Source: MICHIGAN STATE UNIV submitted to NRP
INFEWS/T1: DEVELOPING PATHWAYS TOWARD SUSTAINABLE IRRIGATION ACROSS THE UNITED STATES USING PROCESS-BASED SYSTEMS MODELS (SIRUS)
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1013707
Grant No.
2018-67003-27406
Cumulative Award Amt.
$2,473,700.00
Proposal No.
2017-07651
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jan 1, 2018
Project End Date
Feb 28, 2025
Grant Year
2020
Program Code
[A3151]- Interagency Climate Change
Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
Geological Sciences
Non Technical Summary
Irrigated agriculture is at the core of the nexus of food, energy, and water (FEW) systems; it is both the largest global consumer of water and a major consumer of energy. Global change is expected to place additional pressure on these systems, as climate across the US warms and becomes more variable, and demand for food increases due to global population growth and diet shifts. Simultaneously increasing food production while adapting to change and shrinking agriculture's environmental footprint will require improved management, innovative policies, and more efficient water and energy technologies. This transdisciplinary project team proposes to develop pathways for sustainable irrigated agriculture using coupled socioeconomic and biophysical models, focusing on two major irrigated regions of the US, plus a region that has seen a rapid increase of irrigation. The project will: quantify the effects of projected increases in food production on energy consumption and water resources under a changing climate; simulate the effects of potential water policies and their associated influence on the energy and water footprints of US agriculture; and quantify the likely effects of large scale shifts in irrigated agriculture over the next century on regional climate. This research will also examine tradeoffs among multiple dimensions of sustainability, and how those may be influenced by changes in policy, technologies, and climate. The project will mainly rely on publicly available data plus an extensive dataset that has already been collected by the team in previous NSF and NIFA projects.This project proposes a transformative synthesis of hydrology, crop growth, regional climate, and socioeconomic systems models that will be applied to two key irrigated agricultural regions of the United States and an area undergoing rapid irrigation expansion. The models will be used to understand historical interactions among these FEW systems, and to quantify the impacts of changes in management, climate, policies, and technologies on water supplies, food production, and energy use across portions of 13 states. The proposed research will define more sustainable pathways for irrigated agriculture to meet current and future demand for food, using a systems framework that explicitly addresses tradeoffs between water and energy use with economic livelihoods. Efficient irrigation and renewable energy hold considerable promise to reduce the environmental footprint of irrigated agriculture; this project team will simulate the potential benefits of those technologies, along with their adoption to better understand what factors impact decision making. Recent work by the team suggests that irrigation is cooling large regions of the eastern United States; the proposed project will examine this causative relationship in detail, including an analysis of potential changes to climatic extremes and renewable energy potential due to this feedback.This project team will quantify how different potential water and energy policies could enhance the sustainability of future water supplies while maintaining crop yields for critical irrigated regions of the US. The project team includes a strong network of scientists, farmers, decision makers, and policy makers from the High Plains, Michigan, and California's Central Valley, enabling the research to have a significant impact on decisions that can increase efficiency of water, energy, and nutrient use, while maintaining crop yields and farmer profitability. Outreach efforts will include development of a mobile app to directly share efficient management practices with farmers, and to improve understanding of their decision making. This research will also provide a sound basis for improved policies and incentives, which can promote sustainable agricultural practices across the US and around the world. Students and early career scientists will receive training and education on interdisciplinary science from an experienced team working at the FEW nexus. The proposed research will provide critical insights into pathways toward sustainability of irrigated agriculture, reach out directly to farmers making decisions about sustainability, and train the next generation of scientists to provide the knowledge needed to manage this critical FEW system.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
45%
Applied
50%
Developmental
5%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
1110210205035%
1020199107035%
1320430207010%
6050210209020%
Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 605 - Natural Resource and Environmental Economics; 111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water; 132 - Weather and Climate;

Subject Of Investigation
0430 - Climate; 0210 - Water resources; 0199 - Soil and land, general;

Field Of Science
2070 - Meteorology and climatology; 2090 - Statistics, econometrics, and biometrics; 2050 - Hydrology; 1070 - Ecology;
Goals / Objectives
Our overall goals are to:1) develop pathways toward sustainable irrigated agriculture in the US using process-based systems models,2) train the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists, and3) directly engage farmers and stakeholders to encourage more efficient resource use.
