BioEarth: Envisioning and developing a new regional earth system model to inform natural and agricultural resource management

As managers of agricultural and natural resources are confronted with uncertainties in global change impacts, the complexities associated with the interconnected cycling of nitrogen, carbon, and water present daunting management challenges. Existing models provide detailed information on specific sub-systems (e.g., land, air, water, and economics). An increasing awareness of the unintended consequences of management decisions resulting from interconnectedness of these sub-systems, however, necessitates coupled regional earth system models (EaSMs). Decision makers’ needs and priorities can be integrated into the model design and development processes to enhance decision-making relevance and “usability” of EaSMs. BioEarth is a research initiative currently under development with a focus on the U.S. Pacific Northwest region that explores the coupling of multiple stand-alone EaSMs to generate usable information for resource decision-making. Direct engagement between model developers and non-academic stakeholders involved in resource and environmental management decisions throughout the model development process is a critical component of this effort. BioEarth utilizes a bottom-up approach for its land surface model that preserves fine spatial-scale sensitivities and lateral hydrologic connectivity, which makes it unique among many regional EaSMs. This paper describes the BioEarth initiative and highlights opportunities and challenges associated with coupling multiple stand-alone models to generate usable information for agricultural and natural resource decision-making

Essays on Child Labor and Agricultural Decision-making in Response to Natural Disasters and Climate Change

This dissertation consists of three papers.In India, Ethiopia and Vietnam, rural households face a choice between allocating a child’s time between education, household chores, farm wage labor, non-agricultural wage labor, working on the family farm, or on producing handicrafts and services within the household enterprise. Droughts alter the child’s marginal value of time between these activities by affecting the productivity of agrarian economic activities and opportunity cost of school attendance. The first paper studies the impact of droughts on rural child labor. First, a theoretical model was developed to provide the underlying intuition. Next, the relationship between the incidence, frequency and scale of droughts on participation in rural child labor (Extensive Margin Analysis) and hours devoted to specific child labor activities (Intensive Margin Analysis) was empirically studied using the Young Lives dataset for children in rural India, Ethiopia and Vietnam.Urban households depend largely on non-agrarian economic activities and are less vulnerable to droughts. But damaged capital, infrastructure and schools, due to floods, cyclones, tornadoes or hurricanes, influence the allocation of an urban child’s time between schooling and child labor activities. The second paper studies this impact of floods, cyclones, tornadoes and hurricanes on urban child labor in India, Ethiopia and Vietnam. In particular, this paper studied the relationship between the incidence, frequency and scale of cyclones, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods on participation in urban child labor (Extensive Margin Analysis) and hours devoted to specific urban child labor activities (Intensive Margin Analysis).The third paper details the development of crop-yield response curves for a BioEarth hydro-economic optimization model for the Yakima River Basin. The Leontief, piecewise linear and polynomial specifications for crop-yield functions were reviewed. Next, raw crop data from VIC-CropSyst process-based model was modified and selecting the relevant criteria, the specification that best fits the crop data was determined. Finally, the results show that for most crops and irrigation districts, the piecewise linear specification provides a better fit to the VIC-CropSyst crop growth data. Since the non-linear nature of this specification may cause computational difficulties in the optimization model, a polynomial specification is recommended

BioEarth: Envisioning and developing a new regional earth system model to inform natural and agricultural resource management

As managers of agricultural and natural resources are confronted with uncertainties in global change impacts, the complexities associated with the interconnected cycling of nitrogen, carbon, and water present daunting management challenges. Existing models provide detailed information on specific sub-systems (e.g., land, air, water, and economics). An increasing awareness of the unintended consequences of management decisions resulting from interconnectedness of these sub-systems, however, necessitates coupled regional earth system models (EaSMs). Decision makers’ needs and priorities can be integrated into the model design and development processes to enhance decision-making relevance and “usability” of EaSMs. BioEarth is a research initiative currently under development with a focus on the U.S. Pacific Northwest region that explores the coupling of multiple stand-alone EaSMs to generate usable information for resource decision-making. Direct engagement between model developers and non-academic stakeholders involved in resource and environmental management decisions throughout the model development process is a critical component of this effort. BioEarth utilizes a bottom-up approach for its land surface model that preserves fine spatial-scale sensitivities and lateral hydrologic connectivity, which makes it unique among many regional EaSMs. This paper describes the BioEarth initiative and highlights opportunities and challenges associated with coupling multiple stand-alone models to generate usable information for agricultural and natural resource decision-making