5 research outputs found
Editorial: toward 50 years of 'Water Resources Research'
The first issue of 'Water Resources Research' (WRR) was published in March 1965 and, therefore, the year 2015 will present the exciting opportunity to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the journal. Naturally, this milestone will be seen as an occasion to look back on 50 years of research activity. The history of WRR provides a very interesting perspective on the development of hydrology and the legacy of the worldwide water resources community
Reducing Food Loss and Waste to Enhance Food Security and Environmental Sustainability
While food shortage
remains a big concern in many regions around
the world, almost one-third of the total food production is discarded
as food loss and waste (FLW). This is associated with about one-quarter
of land, water, and fertilizer used for crop production, even though
resources and environmental constraints are expected to limit food
production around the world. FLW reduction represents a potential
opportunity to enhance both food security and environmental sustainability
and therefore has received considerable attention recently. By reviewing
the recent progress and new developments in the literature, this paper
highlights the importance of FLW prevention as a complementary solution
to address the Grand Challenge of global food security and environmental
sustainability. However, raising awareness only is not enough to realize
the expected FLW reduction. We identify the knowledge gaps and opportunities
for research by synthesizing the strategies of FLW reduction and the
barriers, including (1) filling the data gaps, (2) quantifying the
socioeconomic and environmental impacts of FLW reduction strategies,
(3) understanding the scale effects, and (4) exploring the impacts
of global transitions. It is urgent to take more aggressive yet scientifically
based actions to reduce FLW, which require everyone’s involvement
along the food supply chain, including policy makers, food producers
and suppliers, and food consumers
The Interplay Between Bioenergy Grass Production and Water Resources in the United States of America
We
apply a land surface model to evaluate the interplay between
potential bioenergy grass (Miscanthus, Cave-in-Rock, and Alamo) production,
water quantity, and nitrogen leaching (NL) in the Central and Eastern
U.S. Water use intensity tends to be lower where grass yields are
modeled to be high, for example in the Midwest for Miscanthus and
Cave-in-Rock and the upper southeastern U.S. for Alamo. However, most
of these regions are already occupied by crops and forests and substitution
of these biome types for ethanol production implies trade-offs. In
general, growing Miscanthus consumes more water, Alamo consumes less
water, and Cave-in-Rock consumes approximately the same amount of
water as existing vegetation. Bioenergy grasses can maintain high
productivity over time, even in water limited regions, because their
roots can grow deeper and extract the water from the deep, moist soil
layers. However, this may not hold where there are frequent and intense
drought events, particularly in regions with shallow soil depths.
One advantage of bioenergy grasses is that they mitigate nitrogen
leaching relative to row crops and herbaceous plants when grown without
applying N fertilizer; and bioenergy grasses, especially Miscanthus,
generally require less N fertilizer application than row crops and
herbaceous plants
Managing Multiple Mandates: A System of Systems Model to Analyze Strategies for Producing Cellulosic Ethanol and Reducing Riverine Nitrate Loads in the Upper Mississippi River Basin
Implementing
public policies often involves navigating an array
of choices that have economic and environmental consequences that
are difficult to quantify due to the complexity of multiple system
interactions. Implementing the mandate for cellulosic biofuel production
in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and reducing hypoxia in the northern
Gulf of Mexico by reducing riverine nitrate-N loads represent two
such cases that overlap in the Mississippi River Basin. To quantify
the consequences of these interactions, a system of systems (SoS)
model was developed that incorporates interdependencies among the
various subsystems, including biofuel refineries, transportation,
agriculture, water resources and crop/ethanol markets. The model allows
examination of the impact of imposing riverine nitrate-N load limits
on the biofuel production system as a whole, including land use change
and infrastructure needs. The synergies of crop choice (first versus
second generation biofuel crops), infrastructure development, and
environmental impacts (streamflow and nitrate-N load) were analyzed
to determine the complementarities and trade-offs between environmental
protection and biofuel development objectives. For example, the results
show that meeting the cellulosic biofuel target in the RFS using Miscanthus x giganteus reduces system profits by
8% and reduces nitrate-N loads by 12% compared to the scenario without
a mandate. However, greater water consumption by Miscanthus is likely to reduce streamflow with potentially adverse environmental
consequences that need to be considered in future decision making
Downgrading Recent Estimates of Land Available for Biofuel Production
Recent estimates of additional land available for bioenergy
production
range from 320 to 1411 million ha. These estimates were generated
from four scenarios regarding the types of land suitable for bioenergy
production using coarse-resolution inputs of soil productivity, slope,
climate, and land cover. In this paper, these maps of land availability
were assessed using high-resolution satellite imagery. Samples from
these maps were selected and crowdsourcing of Google Earth images
was used to determine the type of land cover and the degree of human
impact. Based on this sample, a set of rules was formulated to downward
adjust the original estimates for each of the four scenarios that
were previously used to generate the maps of land availability for
bioenergy production. The adjusted land availability estimates range
from 56 to 1035 million ha depending upon the scenario and the ruleset
used when the sample is corrected for bias. Large forest areas not
intended for biofuel production purposes were present in all scenarios.
However, these numbers should not be considered as definitive estimates
but should be used to highlight the uncertainty in attempting to quantify
land availability for biofuel production when using coarse-resolution
inputs with implications for further policy development