Project Methods
1.1. Compile climate, hydrology, agronomic, and physiographic data for systems modeling.1.2. Compile and synthesize existing literature and data on adoption of irrigation and renewable energy technologies.1.3. Create new maps of irrigated areas and renewable energy technology using remote sensing.1.4. Quantify the water use, energy use, and economic impact of irrigated agriculture from 1990 to present.1.5. Develop scenarios for changes in climate, diet, policies & regulations, crop types, and energy / irrigation technologies.2.1 Develop innovative models of farmers' decision making.2.2. Improve representations of irrigation technologies in process models.2.3. Build integrated surface / groundwater models for California's Central Valley system.2.4. Develop Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of crops and food systems.3.1. Simulate the effects of historical irrigation activities on regional climate, hydrology, energy, and crop yields across our study regions.3.2. Quantify sustainability pathways and assess FEW impacts of scenarios with changes in policies & regulations, crop types, and energy / irrigation technologies.3.3. Quantify the impacts of projected climate changes on irrigation water use demand, water resources, and associated energy consumption.3.4. Simulate combinations of scenarios to quantify system resilience and adaptation potential using efficient irrigation and energy technologies.3.5. Quantify impacts of irrigation on the energy, and water, and GHG footprints of the US diet.4.1. Engage stakeholders to strengthen collaborations and gain insights into adoption decisions.4.2. Train interdisciplinary scientists, and develop a collaborative course on FEW systems.4.3. Provide state of the art model results to, and solicit decision making data from, farmers through a decision support app.

Progress 01/01/22 to 12/31/22

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our research results is farmers, policymakers, policy makers and scientists (undergraduate and graduate students) working across the water, energy and food nexus. In this fifth year of the project, our team had numerous interactions and presentations with each of these groups of our target audience. We had multiple presentations of our research to the general public, chapters of scientific organizations, the Kansas Senate-House 2022 Special Committee on Water and at scientific conferences. Informal presentations were also given to personnel from groundwater management districts in Kansas, the state's water planning and management agencies, and the vice-chair of the 2022 Special Water Committee of the Kansas Legislature. Multiple conference presentations were given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), ASA-CSSA-SSSA, Solar Power and Wildlife/Natural Resources Symposium (REWI), and the IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference (IEEE-PVSC). Senior project personnel will also co-chair and participate in "Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management: Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges" in Valencia, Spain (October 6-8, 2022), and interact with several commodities groups (corn, wheat, soy, potato) at state and national levels. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?7 graduate students are conducting their research on the project (5 at MSU, 1 at Dartmouth, and 1 at Wisconsin). 2 postdocs are also engaged in the project research (1 at MSU, 1 at the Kansas Geological Survey). All students and postdocs are being trained in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary science through regular meetings and interactions with the project team. A course developed under this project titled "Environmental modeling, water and food security" precisely to teach students the critical interaction occurring at the nexus of food-water and energy was again taught at MSU. Students explore interdisciplinary research from literature and are taught how to use crop models and image data analysis to simulate what-if scenarios as potential solutions to the unsustainable use of water and nutrients in agriculture. Kendall taught graduate students how to build models in LHM, an integrated surface and subsurface hydrologic model. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During this project year, the team had 21 peer-reviewed articles and 5 MS/PhD Theses published on the project efforts; additional manuscripts have been submitted and many are in prep. for submission in the coming year. The team also gave over 30 presentations including invited keynotes to US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, an invited presentation to the Kansas Senate-House 2022 Special Committee on Water, and outreach presentations to share the advances in digital agriculture and crop modeling that enhance the sustainability of agricultural systems and the new methods that our team has developed to assess the impact of pumping reductions in heavily stressed aquifers. Informal presentations were also given to personnel from groundwater management districts in Kansas, the state's water planning and management agencies, and the vice-chair of the 2022 Special Water Committee of the Kansas Legislature. Multiple conference presentations were given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), ASA-CSSA-SSSA, Solar Power and Wildlife/Natural Resources Symposium (REWI), and the IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference (IEEE-PVSC). Senior project personnel also co-chaired and participated in "Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management: Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges" in Valencia, Spain (October 6-8, 2022), and interacted with several commodities groups (corn, wheat, soy, potato) at state and national levels. Butler also presented the latest project results to the Kansas House Water Committee on January 19, 2023. