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

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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.