INFEWS/T1: Linking Current and Future Hydrologic Change to Hydropower, Human Nutrition, and Livelihoods in the Lower Mekong Basin

该INFEWS项目将查明和通报以科学为基础的资源管理制约因素，以维持湄公河下游流域的粮食-能源-水系统。湄公河是最后一条大部分河段没有筑坝的主要河流之一。这条河强烈的自然洪水脉冲是由南亚夏季季风驱动的，并控制着对该地区生计至关重要的多个生态系统过程。然而，尽管洪泛区生态系统在该地区发挥着主导作用，但MRB对气候，水文，生态过程，资源使用者和治理知之甚少。 每年的洪水控制着关键营养物质和污染物的通量，这些营养物质和污染物促进或抑制了鱼类和水稻的生长和生产力。因此，洪水脉动与人类福祉直接相关。然而，这条河的巨大排放量也可以产生超过40吉瓦的电力。这一权力被视为刺激该地区经济发展的关键。似乎可以肯定的是，未来的水电开发和气候变化将影响洪水脉冲及其在MRB中提供的商品和服务。为了填补这些知识空白，该项目（亚利桑那州立大学和华盛顿大学之间的一个伙伴关系）将建立分析框架，收集关键的实地数据，并构建新的工具，以推动科学进步，也适用于情景分析和规划，以帮助可持续发展，并促进科学进步。此外，粮食、能源和水安全是整个发展中国家稳定的核心组成部分，该项目将通过为世界上快速发展和增长的地区提供基于科学的指导方针来稳定粮食-能源-水安全权衡，从而促进国家安全。将提供一个定量框架，用于预测水电开发和气候变化对湄公河流域（MRB）及其洪水脉冲、淡水生物多样性的影响，以及鱼和大米的产量和营养质量，这是粮食安全的两个关键方面。可变入渗能力（维克）宏观水文模型将预测当前和未来的径流，从而作为定量框架的基础。将通过新的遥感分析对维克中心进行参数化，预测蒸散量以及从河岸森林到灌溉稻田的土地覆盖变化。气候模拟和未来的水坝开发和运行设想方案将被用作维克中心的一个强迫函数，然后将驱动一个水资源开发模型、一个水力发电模型和一个下MRB洞里萨湖的水动力学模型。该项目将以两种方式将洞里萨湖的水文学与粮食生产联系起来：1）通过对单位努力量新渔获量数据的多变量自回归状态空间分析，以量化洪水脉冲的时间、大小和十年尺度序列如何驱动相对鱼类丰度和生态系统进程; 2）通过与维克中心相连的作物模型（CropSyst），从基于物理的地表方案中得出水稻产量。洪水脉冲的动力学也可能控制食物质量，特别是通过其对氧化还原地球化学的影响，鱼类和水稻中关键营养物质和有害污染物的通量。该项目将首次建立这种关系，并将鱼和大米的积极（营养）和消极（污染物）影响纳入单一指标，从而将洪水脉冲与人类福祉定量联系起来。该研究小组将使用粮食系统产量和质量的指标，通过多目标优化方法分析水电发电和粮食产量之间的权衡，确定大坝开发和运营的最佳管理实践。最后，该项目将利用合作博弈论方法开发首批定量机构分析之一，以挖掘在多个治理层面建立国际联盟的最佳做法。这些系统的组成部分将通过衡量极端气候条件下的权衡稳健性来整合，并在可能迫使地方解决方案偏离全球（流域）最优方案的机构之间进行讨价还价。 该项目将：1）培训三名美国博士后研究人员，六名研究生，多名本科生和至少两名柬埔寨学生; 2）通过湄公河内广泛的利益相关者参与分享关键数据和模型; 3）开发一个新的在线课程，通过让20名渔业管理人员参与定量建模和权衡分析，提高可持续性的能力。4）随着MRB科学家开发和应用该项目的先进建模系统，提高该地区的科学能力。当地科学家和学生将接受实地和统计方法方面的培训，以便研究能够持续到项目结束后。

This INFEWS project will identify and communicate science-based resource management constraints to sustain food-energy-water systems in the lower Mekong River Basin (MRB). The Mekong is one of the last major rivers to remain undammed for much of its length. The river's strong natural flood pulse is driven by the South Asian Summer Monsoon and controls multiple ecosystem processes critical to livelihoods in the region. Yet, despite the dominant role floodplain ecosystems play in the region, there is little known in the MRB regarding climate, hydrology, ecological processes, resource users and governance. Annual flooding controls the fluxes of the key nutrients and contaminants that enhance or shrink the growth and productivity of fish and rice. In this way, the flood pulse is directly linked to human well-being. However, the river's enormous discharge could also generate over 40 GW of power. This power is viewed as essential to stimulate the economic development of the region. It seems certain that future hydropower development and climate variability will impact the flood-pulse and the goods and services it provides in the MRB. To fill these knowledge gaps, this project(a partnership between Arizona State University and the University of Washington) will build analytical frameworks, collect critical field data, and construct new tools that advance the progress of science and that are also applicable for scenario analysis and planning as an aid to sustainable development and that will also promote the progress of science. Furthermore, food, energy and water security are core components of stability throughout the developing world, and this project will advance national security by providing science-based guidelines for stabilizing food-energy-water security tradeoffs in