INFEWS/T1: A Modeling Framework to Understand the coupling of Food, Energy, and Water in the Teleconnected Corn and Cotton Belts

极端气候的增加、不断增长的人口需求和不断变化的土地利用极大地影响了美国农业的弹性。该项目将开发、评估和应用一个横跨中西部、东南部和大平原的玉米和棉花带的食物、能源和水(少数)耦合系统的模型。这项研究将评估目前在这些地带种植的粮食作物，以及在边际土地上种植生物能源作物的潜力。该项目将：(1)开发几个模型框架，代表食品、生物能源生产和水的耦合性质及其对环境压力和人类干预的反应；(2)提高对几个系统中关键反馈机制的了解；(3)确定几个系统中表明美国农业和水资源弹性受损的潜在阈值。该项目将为博士生和博士后研究人员提供跨学科研究方面的培训，其中思想的交叉培养是核心。在与少数群体服务机构现有伙伴关系的基础上，该项目还将通过暑期实习让少数群体学生参与进来。该项目将整合气候、水文学、农学、生物地球化学、工程学和经济学的最新知识和模型。该项目将使用这一综合模型来评估粮食和生物能源生产、水量和水质以及气候和水文过程的耦合性质，以应对环境压力和人为干预。这项活动将通过建立不同的系统知识来解决脆弱性、复原力和可持续性等关键问题，从而推动跨学科科学。具体地说，该项目将开发一种依赖于规模的方法，以耦合、预测和应用水、碳和氮循环与农业、水资源、生物燃料工业和经济实践的互动过程。这将使外部力量(例如，极端气候和人口需求增加)产生的更大规模的影响与人类干预(例如，基础设施和管理)和决策层信息的影响直接挂钩。它将改善可持续农业粮食和生物能源做法、水资源管理和污染评估、水利工程设计以及适应和缓解战略的决策的科学基础。

The resilience of U.S. agriculture is significantly impacted by increasing climate extremes, growing population demands, and evolving land use. This project will develop, evaluate, and apply a model of the coupled Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) systems across the Corn and Cotton Belts of the Midwest, Southeast and Great Plains. The study will evaluate food crops currently grown in these Belts as well as the potential for growing bioenergy crops on marginal land. The project will: (1) develop a FEW model framework that represents the coupled nature of food and bioenergy production and water and its responses to environmental forcings and human interventions; (2) enhance understanding of key feedback mechanisms within FEW systems; (3) determine potential thresholds in FEW systems that would indicate damage to the resilience of U.S. agriculture and water resources. The project will provide training for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers in transdisciplinary research where cross-fertilization of ideas is central. Building upon existing partnerships with Minority-Serving Institutions, the project will also involve minority students through summer internships. This project will integrate state-of-the-art knowledge and modeling across the climate, hydrologic, agronomic, biogeochemical, engineering, and economic sciences. The project will use this integrated model to evaluate the coupled nature of food and bioenergy production, water quantity and quality, and climate and hydrologic processes in response to environmental forcings and human interventions. This activity will advance the transdisciplinary science by building diverse systems knowledge to address critical issues of vulnerability, resilience and sustainability. Specifically, the project will develop a scale-dependent approach for coupling, predicting and applying the interactive water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle processes with agriculture, water resources, the biofuels industry and economic practices. This will enable the larger-scale impacts of external forcings (e.g., increasing climate extremes and population demands) to be directly coupled to the impacts of human interventions (e.g., infrastructure and management) and decision level information. It will improve the scientific basis for decisions in sustainable agricultural food and bioenergy practices, water resources management and pollution assessment, hydroengineering design, and adaptation and mitigation strategies.