Collaborative Research: IRES: Life Cycle Management and Ecosystem Services Applied to Urban Agriculture

比较城市农业和传统农业的环境效益与环境影响越来越多的人迁入城市，远离传统农作物种植的地方。如果我们能在城市里耕种，食物的运输距离和相关的环境影响将会缩短；食物的新鲜度和城市的自力更生和韧性将会增加。随着越来越多的后院和社区花园，我们的社会已经逐渐过渡到在城市里生产食物。但都市农业能比传统农业更高效、更环保吗？农业对环境的影响总是大于环境效益吗？我们如何使用现有的环境影响和环境效益建模方法来估计净可持续性和绝对可持续性？农业的发展吗？在这个项目中，我们将在托莱多大学(UT)、犹他大学(UU)和巴塞罗那自治大学(UAB)的合作下回答这些类型的问题。如果我们的研究结果表明都市农业具有净环境效益，那么当前的当地食品流动将进一步加强，并得到科学理解的指导。该项目旨在对研究和全球参与产生影响。这三所院校的学生将接受为期两个学期的虚拟培训和协作，之后UT和UU的学生将前往UAB进行为期两个月的培训。学生将使用视频会议、维基、博客和在线论坛来提高他们的创业和研究技能以及文化能力。学生和主要研究人员将在三个城市的屋顶温室和社区花园建立番茄生产模型：托莱多、盐湖城和巴塞罗那。将使用生命周期评估来评估环境影响。生态系统服务模型将用于评估环境效益。影响和收益将被添加到估计中？绝对环境可持续性？对于农业系统来说。我们将分析多个尺度，以比较个人和城市范围内实施的结果，以得出适用于设施经理、公用事业经理、设计工程师和城市规划师的结论。项目方法和结果将帮助我们的社会设计更可持续的食物-能源-水(LESS)系统。

Comparing environmental benefits to environmental impacts in urban and conventional agricultureAn increasing percentage of people are moving into cities, getting farther away from places where crops are traditionally cultivated. If we could farm in the cities, food transportation distances and associated environmental impact would be reduced; the freshness of the food and self-reliance and resilience of cities would increase. With an increasing number of backyard and community gardens, our society is already gradually transitioning to producing food within the city. But can urban agriculture be more efficient and environmentally friendly than conventional farming? Are environmental impacts always greater than environmental benefits in agriculture? How can we use existing environmental impact and environmental benefit modeling approaches to estimate ?net and absolute sustainability? of agriculture? In this project, we will answer these types of questions in a collaborative effort from University of Toledo (UT), University of Utah (UU), and Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Current local food movement will further strengthen and be guided by scientific understanding if our results show that urban agriculture has net environmental benefits.This project aims to have impact in both research and global engagement. Students from all three institutions will train and collaborate virtually for two semesters prior to UT and UU students traveling to UAB for two months. Students will use videoconferencing, wiki, blogs, and online discussion forums to improve their entrepreneurship and research skills and cultural competencies. Students and principal investigators will model tomato production in rooftop greenhouses and community gardens in three cities: Toledo, Salt Lake City, and Barcelona. Life cycle assessment will be used to estimate environmental impacts. Ecosystem services models will be used to estimate environmental benefits. The impacts and benefits will be added to estimate ?absolute environmental sustainability? for agricultural systems. Multiple scales will be analyzed as we compare results at individual versus city wide implementation to derive conclusions for facility managers, utility managers, design engineers, and urban planners. Project methods and results will help our society in designing more sustainable food-energy-water (FEW) systems.