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Complete annual irrigation maps of the three project regions (CA Central Valley, High Plains, and Upper Midwest) using neural networks. Finish integrating our CCV Basin LHM model with the groundwater model of the region (from the USGS) and simulate groundwater recharge under the effects of changing irrigation practices and the current Western Mega-drought. Expand crop components of SALUS crop model to include fruits and vegetables to better capture feedbacks between water use, plant water uptake and nutrient dynamics across the CCV. Evaluate historical patterns of precipitation variability in Kansas, the High Plains Aquifer, and Michigan, to evaluate how these relate to groundwater use. Submit a manuscript on using digital agriculture technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate leaching across the US Midwest corn and soybean rotation. Finalize SALUS simulations to evaluate what-if scenarios in coupling irrigation and N fertilizer management. Objective 2 Quantify how adoption of efficient irrigation technologies has facilitated expansion of irrigated areas and reduced cropland abandonment. Expand our assessment of the effects of increasing solar PV adoption in the CCV to our national dataset and assess the economic, nutritional, and hydrological tradeoffs of United States renewable energy infrastructure. Identify croplands in the Central US that may be better suited to renewable energy production than agriculture under projected climate change scenarios. Objective 3: Complete the Kansas energy demand for irrigation and energy system modeling by including water storage and grid/off-grid systems with grid sell-back opportunities for farmers. The irrigation electricity demand for Michigan will be calculated similarly to what was done for Kansas and added to the total energy demand to model energy system capacity. The environmental and economic impact of each option will also be compared. Expand the satellite solar farm estimation approach to other regions of the project and use LCA to quantify the life cycle impact of expanding solar systems onto agricultural land by characterizing effects on greenhouse gasses, water footprint, and cost. Publish the code as a tool, to allow other researchers to apply these methods. Develop maps of temporally consistent low productivity agricultural land relative to surrounding cropland of the same agricultural use. Initially, these maps will serve as indicators for ideal renewable energy placement both for current installations and future scenarios. Objective 4 Create more comprehensive and realistic scenarios of technology adoption to assess changes in aquifer recharge across the HPA. This comprehensive assessment of groundwater recharge changes over recent decades will serve as a baseline for future climate scenarios assessments. Analyze qualitative data from producers within the Sheridan 6 LEMA to understand producer perceptions of policy success beyond simply groundwater levels and profit. Analyze and publish Michigan water user survey data testing the generalizability of the above findings. Analyze and publish the performance of the first decade of the Sheridan 6 LEMA. Objective 5 Assess the effects of climate change on irrigation water needs and groundwater recharge across the HPA, Michigan, and CA Central Valley, and identify pathways for sustainable groundwater-irrigated agriculture in those regions.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Summary (2022 Annual) - Updated from report submitted September 2022 Our project team: Advanced the understanding of pathways toward sustainable irrigated agriculture in the US by integrating high resolution remote sensing with process-based systems models. Quantified how irrigation adaptation strategies in the first large-scale demonstration of pumping reductions were successful for short term reductions in groundwater level declines. Identified consistently low yielding areas across the Midwest to be allocated to alternative systems such as native vegetation pollinators, bioenergy crops or agrivoltaics. Presented project results in 26 peer reviewed articles and 3 MS/PhD Theses, and 26 scientific presentaions.. Presented a summary of project findings in front of the Kansas Special Joint Committee on Water and offered sustainable irrigation policy recommendations. Objective 1: Quantify feedbacks between crop yields, climate, and use of water and energy. Developed a renewable energy installation dataset for the CONUS and evaluated land use change metrics for those replacing agriculture. We assessed agricultural and technology preferences, and sub-array (solar) ground cover as a basis for modeling hydrological implications. Developed data-driven workflow to create annual maps of irrigated water use across the CONUS. Evaluated the effects of land-atmosphere exchange parameterizations in WRF RCM for irrigated regions across >40 years of CONUS-scale growing season simulations (Pei et al. in prep.). Used deep learning TensorFlow AI models to develop maps of California's Central Valley (CCV), the High Plains Aquifer, and Upper Midwest and prepared the data assets for larger-scale mapping. Prepared a detailed review of accuracy metrics in other literature (Rapp et al., in prep.). Expanding on our efforts in Kansas, we calculated the at-the-pump energy requirements for irrigation across the CONUS. This revealed that crops grown in different regions of the US have substantially different energy requirements (McCarthy et al., in prep.). Objective 2: Quantify