INFEWS/T2: Identifying Sustainability Solutions through Global-Local-Global Analysis of a Coupled Water-Agriculture-Bioenergy System

未来40年，全球粮食-能源-水系统（FEWS）将面临相互关联的重大可持续性挑战：在一个生物物理系统或空间位置实施的解决方案将不可避免地影响其他生物物理系统或空间位置。没有考虑到这些相互联系的决策者可能会无意中追求不可持续的FEWS政策。研究小组将开发并应用一种新颖的综合方法，突出不同的政策或管理活动何时相互支持或相互否定。这种综合方法将提供有关地方决策如何结合起来影响更广泛问题或溢出到其他系统的新知识。更全面的了解将显示经济或气候变率等外部因素如何在地方尺度上改变和限制管理决策，并影响国家的FEWS结果。这个新的免费分析系统，可以通过nsf资助的计算机系统获得，将允许任何人访问计算能力，这将改变全球和本地FEWS分析的联系方式，并为提出的可持续性解决方案的不同影响提供新的视角。我们的团队将战略性地建立在团队撰写的经过国际审查的分析工具组合的基础上，包括水文和水质、食品、生物能源和美国农业生态学的全球模型，以产生一个开源、可复制和可访问的框架。项目目标是：1)建立系统行为，确定个别政策方案的表现，并通过影响的级联路径反馈给更大的综合系统；2)使用综合系统来确定由多个选项组成的高绩效战略，这些选项揭示了与管理FEWS挑战相关的权衡、协同效应和经济成本；3)促进实践社区的发展，利用全球-地方-全球范式来研究这些FEWS挑战的综合解决方案。该框架将由nsf资助的技术提供支持：利用地理空间数据分析构建块（gabb）的HUBzero上的GeoHub和XSEDE计算骨干，以实现跨广泛地理区域的精细分析。GeoHub还将为当地和区域FEWS分析师和决策者提供边界条件，如作物产量、价格、耕地面积、灌溉面积、养分应用和地表水负荷、生物能源生产和任何空间聚集的水流入的变化，作为当地可持续性研究的输入。基于地方的研究结果将被纳入这个多系统、多尺度的框架，以评估其对国家和全球的影响。这种首次能力将使FEWS社区能够在无缝、透明、灵活和可复制的框架内探索替代政策和可持续性战略。通过在GeoHub上免费提供探索可持续性解决方案的新工具，该项目将加速多样化的FEWS实践社区的发展，通过该社区，分析全球变化的研究人员可以有效地与进行本地和区域FEWS研究的研究人员联系起来。知情的短期课程和高中参与将进一步培养下一代FEWS研究人员和实践者，并将有助于填补中等教育经济学课程的空白。全国记者俱乐部活动的影响将远远超出这个项目？为建立一个专注于全球-本地-全球FEWS互动的充满活力和知情的实践社区做出贡献。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Over the next 40 years, the global Food-Energy-Water System (FEWS) will face significant sustainability challenges that are interconnected: solutions implemented in one biophysical system or spatial location will inevitably affect others. Decision makers that do not account for these interconnections risk inadvertently pursuing unsustainable FEWS policies. The research team will develop and apply a novel integrated approach that highlights when different policies or management activities support vs. negate one another. This integrated approach will provide new knowledge about how local decisions combine to affect broader issues, or spill over to other systems. A more complete understanding will show how outside factors like economic or climate variability alter and constrain management decisions at local scales and influence national FEWS results. This new freely-available analysis system, available through NSF-funded computer systems, will allow anyone an access to computational capabilities that will transform the way global and local FEWS analyses are linked and shed new light on the diverse impacts of proposed sustainability solutions.Our team will strategically build on a portfolio of internationally vetted analysis tools the team has authored, including global models of hydrology and water quality, food, bioenergy and U.S. agro-ecology, to produce an open-source, reproducible, and accessible framework. Project goals are to: 1) establish system behavior and identify the performance of individual policy options and feedbacks to the larger integrated system via cascading pathways of impacts; 2) use the integrated system to identify high-performing strategies composed of multiple options that reveal the trade-offs, synergies and economic costs associated with managing FEWS challenges; and 3) foster development of a community of practice utilizing the Global-Local-Global paradigm to examine integrative solutions to these FEWS challenges. This framework will be powered by NSF-funded technologies: GeoHub on HUBzero, utilizing geospatial data analysis building blocks (GABBs), and the XSEDE computational backbone to enable fine-scale analysis across broad geographies. GeoHub will also provide local and regional FEWS analysts and decision makers with boundary conditions such as changes in crop production, prices, cropland area, irrigated area, nutrient applications and surface water loading, bioenergy production and water in-flows at any spatial aggregation for use as inputs into local sustainability studies. Results from locally-based studies will be incorporated back into this multi-system, multi-scale framework to assess their national and global impacts. This first-time capability will enable the FEWS community to explore alternative policies and sustainability strategies within a seamless, transparent, flexible, and replicable framework. By making new tools for exploring sustainability solutions freely available on the GeoHub, the project will accelerate development of a diverse FEWS community of practice through which those analyzing global change can be effectively linked to researchers conducting local and regional FEWS studies. Informed short courses and high school engagement will further prepare next-generation FEWS researchers and practitioners and will help to fill a gap in secondary education economics curricula. A National Press Club event will extend impact far beyond this project?s time horizon to contribute to a vibrant and informed community of practice focusing on Global-Local-Global FEWS interactions.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.