rapidly developing and growing regions of the world.The South Mekong Livelihoods Project (SMLP) will provide a quantitative framework for predicting the effects of hydropower development and climate variability on the Mekong River Basin (MRB) and its flood-pulse, freshwater biodiversity, and both yields and nutritional quality of fish and rice, two key aspects of food security. The Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) macro-hydrology model will predict current and future streamflow and thereby serve as the foundation of the quantitative framework. VIC will be parameterized with new remote-sensing analyses predicting evapotranspiration as well as land-cover change from riparian forest to irrigated rice paddy. Climate simulations and future dam development and operations scenarios will be used as a forcing function for VIC, which will then drive a water-resources development model, a hydropower generation model, and a hydrodynamics model of the Tonle Sap Lake in the lower MRB. The project will link aspects of hydrology with food production in the Tonle Sap in two ways: 1) via multivariate autoregressive state-space analyses of new catch per unit effort data to quantify how timing, magnitude, and the decadal-scale sequence of the flood-pulse drives relative fish abundance and ecosystem processes; and 2) via a crop model (CropSyst) linked to VIC that generates rice yields from a physically based land-surface scheme. Dynamics of the flood-pulse are also likely to control food quality, specifically fluxes of key nutrients and harmful contaminants to people in fish and rice through its effect on redox biogeochemistry. The project will establish this relationship for the first time and incorporate both positive (nutritional) and negative (contaminants) effects of fish and rice into a single metric, thereby quantitatively linking the flood-pulse to human well-being. The research team will use metrics of food-system yield and quality to identify best management practices for dam development and operations using multi-objective optimization approaches that analyze tradeoffs between hydropower generation and food yield. Finally, the project will develop one of the first quantitative institutional analyses using a cooperative game-theoretic approaches to unearth best practices in creating international coalitions at multiple scales of governance. These system components will be integrated by measuring robustness of tradeoffs under climate extremes and given bargaining among institutions that might force local solutions to diverge from the global (basin) optima. The project will: 1) train three US-based postdoctoral researchers, six graduate students, multiple undergraduates, and at least two Cambodian students; 2) share critical data and models through broad stakeholder engagement within the Mekong; 3) develop a novel online curriculum that enhances STEM capacity in sustainability by engaging 20 fisheries managers in quantitative modeling and tradeoff analysis led by ASU's EdPlus online learning program; and 4) improve scientific capacity in the region as MRB scientists develop and apply the project's advanced modeling systems. Local scientists and students will be trained in both field and statistical methods so that the research can be sustained beyond the project's duration.