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

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

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.