of water and stream habitats in tropical watersheds, and energy production. Results will be transmitted to policymakers and producers in Brazil through direct communication with state and federal government agencies; a 10-week immersion Policy Lab in which US and Brazilian graduate students will use science from this project to create policy papers; and direct interactions with a major Brazilian soybean producing company to study crop management options.This project evaluates the tradeoffs inherent in balancing increased food production ? and its associated demands for water, energy, and land ? with the conservation of the Amazon and Cerrado environments of Brazil, the Earth?s largest remaining tropical forests and woodlands. The overarching question is whether this balance can be achieved through rapid and sustained intensification of food production on already cleared lands. Achieving this transition, while avoiding the environmental costs associated with intensive agriculture in other regions, and minimizing vulnerability to a changing climate, is one of the world?s greatest food, water, and energy challenges. This project will develop new understanding of how increased food production will impact and depend upon water, nutrient, and energy. It will advance the development of state-of-the art prognostic computational models of tropical meteorology, ecology, hydrology, and cropping to analyze the impacts of deforestation, agricultural intensification, and increasing greenhouse gasses on mesoscale convection, total and seasonal rainfall, land surface, forest health, and crop production temperature. It will lead to more accurate predictions of the downstream effects of intensive agriculture that will be relevant across tropical South America where the least information is available and greatest agricultural land transformations on Earth now occur. This project will contribute to the development of new fine-scale climate modeling and a tropical crop version of the Community Land Model 5, one of the most widely used land surface models. Data from this project will be made widely available using the cyberinfrastructure built by NSF and other federal agencies for sharing and moving large amounts of data. It will advance understanding of climatic thresholds for tropical crops, the vulnerability of crops to climate extremes, and how those will change in the future as cropping intensifies and expands.