tradeoffs among four key aspects of sustainability: economic prosperity, water supply, energy use, and food production. Identified and characterized solar photovoltaic installations in the CCV, which converted 34 km2 of cropland. There are clear preferences for large arrays converting commodity croplands and smaller arrays converting specialty cropland We also found sub-optimal installation practices with unnecessary cropland losses (Stid et al., 2022). Performed a food, energy, water and economic life cycle assessment of agriculturally co-located solar installations in the CCV through the year 2042. We presented this work at IEEE PVSC 2022 and Sustain Valencia 2022, and will submit this work for publication in early 2023. Identified areas across the CONUS that may benefit from new irrigation under several climate change scenarios. Using simulated yields under irrigated and non-irrigated conditions, we identified where irrigation can both increase profits and lower risk (Partridge et al., in review). Examined the variation in the carbon and energy footprints of the U.S. diet among demographic groups, showing significantly different trends over time according to gender, race, and income (Bassi et al., 2022). Objective 3: Quantify benefits of adopting improved irrigation technologies and renewable energy, and their efficient utilization Improved maps of efficient irrigation adoption, including updating irrigated area datasets through 2020 including maps that cover the entire High Plains Aquifer (Brady et al., in prep.). Quantified how lagged reductions in groundwater recharge due to more efficient irrigation affect the long term effectiveness of conservation policy changes that reduced irrigation amounts. Such conservation-based pumping reductions can extend aquifer lifespans, but lagged responses will reduce the long-term effectiveness of such strategies (Glose et al., 2022). Simulated aquifer-wide adoption of efficient irrigation technologies and the effects on evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge over the HPA using the Landscape Hydrology Model (LHM), of irrigated area maps, and new maps of irrigation technology adoption (Brady et al., in prep.;Kendall et al., in prep.); Developed a new LHM simulation for the Central Valley that will integrate existing USGS-developed groundwater models. Quantifying groundwater recharge mechanisms across the Southern HPA (Smidt et al., in review). Developed a simple approach to assess the effectiveness of water conservation activities using water-use and climatic data and demonstrated the approach in western Kansas. Two western Kansas LEMAs reduced groundwater use by 26-30%. However, the largest LEMA in Kansas does not appear to have reduced groundwater use (Whittemore et al., in review) Objective 4: Quantify effects of farmer decision making, water laws, and policies on irrigation practices, technology adoption, and crop choices. Conducted interviews of farmers in western Kansas to understand the factors that lead to local organizing for self-imposed irrigation limits and definitions for success beyond simply economic outcomes. Received the Best Student Paper of 2022 at the International Association for Society and Natural Resources. Briefed Representative Ron Highland, vice-chair of the Kansas Senate-House 2022 Special Water Committee, on our evaluation of LEPA and LEMA policies. Made direct recommendations for how to expand the LEMA approach in the future and how best to incentivize irrigators to use less water. This briefing was in preparation for a Kansas Special Joint Water Committee meeting at which Butler presented project results. Completed development of the net inflow concept for assessing the near-term impact of pumping reductions in the High Plains Aquifer (HPA), finding that pumping reductions ~20% could lead to stabilization of water levels in Western Kansas (Butler et al., 2022). Incorporated specific yield (Sy) into groundwater models of the HPA. Misestimation of Sy has a large effect on the estimation of the effect of pumping reductions in west central Kansas. This new approach led to results that were consistent with field data, enhancing confidence in estimates of the impact of pumping reductions (Liu et al., 2022). Surveyed all large quantity water users in Michigan to understand their knowledge of state water policy and attitudes towards collaborative management. Reported findings to members of several Michigan state agencies. Objective 5: Quantify implications of global change including altered food demand, diets, and projected climate changes. Estimated the effects of sustainable groundwater use on irrigated production of corn, soy, and wheat in the Central United States. We found that using groundwater sustainably would reduce US irrigated production of maize, soy, and winter wheat (Lopez et al., 2022). Quantified crop-climate feedback mechanisms across the US Corn Belt, which increased crop production and cooled local climate, further raising crop yields. We found that maize and soy production has cooled the Corn Belt approximately as much as climate change has warmed it (Coffel et al., 2022). Analyzed the impacts of climate change on corn and soy production in the Central US. For a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, we found that corn yields generally increased over the upper Midwest and decreased over the High Plains by the end of the century (Partridge et al., in review). Developed a method to estimate the value of groundwater for irrigation using distributed crop modeling. Created and evaluated potential irrigation, cropping area, planting date, and cultivar climate change adaptation scenarios for corn and soy across the Central United States (Partridge et al., in review).

