Non Technical Summary
River valleys and their contributing headwater areas in the western US are key focal points of irrigated agriculture, natural resources-connected communities, river and riparian ecosystems, and local economies that have all faced new interrelated water scarcity challenges in the last few decades. Temperature increases driven by climate change have increased atmospheric evaporative demand by 15-20% since 1980, causing crops and wildland plants to need more water and causing more evaporation from lakes and streams. Heat drought has reduced snowmelt runoff by 20% or more since the 1970s, and streamflow has further declined since 2002 through the onset of meteorological drought with less precipitation. More groundwater pumping to compensate for less surface water is causing aquifer water tables to decline. Surface waters and associated groundwaters are becoming increasingly disconnected, leading to drying rivers, declining acres of agricultural production, aquatic ecosystem decline, and reduced streamside riparian areas that support life cycle phases of 85% of terrestrial fauna. Water availability challenges have exacerbated tensions between different water user groups and have upended longstanding collaborative water management approaches. Because these problems are interconnected, there is an opportunity to identify the key influencing drivers and alter these levers of change to move toward more resilient systems.To maintain thriving agriculture with less water while providing sustainable river-connected groundwater storage and supporting community viability and ecosystem hea­­lth, this project helps build Resilient Agriculture-Water-Community Systems (RAWCS). The project is founded on the collective experiences of community members, researchers, and extension specialists from team member projects in three river basins that are representative of the western US: the Rio Grande Basin, the Snake River Basin, and the Truckee-Carson River System. The team's experience at the forefront of applied water science provides guidance for this project to develop resilient water resources to support all water uses. We utilize a community-empowering engagement approach in which community members are co-experts in developing solutions. The research follows a targeted system science methodology that identifies key drivers and interactions within the agricultural, water, and community systems. Some of the key resilience practices are already identified and will be investigated for local applicability, such as: alternative low water use high value crops, watershed restoration to reduce flooding and enhance groundwater recharge, dissemination to stakeholders of the importance of surface water groundwater connectivity, and community involvement in identifying needed water information. The communities will provide input to direct the development of system-science modeling-based tools that incorporate field measurements and information from earth-observing satellites to develop future resilience scenarios. Education and extension will disseminate the science to students and stakeholders in each project basin and state. In order to expand from our projects to the scale of the western US, we will implement the Western Water Network (WWN) to pursue the audacious objective of connecting stakeholders, researchers, educators, and policy makers across the entire west.The products from this project are designed to be individually straightforward and cumulatively transformative for agricultural river valleys in the western US. We will build a RAWCS Center of Excellence (COE) as a project hub with virtual nodes to effectively gather and distribute multiple objective-guided products including: 1) Community engagement through on site liaisons to guide research priorities, support strategic management actions, and build long-term, effective relationships between stakeholders and researchers as well as upstream and downstream communities; 2) Research for farm-scale agricultural water efficiency and profitability approaches, systems-based RAWCS models and decision tools, and pathways to climate resilience and balanced water budgets sharable by stakeholders, researchers, and decisionmakers and scalable from local communities to the broader region; 3) Extension of the cutting-edge research-based knowledge to our project communities and the larger western US audience; 4) Education including traditional campus based and onsite programs as well as videos, water technician training, and an interactive water management game; 5) the WWN, a network of networks to share, connect, and communicate knowledge and strategies for water for agriculture, water resilience, eco-hydrologic approaches, and agro-economic policy. The RAWCS COE produces key outcomes: resilient agricultural production with less water, balanced surface water and groundwater systems, and resilient water, agriculture, and natural resources community systems.

