INFEWS/T1: Sustaining food, energy, and water security in agricultural landscapes of the Upper Mississippi River Basin

作为粮仓、生物燃料生产地和水塔，密西西比河上游流域（UMRB）是美国最重要和最多样化的流域之一，对国家粮食-能源-水（FEW）安全至关重要。UMRB涵盖了一系列农业气候区域、决策者、政治和社会结构，并举例说明了由于对FEW的竞争需求而具有农业景观特征的许多环境问题。研究小组将利用数值模拟和综合生物物理、水文和社会生态研究，在UMRB中产生对促进国家和全球生态系统可持续性过渡所需的生态系统级动态的理解。少数要素紧密相连，控制少数供应的生物物理系统对地方到全球的经济和政策作出反应。为了解决这一复杂性，该项目将在多个尺度和2050年之前的不同未来情景和政策下检查和模拟FEW安全指标（即粮食和生物燃料生产、水质和数量）。这种有针对性的建模将促进对FEW系统如何响应多个相互作用的驱动因素（如土地和水管理以及随空间和时间变化的气候）的理解。该项目将确定阻碍社会适应土地和水管理以实现少数安全的体制障碍。该项目的综合建模将增强UMRB的FEW安全性，并重点关注以下首要问题：UMRB的FEW系统如何应对复杂的社会-生物物理相互作用，以及在21世纪，哪些政策和实践将维持FEW安全和环境，降低突变风险，并促进生态系统的恢复能力？这一综合跨系统项目将探索农业景观长期缓慢（如气候）和突然（如极端天气事件；新政策）变化的幅度和速度，这些变化可以在不经历FEW供应急剧下降的情况下被吸收。该项目将评估七个FEW组成部分的变化：来自草的纤维素生物燃料、来自作物的生物燃料、水质、水量、作物产量、人类粮食产量和生态系统生物多样性指标。将以联合国可持续发展目标（SDGs）为框架，对UMRB中改善FEW安全性的一套补充性可量化目标进行评估。该研究将量化1)FEW系统的现状和趋势，2)整个UMRB地区外部生物物理和社会经济驱动因素的自上而下影响，以及3)自下而上驱动因素和决策在更精细尺度上对UMRB四个不同代表性子区域的影响。这项工作将确定选择、政策和治理网络如何放大或抑制稳定或破坏少数系统的反馈。这项工作将发展和应用关于驱动因素组合如何在农业景观中相互作用的新理论，以确定当冲击（干旱、极端高温、洪水和政策变化）与缓慢变化的驱动因素相交时，少数安全可以持续的状态空间。生物物理和经济土地利用建模将与治理的混合方法研究一起使用，以开发参与式建模方法，以提高对FEW安全的认识。该项目将通过各种努力将研究与学生、教育工作者、利益相关者、政策参与者和公众联系起来，促进在教室、董事会和市政厅讨论FEW安全问题。为了促进对FEW系统安全性和可持续性过渡的重要和广泛的讨论，该项目与直接参与中北部水网和营养减少战略合作框架的推广专业人员进行了战略合作。这将促进与关键行动者的接触，使调查结果能够直接传达给整个UMRB中关注少数安全的广泛社区。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。

As a breadbasket, biofuel producer, and water tower, the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) is one of the most important and diverse watersheds in the U.S. and is critical to national food-energy-water (FEW) security. The UMRB encompasses a range of agro-climatic regions, decision makers, and political and social structures, and exemplifies many environmental problems that characterize agricultural landscapes because of competing demands for FEW. The research team will use numerical modeling and integrated biophysical, hydrological and social-ecological research to generate systems-level understanding of FEW dynamics in the UMRB needed to foster a sustainability transition in national and global FEW systems. FEW elements are strongly connected and the biophysical systems that control FEW supply respond to local-to-global economies and policies. To address this complexity, the project will examine and model indicators of FEW security (i.e. food and biofuel production, water quality and quantity) at multiple scales and under alternative future scenarios and policies to the year 2050. This targeted modelling will advance understanding of how FEW systems respond to multiple interacting drivers such as land and water management and climate that vary over space and time. The project will identify institutional barriers that inhibit societal adaptation of land and water management to achieve FEW security.The integrated modeling of this project will enhance FEW security in the UMRB and focuses on the overarching question: How do FEW systems of the UMRB respond to complex social-biophysical interactions, and what policies and practices will sustain FEW security and the environment, reduce risk of abrupt change, and promote ecosystem resilience during the 21st century? This integrated cross-systems project will explore the magnitude and rate of long-term slow (e.g. climate) and abrupt (e. g. extreme weather events; new policy) changes on agricultural landscapes that can be absorbed without experiencing precipitous declines in FEW supplies. The project will evaluate changes in seven FEW components: cellulosic biofuel from grasses, biofuel from crops, water quality, water quantity, crop production, human food production, and indicators of ecosystem biodiversity. A suite of complementary quantifiable targets for improving FEW security in the UMRB will be assessed using the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework. The research will quantify 1) current conditions and trends in FEW systems, 2) top-down effects of external biophysical and socioeconomic drivers across the entire UMRB region, and 3) impacts of bottom-up drivers and decisions at finer scales in four diverse representative sub-regions of the UMRB. The work will identify how choices, policies, and governance networks can amplify or dampen feedbacks that stabilize or destabilize FEW systems. The work will develop and apply new theory about how combinations of drivers interact in agricultural landscapes in order to identify the state-space in which FEW security can be sustained as shocks (drought, extreme heat, flooding, and policy changes) intersect with slowly changing drivers. Biophysical and economic land use modeling will be used with mixed-methods studies of governance to develop a participatory modeling approach to advance knowledge about FEW security. The project will connect the research with students, educators, stakeholders, policy actors, and the public through a variety of efforts that will foster discussions of FEW security in classrooms, boardrooms, and town halls. To promote significant and wide-ranging discussions of FEW systems security and a sustainability transition, this project has strategically teamed with extension professionals who are directly involved in the North Central Water Network and the Framework for Nutrient Reduction Strategy Collaboration. This will facilitate engagement with key actors, enabling direct communication of findings to a broad community concerned with FEW security in the entire UMRB.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.