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., G.C. Bohling, S.P. Perkins, D.O. Whittemore, G. Liu, and B.B. Wilson, 2022, Net inflow: An important target on the path to aquifer sustainability, Groundwater doi: 10.1111/gwat.13233.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Smidt, S., Haacker, E., & Kendall A.D., et. al. Forming the Future of Agrohydrology Research, Earths Future: in review
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Stid J. T. , Shukla S., Anctil A., Kendall A. D. , Rapp J., and Hyndman D. W., Sustainable Agroenergy Landscapes: Balancing Shifts in Agricultural Production with Regenerative Opportunities when Replacing Agricultural Land with Solar. Nature Sustainability
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., D.O. Whittemore, B.B. Wilson, and G.C. Bohling, Convincing the doubters: New means to demonstrate the effectiveness of groundwater conservation activities to the stakeholder community, Book of Abstracts for Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management - Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges, p. 37, Universitat Polit�cnica de Val�ncia, Val�ncia, Spain, Oct. 8, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Liu, G., J.J. Butler, Jr., B.B. Wilson, G.C. Bohling, and D.O. Whittemore, and G.C. Bohling, Groundwater recharge enhancement in depleting aquifers: Delay of drainage by low-permeability sediments, Book of Abstracts for Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management - Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges, pp. 67-68, Universitat Polit�cnica de Val�ncia, Val�ncia, Spain, Oct. 8, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., The net inflow concept: An alternate approach for aquifer water-balance studies, Groundwater Security Planning Workshop, University of Alabama, Oct. 25, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., B.B. Wilson, and D.O. Whittemore, The High Plains Aquifer in Kansas: Current challenges and promising paths forward, 2022 Kansas Farmers Union Convention, Salina, KS, Nov. 30, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Whittemore, D.O., J.J. Butler, Jr., B.B. Wilson, and J. Wood, Are groundwater conservation management areas in the High Plains Aquifer truly saving water? Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas, Manhattan, KS, November 17, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Liu, G., J.J. Butler, Jr., B. Wilson, G. Bohling, D. Whittemore, Recharge enhancement in depleting aquifers: Delayed drainage by low-permeability sediments, Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas, Manhattan, KS, November 17, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Stid, J., Shukla, S., Kendall, A.D., Anctil, A., Rapp, J., and D.W. Hyndman, Sustainable energy landscapes: Towards understanding the hydrological implications of replacing agricultural land with solar energy. Book of Abstracts for Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management - Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges, pp. 67-68, Universitat Polit�cnica de Val�ncia, Val�ncia, Spain, Oct. 8, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kendall, A.D., Brady, A.J., Deines, J.D., Hyndman, D.W., and J. Butler Jr., Simulating the Hydrologic Effects of Adopting EFFICIENT Irrigation Technologies Across the High Plains Aquifer. Book of Abstracts for Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management - Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges, pp. 67-68, Universitat Polit�cnica de Val�ncia, Val�ncia, Spain, Oct. 8, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., Kendall, A.D., Butler, J. Jr., Deines, J.D., and T. Partridge. Quantifying the Effects of Irrigated Agriculture on the Food, Energy, and Water Nexus in Key Regions of the United States. Book of Abstracts for Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management - Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges, pp. 67-68, Universitat Polit�cnica de Val�ncia, Val�ncia, Spain, Oct. 8, 2022.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Schulte, L.A. et al. (2022). Meeting global challenges with regenerative agriculture producing food and energy Nature Sustainability, 5(5). Nature Research, 384-388. doi: 10.1038/s41893-021-00827-y
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Fabbri, B Basso, M Napoli, A Dalla Marta, S Orlandini, (2023). Developing a tactical nitrogen fertilizer management strategy for sustainable wheat production European Journal of Agronomy 144,
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: S�ndor, et al., (2023). Residual correlation and ensemble modelling to improve crop and grassland models. Environmental Modelling & Software, 105625
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kim, S. et al. (2023). Global warming intensity of biofuel derived from switchgrass grown on marginal land in Michigan GCB Bioenergy. John Wiley and Sons Inc, -. doi: 10.1111/gcbb.13024 Link 2022
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Guarin, J.R. et al. (2022). Evidence for increasing global wheat yield potential Environmental Research Letters, 17(12). Institute of Physics, -. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/aca77c
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Martinez-Feria, R.A., Basso, B., Kim, S. (2022). Boosting climate change mitigation potential of perennial lignocellulosic crops grown on marginal lands Environmental Research Letters, 17(4). IOP Publishing Ltd, -. doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac541b
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Northrup, D.L., Basso, B., Wang, M.Q., Morgan, C.L.S., Benfey, P.N. (2022). Reply to Amundson: Time to go to work Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(12). National Academy of Sciences, -. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2122842119
