Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Biosphere and Land Use Exchanges with Groundwater and soils in Earth system Models (BLUEGEM)

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This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 9-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations representing over 55 countries focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries. The research teams will work to identify sustainable pathways to help alleviate the increasing and unprecedented pressure on the natural resources that interact to provide sustainable life support systems and essential benefits to societies such as food production and water quality and quantity. The impacts of changes in land management and urbanization will be evaluated to develop sustainable soils and groundwater management options that will help create and maintain sustainable terrestrial ecosystems. The project seeks to explore the evolution of groundwater, irrigation, and climate during the Anthropocene (1900-2100), to better understand their interdependencies, foresee their potential changes, and identify possible social consequences. The team will assess these factors to identify sustainable pathways with respect to water resources, food security, biodiversity, and human well-being and socio-economic activities. The team will combine advanced numerical modeling of biophysical and social systems, as well as participatory methods with stakeholders, to address establish the fingerprint of interactions and irrigation on global and regional climate, water resources, biosphere, and soil carbon pools. The project results will provide improved projections of global and regional climate, water resources, biosphere and soil carbon pools, fully taking into account the influence of groundwater irrigation and groundwater-soil moisture interactions. The team will Integrate local and regional knowledge and expertise as well as socio-economic data to refine the land use and irrigation scenarios used in state-of-the-art climate projections and to explore pathways for sustainable critical zone management.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.