CNH-L: Land-Climate-Water Feedbacks and Farmer Decision-Making in an Agricultural System

该项目研究了为农业砍伐森林如何影响区域水循环，以及这些变化如何反过来影响农业生产。 这项研究将扩大新兴的社会水文学领域（研究人类决策与水系统之间的反馈），重点是农民的土地使用选择如何影响水的供应，从而改变农业土地的生产力。 了解土地使用变化、水和农业之间的关系，对于平衡将森林和其他自然栖息地转变为农田和牧场的环境成本与增加粮食产量以满足全球人口和收入增长带来的日益增长的需求之间的权衡至关重要。该项目将为美国和其他地方的健康和福利做出贡献，提供有关如何增加农业产量的选择，同时限制对水、大气和生物多样性的影响。 它将通过扩大一个具有科学相关性和公开可用的数据集，将农户调查与土地和水资源使用数据和模型联系起来，加强研究和教育基础设施。 最后，它将通过培训学生和博士后研究人员来发展跨学科研究能力，农民个人的土地使用决定可以累积到影响区域水文气候的重大变化，从而改变农业生产用水的供应，包括土壤湿度或“绿色”水和地表/地下水或“蓝色”水。 农民如何调整其投资和土地使用决定以应对水资源短缺，对农业生产力并最终对农业商品的供应产生影响。 该项目将增进关于农业生产选择、区域环境变异性和易受水资源压力影响的动态反馈的基本科学知识。 它将解决的问题，环境变异性和土地使用的变化如何影响区域水文气候和属性水平的绿色和蓝色的水;在何种程度上，个别农民容易受到变化的绿色和蓝色的水，他们如何适应;以及如何相互关联的农民生产决策聚合，以确定水，土地使用，生产和福利的结果在不同的政策情景。 一项独特的长期住户小组调查（1996-2018年）的数据将与土地覆盖、气候和水文的数据和模型相结合，以了解区域水文气候对财产一级水供应的影响以及水供应对农业生产决策的影响。 分析的财产层面的经验关系将告知一个代理为基础的模型（ABM），将与区域气候模型，以评估这些反馈的土地使用，农业产量和welfings.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命的综合后果，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

This project examines how clearing forests for agriculture impacts regional water cycles and how these changes, in turn, affect agricultural production. The research will expand the emerging field of socio-hydrology (the study of the feedbacks between human decisions and water systems) by focusing on how land-use choices made by farmers influence water availability and thus alter the productivity of agricultural land. Understanding the relationships between land-use change, water, and agriculture is crucial to balancing tradeoffs between the environmental costs associated with converting forests and other natural habitats to crop fields and pasture, and the need to increase food production to meet growing demands as global populations and incomes rise. This project will contribute to the health and welfare of the United States and elsewhere by informing choices about how to increase agricultural output while limiting impacts on water, atmosphere and biodiversity. It will enhance research and education infrastructure by expanding a scientifically relevant and publicly-available dataset linking a survey of farm households to data and models of land and water use. Lastly, it will develop capacity in interdisciplinary research through the training of students and postdoctoral researchers.Land-use decisions of individual farmers can aggregate up to landscape-level changes that influence the regional hydroclimate in ways that alter the availability of water for agricultural production, including both soil moisture or 'green' water and surface/ground or 'blue' water. How farmers adjust their investment and land-use decisions in response to water scarcity has implications for agricultural productivity and ultimately the supply of agricultural commodities. This project will advance basic scientific knowledge of the dynamic feedbacks among agricultural production choices, regional environmental variability, and vulnerability to water stress. It will address questions of how environmental variability and land-use changes affect the regional hydroclimate and property-level green and blue water; the extent to which individual farmers are vulnerable to variation in green and blue water and how they adapt; and how inter-related farmer production decisions aggregate to determine water, land-use, production and welfare outcomes under different policy scenarios. Data from a unique long-term household panel survey (1996-2018) will be combined with data and models of land cover, climate and hydrology to understand the effects of the regional hydroclimate on property-level water availability and the effects of water availability on agricultural production decisions. Analysis of the property-level empirical relationships will inform an agent-based model (ABM) that will be linked with a regional climate model to assess the aggregate consequences of these feedbacks for land-use, agricultural output and welfare.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.