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: O'Neill, E.G., Martinez-Feria, R.A., Basso, B., Maravelias, C.T. (2022). Integrated spatially explicit landscape and cellulosic biofuel supply chain optimization under biomass yield uncertaintyComputers and Chemical Engineering, 160. Elsevier Ltd, -. doi: 10.1016/j.compchemeng.2022.107724
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Shuai, G., & Basso, B. (2022). Subfield maize yield prediction improves when in-season crop water deficit is included in remote sensing imagery-based models Remote Sensing of Environment, 272. Elsevier Inc, -. doi: 10.1016/j.rse.2022.112938
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Dueri, S. et al., (2022) Simulation of winter wheat response to variable sowing dates and densities in a high-yielding environment. Journal of Experimental Botany 73 (16), 5715-5729
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Basso., B. 2022. Enhancing soil quality makes crop production more resilient to climate change. Nature climate change 12 (6), 516-517 (comment)
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Italian Society of Agronomy, Annual Meeting. Padua, Italy, Sept 16, 2022, Keynote. Digital Agriculture to Design and Scale Sustainable Ag and Food Systems
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: World Food Prize, October 19, 2022, Des Moines. Invitation by 2022 World Food Prize Winner (Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweigh). AgMIP US, Modeling US agriculture for climate benefits
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: University of Texas at Dallas, Regional Center for Expertise (RCE) North Texas, Summit on Sustainability. November 9, 2022. Keynote. Digital Agriculture and Sustainability
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: COP 27 United Nation Climate Conference, Sharm El Sheik, Egypt, Circular Bioeconomy in Agricultural Systems. Presentation by Zoom. November 30, 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: International Conference Circular Bioeconomy systems for urban-rural co-prosperity, Government of Argentina, Buenos Aires, US NSF, and University of Tennessee.Symposium on Circular Biosystems. December 1, 2022. Keynote
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, US National Academy of Sciences, (BARN NASEM), Washington DC, NASEM Board Room, December 5, 2022, Digital Technology To Enhance Sustainability of Agricultural Systems
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: The Climate Underground, December 8, 2022. Invited panelist by VP Al Gore, Presentation by Zoom. Modeling Soil for Climate Benefits
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: US Soybean Coalition, Savannah, Georgia, December 14, 2022. Keynote. Digital Twins for Sustainable Agriculture


Progress 01/01/21 to 12/31/21

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our research results is farmers, policymakers, policy makers and scientists (undergraduate and graduate students) working across the water, energy and food nexus. In this fifth year of the project, our team had numerous interactions and presentations with each of these groups of our target audience. We had multiple presentations of our research to the general public, chapters of scientific organizations, the Kansas Senate-House 2022 Special Committee on Water and at scientific conferences. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?7 graduate students are conducting their research on the project (5 at MSU, 1 at Dartmouth, and 1 at Wisconsin). 2 postdocs are also engaged in the project research (1 at MSU, 1 at the Kansas Geological Survey). All students and postdocs are being trained in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary science through regular meetings and interactions with the project team. A course developed under this project titled "Environmental modeling, water and food security" precisely to teach students the critical interaction occurring at the nexus of food-water and energy was again taught at MSU. Students explore interdisciplinary research from literature and are taught how to use crop models and image data analysis to simulate what-if scenarios as potential solutions to the unsustainable use of water and nutrients in agriculture. Kendall taught graduate students how to build models in LHM, an integrated surface and subsurface hydrologic model. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During this project year, the team had 21 peer-reviewed articles and 5 MS/PhD Theses published on the project efforts; additional manuscripts have been submitted and many are in preparation for submission in the coming year. The team also gave a wide range of presentations including invited keynotes to US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, an invited presentation to the Kansas Senate-House 2022 Special Committee on Water, and outreach presentations to share the advances in digital agriculture and crop modeling that enhance the sustainability of agricultural systems and the new methods that our team has developed to assess the impact of pumping reductions in heavily stressed aquifers. Informal presentations were also given to personnel from groundwater management districts in Kansas, the state's water planning and management agencies, and the vice-chair of the 2022 Special Water Committee of the Kansas Legislature. Multiple conference presentations were given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU), ASA-CSSA-SSSA, Solar Power and Wildlife/Natural Resources Symposium (REWI), and the IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference (IEEE-PVSC). Senior project personnel also hosted a special session entitled "Prospects for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers: Impediments and Opportunities" at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans (Dec. 2021). Senior project personnel will also co-chair and participate in "Sustain Valencia 2022: Achieving Sustainable Groundwater Management: Promising Directions and Unresolved Challenges" in Valencia, Spain (October 6-8, 2022), and interact with several commodities groups (corn, wheat, soy, potato) at state and national levels. