Food, energy and water systems are highly interdependent and increasingly stressed by resource demands, strict environmental policies, and severe and persistent drought. This project builds on knowledge of the recent drought in California and presents an opportunity to learn how to monitor and jointly manage food, energy, water systems together. This will be accomplished through detailed modeling aimed at evaluating trade-offs among these systems both now and in the future. The model can be used to assess the impacts of climate variability, water policies, economic and population growth, and technological progress and trade. This integration of sciences is necessary to study systems under stress in order to ensure that risk in each component of this vital system is minimized. This research will strengthen the understanding of the interdisciplinary coupling of agriculture, energy, hydrology, and climate variability. The project will contribute to US scientific leadership and will train postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, undergraduate students, and high school summer interns recruited from secondary schools and underrepresented groups. The project has strong contact with key stakeholders in the state of California.
This project will model the food, energy water system (FEWS) nexus for California where the important interactions among these components can be comprehensively assessed using historical data. By addressing this FEW system of systems at the intended level of spatial, temporal and mechanistic detail, the project will advance knowledge of FEW systems and how they respond to external and internal stress. This knowledge can then be used to inform future decisions regarding resource management in California and by extension elsewhere. The modeling effort will be structured in three phases: (1) estimation of economic and behavioral responses to changing water supply, (2) quantitative modelling and assessment of the strength of impacts and dependencies among the existing food, energy, and water systems in California, and (3) robust scenario-based model assessment of impacts and dependencies among the future food, energy, and water systems in California. The use of historical observations and responses is will enable a direct comparison of modelled and measured responses and thus provide a strong test of FEW systems interdependence as they have been managed in recent years.
