CNH-L: Land-Climate-Water Feedbacks and Farmer Decision-Making in an Agricultural System

本项目研究砍伐森林用于农业如何影响区域水循环，以及这些变化如何反过来影响农业生产。这项研究将扩大新兴的社会水文学领域（研究人类决策与水系统之间的反馈），重点关注农民所作的土地使用选择如何影响水的可用性，从而改变农业用地的生产力。了解土地利用变化、水和农业之间的关系，对于平衡与将森林和其他自然栖息地转变为农田和牧场相关的环境成本，以及随着全球人口和收入的增加而增加粮食生产以满足日益增长的需求之间的权衡至关重要。该项目将为如何在增加农业产出的同时限制对水、大气和生物多样性的影响提供信息，从而为美国和其他地方的健康和福利做出贡献。它将通过扩大一个科学相关和可公开获得的数据集，将农户调查与土地和水利用的数据和模型联系起来，从而加强研究和教育基础设施。最后，它将通过培养学生和博士后研究人员来发展跨学科研究能力。个别农民的土地利用决定可以累积到景观层面的变化，影响区域水文气候，从而改变农业生产用水的可用性，包括土壤湿度或“绿”水和地表水/地表水或“蓝”水。农民如何调整投资和土地使用决策以应对水资源短缺，将影响农业生产力，并最终影响农产品的供应。该项目将推进农业生产选择、区域环境变异性和水资源压力脆弱性之间动态反馈的基础科学知识。它将处理环境变化和土地利用变化如何影响区域水文气候和财产级别的绿水和蓝水的问题；个别农民在多大程度上容易受到绿水和蓝水变化的影响以及他们如何适应；以及相互关联的农民生产决策如何共同决定不同政策情景下的水、土地利用、生产和福利结果。来自一项独特的长期家庭小组调查（1996-2018）的数据将与土地覆盖、气候和水文的数据和模型相结合，以了解区域水文气候对财产水平水可用性的影响以及水可用性对农业生产决策的影响。对财产层面经验关系的分析将为基于主体的模型（ABM）提供信息，该模型将与区域气候模型相关联，以评估这些反馈对土地利用、农业产出和福利的总体影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project examines how clearing forests for agriculture impacts regional water cycles and how these changes, in turn, affect agricultural production. The research will expand the emerging field of socio-hydrology (the study of the feedbacks between human decisions and water systems) by focusing on how land-use choices made by farmers influence water availability and thus alter the productivity of agricultural land. Understanding the relationships between land-use change, water, and agriculture is crucial to balancing tradeoffs between the environmental costs associated with converting forests and other natural habitats to crop fields and pasture, and the need to increase food production to meet growing demands as global populations and incomes rise. This project will contribute to the health and welfare of the United States and elsewhere by informing choices about how to increase agricultural output while limiting impacts on water, atmosphere and biodiversity. It will enhance research and education infrastructure by expanding a scientifically relevant and publicly-available dataset linking a survey of farm households to data and models of land and water use. Lastly, it will develop capacity in interdisciplinary research through the training of students and postdoctoral researchers.Land-use decisions of individual farmers can aggregate up to landscape-level changes that influence the regional hydroclimate in ways that alter the availability of water for agricultural production, including both soil moisture or 'green' water and surface/ground or 'blue' water. How farmers adjust their investment and land-use decisions in response to water scarcity has implications for agricultural productivity and ultimately the supply of agricultural commodities. This project will advance basic scientific knowledge of the dynamic feedbacks among agricultural production choices, regional environmental variability, and vulnerability to water stress. It will address questions of how environmental variability and land-use changes affect the regional hydroclimate and property-level green and blue water; the extent to which individual farmers are vulnerable to variation in green and blue water and how they adapt; and how inter-related farmer production decisions aggregate to determine water, land-use, production and welfare outcomes under different policy scenarios. Data from a unique long-term household panel survey (1996-2018) will be combined with data and models of land cover, climate and hydrology to understand the effects of the regional hydroclimate on property-level water availability and the effects of water availability on agricultural production decisions. Analysis of the property-level empirical relationships will inform an agent-based model (ABM) that will be linked with a regional climate model to assess the aggregate consequences of these feedbacks for land-use, agricultural output and welfare.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.