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Complete annual irrigation maps of the three project regions (CA Central Valley, High Plains, and Upper Midwest) using neural networks. Finish the integration of our CA Central Valley Basin LHM model with the groundwater model of the CA Central Valley (developed by the USGS) and simulate groundwater recharge under the effects of changing irrigation practices and the current Western Mega-drought. Continue to expand the crop components of SALUS crop model to include fruits and vegetables to better capture feedbacks between water use, plant water uptake and nutrient dynamics in soils across the CA Central Valley. Evaluate historical patterns of precipitation variability in Kansas, the High Plains Aquifer, and Michigan, to evaluate how these relate to groundwater use. Submit a manuscript quantifying groundwater recharge mechanisms across the Southern HPA. Submit a manuscript on using digital agriculture technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nitrate leaching across the US Midwest corn and soybean rotation. Finalize SALUS simulations to evaluate what-if scenarios in coupling irrigation and N fertilizer management. Objective 2 Quantify how adoption of efficient irrigation technologies has facilitated expansion of irrigated areas and reduced cropland abandonment. Expand our assessment of the effects of increasing solar PV adoption in the CA Central Valley to our national dataset and assess the economic, nutritional, and hydrological tradeoffs of United States renewable energy infrastructure. Identify croplands in the Central US that may be better suited to renewable energy production than agriculture under projected climate change scenarios. Develop high-resolution (1-10 meter) representations of water usage and its sources (groundwater or surface water) over Michigan. Acquire in situ data on PV sub-array and proximal-array microclimate and hydrological variables to parameterize a hydrological model. Objective 3: Complete the Kansas energy demand for irrigation and energy system modeling by including water storage and grid/off-grid systems with grid sell-back opportunities for farmers. The irrigation electricity demand for Michigan will be calculated similarly to what was done for Kansas and added to the total energy demand to model energy system capacity. The environmental and economic impact of each option will also be compared. Expand the satellite solar farm estimation approach to other regions of the project and use LCA to quantify the life cycle impact of expanding solar systems onto agricultural land by characterizing effects on greenhouse gasses, water footprint, and cost. Publish the code as a tool, to allow other researchers to apply these methods. Develop maps of temporally consistent low productivity agricultural land relative to surrounding cropland of the same agricultural use. Initially, these maps will serve as indicators for ideal renewable energy placement both for current installations and future scenarios. Objective 4 Create more comprehensive and realistic scenarios of technology adoption to assess changes in aquifer recharge across the HPA. This comprehensive assessment of groundwater recharge changes over recent decades will serve as a baseline for future climate scenarios assessments. Analyze qualitative data from producers within the Sheridan 6 LEMA to understand producer perceptions of policy success beyond simply groundwater levels and profit. Objective 5 Assess the effects of climate change on irrigation water needs and groundwater recharge across the HPA, Michigan, and CA Central Valley, and identify pathways for sustainable groundwater-irrigated agriculture in those regions.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Summary Our project team: Significantly advanced the understanding of pathways toward sustainable irrigated agriculture in the US using remote sensing and process-based systems models. Quantified how irrigation adaptation strategies in the first large-scale demonstration of pumping reductions were successful for short term reductions in groundwater level declines. Identified constantly low yielding areas across the Midwest to be allocated to alternative systems such as native vegetation pollinators, bioenergy crops or agrivoltaics. Presented project results in 21 peer reviewed articles and 5 MS/PhD Theses in year 5. Objective 1: Quantify feedbacks between crop yields, climate, and use of water and energy. Curated a national dataset of renewable energy installations across the CONUS and assessed land use change metrics for agricultural installations. We assessed agricultural and technology preferences, and sub-array (solar) ground cover for modeling hydrological implications. Developed data-driven workflow to create the first available annual maps of irrigated water use across the CONUS. Received over 5 million compute-hours on UCAR's supercomputer to evaluate the effects of physics parameterizations in the WRF regional climate model on land-atmosphere exchanges in irrigated regions. using >40 years of CONUS-scale irrigation season simulations (Pei et al. in prep.). Trained, tested, and deployed deep learning TensorFlow AI models leveraging Google Earth Engine. Developed maps of California's Central Valley, High Plains Aquifer, and Upper Midwest and prepared the data assets for larger-scale mapping (Rapp et al., in