Collaborative Research: WSC-Category 3- Toward Sustainability of the High Plains Aquifer Region: Coupled Landscape, Atmosphere, and Socioeconomic Systems (CLASS)

合作研究：WSC-3类--迈向高平原含水层地区的可持续性：景观、大气和社会经济系统(类)摘要由于奥加拉拉-高平原含水层(HPA)的巨大复合体，高平原地区拥有美国一些最高产的灌溉农田，但由于自20世纪30年代以来广泛的地下水开采，该系统的大部分处于根本不可持续的道路上。该地区的未来将由一系列州和地方法律法规、复杂的经济驱动因素、可变的土壤生产力和饱和厚度以及不断变化的气候决定，预计气候变化将加剧现有区域降水和蒸散梯度的严重程度。这个跨学科项目通过将基于过程的气候、水文学、动态植被和计量经济学模型联系起来，研究与HPA相关的景观、大气和社会经济系统(类)。利用数十年来对该地区进行的密集研究的数据，研究人员正在应用课堂建模套件来更好地理解历史变化、系统相互作用以及气候、水文学和农业生态系统之间的反馈。根据这一历史背景，可以量化未来一系列可能的社会、经济、气候、农业工程和土地管理条件对该地区水文和经济可持续性的影响。日进程被模拟在季节到世纪的时间尺度上，以调查短期扰动和长期趋势的可能影响。这个项目广泛地融合了工程学、物理、生物和社会科学。它提供了一套新耦合的物理过程模型，这些模型将共同模拟陆地和大气的水文循环。这些物理模型与生物系统模型相结合，描述了自然和管理的农业植被的动态生长，以及这些生物系统如何对气候或水文变化作出反应。然后，模拟灌溉、管理实践和作物轮作的农业工程决策的模型被用于驱动生物物理模型并在系统中纳入反馈。这项研究提供了一个强大的模型系统，可以更好地管理区域用水、产量、养分应用和土壤碳汇，并为世界上最重要的农业区之一的可持续性提供变革性的见解。相互关联的模型还可以更好地理解和量化与全球灌溉农业系统相关的HPA上的景观、大气、农业工程和社会经济系统之间的相互作用。高分辨率模拟将为政策制定者和管理人员提供区域范围内的本地信息。该项目的成果还将有助于提高公众对气候变化与生物物理、农业工程和社会经济系统之间关键联系的认识。将通过互动网站向政策制定者、规划者和公众介绍总结的成果，以便为能够改善HPA和其他含水层系统可持续性的政策提供信息。在项目团队工作的学生将在多个学科之间的界面上融入科学，为他们提供各自领域的深入知识，以及在广泛的跨学科物理和社会科学团队中工作的能力。这里使用的模型和联系可应用于世界各地的农业系统，并将免费提供给研究界。

Collaborative Research: WSC-Category 3 - Toward Sustainability of the High Plains Aquifer Region: Coupled Landscape, Atmosphere, and Socioeconomic Systems (CLASS)Abstract The High Plains region hosts some of the most productive irrigated agricultural land in the United States due to the vast Ogallala-High Plains aquifer (HPA) complex, but much of this system is on a fundamentally unsustainable path due to extensive groundwater withdrawals since the 1930s. The future of this region will be dictated by a range of state and local laws and regulations, complex economic drivers, variable soil productivity and saturated thicknesses, and a changing climate that is forecast to increase the severity of existing regional precipitation and evapotranspiration gradients. This interdisciplinary project examines the coupled landscape, atmospheric and socioeconomic systems (CLASS) associated with the HPA through linking process-based climate, hydrology, dynamic vegetation, and econometrics models. Exploiting data from decades of intense study of the region, the investigators are applying the CLASS modeling suite to better understand historical changes, system interactions, and the feedbacks among climate, hydrology, and agroecosystems. With insights from this historical context, the impacts of a range of possible future social, economic, climate, agroengineering, and land-management conditions on the sustainability of the region's hydrology and economy can be quantified. Diurnal processes are simulated over seasonal to century timescales to investigate the likely impacts of both short-term perturbations and long-term trends. This project broadly integrates across engineering and the physical, biological, and social sciences. It provides a newly-coupled set of physical process models that will together simulate the terrestrial and atmospheric hydrologic cycles. These physical models are coupled to a biological systems model describing the dynamic growth of both natural and managed agricultural vegetation, and how those biological systems respond to climatic or hydrologic variability. Models that simulate agroengineering decisions about irrigation, management practices, and crop rotations in response to social and economic drivers are then used to both drive the biophysical models and incorporate feedbacks among the systems. The research provides a powerful modeling system that can inform better management of regional water usage, yields, nutrients applications, and soil carbon sequestration, and offer transformative insights into the sustainability of one of the world's most important agricultural regions. The linked models also allow for better understanding and quantification of interactions among landscape, atmospheric, agroengineering, and socioeconomic systems over the HPA that will be relevant to irrigated agricultural systems worldwide. High resolution simulations will provide policy makers and managers with local information within a regional context. Results of the project will also help raise public awareness of critical links between climate change and biophysical, agroengineering, and socioeconomic systems. Summarized results will be presented to policy makers, planners, and the public via interactive web sites to inform policies that can improve the sustainability of the HPA and other aquifer systems. Students working on the project team will be embedded in science at the interface among multiple disciplines, providing them with both in-depth knowledge within their fields and an ability to work in broad interdisciplinary physical and social science teams. The models and linkages used here can be applied to agricultural systems worldwide and will be made freely available to the research community.