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
111	0210	2050	100%

Knowledge Area
111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water;

Subject Of Investigation
0210 - Water resources;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology;

Goals / Objectives
The Resilient Agriculture-Water-Community Systems Center of Excellence (RAWCS COE) will provide resilient agricultural systems with less water, balanced surface water and groundwater systems, and resilient community systems that rely on agriculture and water. The RAWCS COE goal is tocraft integrated, flexible land and water management portfolios developed with community-directed research and with system-science modeling-based tools that enable targeted local interventions and West-wide knowledge sharing to maintain thriving agriculture while providing sustainable groundwater storage and viable communities. Five key supporting objectives include:1. Engaging with communities in defining and resolving climate-driven water scarcity challenges.2. Creating needed new knowledge through local to regional scalable and solution-driven research.3. Extending cutting-edge research-based knowledge to our project communities and the larger Western US audience. 4. Educating the next generation of water managers.5. Implementing the Western Water Network

Project Methods
Community engagementWe will organize extension outreach meetings as listening sessions to understand and include tribal perspectives in furthering the vision of ethnographic communities and to disseminate project results to tribal populations.As part of our engagement with farmers, water managers, and USDA/state agriculture specialists, corporations, and NGOs, and leaning on the WWN, we will develop a web-based system that is populated with historical time series on climate and water availability, crop productivity, and commodity prices, coupled to tools for prediction and outcome analysis.Scalable, solution- driven researchWe will develop the RAWCS SD model to understand the interactions of the agriculture, water, and community system of systems to identify the key drivers, system boundary, structure, feedback, and dynamics leading to improved resilience.Once the model is completed it will be used to run simulations to assess various policy and management decisions for developing an adaptive decision support tool.Using advanced modeling and data assimilation systems, NASA currently produces global water cycle products at 10km spatial resolution by assimilating GPM IMERG precipitation, MODIS leaf area index, GRACE terrestrial water storage, and ESA CCI soil moisture data and including additional water budget, energy balance, surface and subsurface states, carbon fluxes, and hydrology variables.We will continue work with the communities on field-scale water budgets at different agricultural experiment stations, upgrade the existing equipment, and compare data from similar sites in the RAWCS study regions to produce a water budget for local farmer and communities.After applying Deficit Irrigation (DI), we will obtain parameters that will be used by the decision tools to assess the financial impact of producing alfalfa under DI.A comprehensive study to assess pistachio as an alternative crop to pecans for the region will provide farmers and water managers with data for decision-making relevant to water conservation and crop production potential.A Python script will be developed to run a Monte Carlo analysis to determine the ranges of future changes in cropping patterns impacts on the water budget along with changes in climate and water availability, particularly with the current trend of increasing evaporative demand of the atmosphere.Annual soil health assessments will be produced to track directional changes within various systems.We will build on previous hydrologic modeling in NM, WY, ID, and NV to forecast regional-scale surface water and groundwater interactions at all the study sites using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT)MODFLOW coupled model.We will develop sample crop cost and return budgets that explicitly account for water and water costs with information on the budgets will be developed via in-depth interviews with agricultural producers.ExtensionTraditional extension outreach efforts in the five project regions, each with its own unique mix of economic, environmental, and cultural contextsNewsletters with relevant previous, ongoing and new project research distributed four times per year via print mailing and/or email (depending on agent recommendations)We will host one field day per year, rotating between each of the five sites, at a university research farm or at the farm of a community member who is adopting/applying improved irrigation and other water saving techniques, thereby allowing other community members to witness first-hand the benefits and challenges associated with these technologies.10-14 animations and videos for the purpose of increasing knowledge, sharing research findings, and addressing gaps in understanding identified by community outreach.Interactive water management game through which policymakers and water managers can experiment with different choices of water management approaches and strategies for managing conflicting needWater management educationAn innovative water manager certification program will be offered as a stand-alone certificate and be integrated into the Water Science and Management Graduate Degree Program at NMSU.Water technician training in each state and throughout the west will be designed to provide training in: site selection, installation, maintenance, and data analysis of climate stations, and use of climate data for estimating irrigation water requirements.Experiential learning opportunities for students will provide access to learning activities to bolster project activities.Community education will be delivered using content developed for climate adaptation outreach.Western water networkNetwork of networks to share water management challenges and solutions across the west.Facilitated technical support as an outreach nexus between the research and community engagement endeavor to people in all western states.Interactive Data Support for communities with WWN-moderated data exchange.Communications, website and social media to support WWN and RAWCS COE.Climate adaptation to water scarcity content from USDA Southwest Climate Hub (SWCH) and USDA Northwest Climate Hub.