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.