prep.). Expanding on our efforts in Kansas, we calculated the at-the-pump energy requirements for irrigation across the CONUS. This revealed that crops grown in different regions of the US have substantially different energy requirements (McCarthy et al., in prep.). Identified tradeoffs between profitability and land use sustainability using an improved version of the SALUS model, which resulted in several high profile publications in PNAS and Nature journals. We found that the application of regenerative practices (rotation, variable rate application of inputs, adoption of cover crops etc) leads to up to 36% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere and increases in soil carbon and other ecosystems services. Objective 2: Quantify tradeoffs among four key aspects of sustainability: economic prosperity, water supply, energy use, and food production. Identified and characterized solar photovoltaic installations in the CA Central Valley, which converted 34 km2 of cropland. There are clear preferences for large arrays converting commodity croplands and smaller arrays converting specialty cropland; we also found sub-optimal installations practices with unnecessary cropland losses (Stid et al., 2022). Identified areas across the CONUS that may benefit from new irrigation under several climate change scenarios. Using simulated yields under irrigated and non-irrigated conditions, we identified where irrigation can both increase profits and lower risk (Partridge et al., in review). Analyzed the life-cycle impacts of changes in crop production practices on the carbon and energy footprints of the U.S. (Bassi, 2021). Examined the variation in the carbon and energy footprints of the U.S. diet among demographic groups, showing significantly different trends over time according to gender, race, and income (Bassi et al., 2022). Objective 3: Quantify benefits of adopting improved irrigation technologies and renewable energy, and their efficient utilization Improved maps of efficient irrigation adoption, including updating irrigated area datasets through 2020 including maps that cover the entire High Plains Aquifer (Brady et al., in prep.). Quantified how lagged reductions in groundwater recharge due to more efficient irrigation affect the long term effectiveness of conservation policy changes that reduced irrigation amounts. Such conservation-based pumping reductions can extend aquifer lifespans, but lagged responses will reduce the long-term effectiveness of such strategies (Glose et al., 2022). Simulated aquifer-wide adoption of efficient irrigation technologies and the effects on evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge over the HPA using the Landscape Hydrology Model (LHM), of irrigated area maps (Deines et al. 2019), and new maps of irrigation technology adoption (Brady et al., in prep.;Kendall et al., in prep.). Developed a simple approach to assess the effectiveness of water conservation activities using water-use and climatic data and demonstrated the approach in western Kansas. Two of the western Kansas LEMAs reduced groundwater use by 26-30%. However, the largest LEMA in Kansas does not appear to have reduced groundwater use (Whittemore et al., in review) Objective 4: Quantify effects of farmer decision making, water laws, and policies on irrigation practices, technology adoption, and crop choices. Conducted interviews of farmers in western Kansas to understand the factors that lead to local organizing for self-imposed irrigation limits and definitions for success beyond simply economic outcomes. Received the Best Student Paper of 2022 at the International Association for Society and Natural Resources. Briefed Representative Ron Highland, vice-chair of the Kansas Senate-House 2022 Special Water Committee, on our evaluation of both LEPA and LEMA policies. Made direct recommendations for how to expand the LEMA approach in the future and how best to incentivize irrigators to use less water. This briefing was in preparation for a joint Kansas Senate-House Special Water Committee meeting at which Butler presented project results. Completed development of the net inflow concept for assessing the near-term impact of pumping reductions in the High Plains Aquifer (HPA), finding that pumping reductions ~20% could lead to stabilization of water levels in Western Kansas (Butler et al., 2022). Used a new approach to incorporate specific yield into groundwater models of the HPA. We found that misestimation of specific yield has a large effect on the estimation of the impact of pumping reductions in west central Kansas. We found that this new approach led to results that were consistent with field data, enhancing confidence in estimates of the impact of pumping reductions (Liu et al., 2022). Objective 5: Quantify implications of global change including altered food demand, diets, and projected climate changes. Estimated the effects of sustainable groundwater use on irrigated production of corn, soy, and wheat in the Central United States. We found that using groundwater sustainably would reduce US irrigated production of maize, soy, and winter wheat (Lopez et al., 2022). Quantified crop-climate feedback mechanisms across the US Corn Belt, which increased crop production and cooled local climate, further raising crop yields. We found that maize and soy production has cooled the Corn Belt approximately as much as climate change has warmed it (Coffel et al., 2022). Analyzed the impacts of climate change on corn and soy production in the Central US. For a moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenario, we found that corn yields generally increased over the upper Midwest and decreased over the High Plains by the end of the century (Partridge et al., in review). Developed a method to estimate the value of groundwater for irrigation using distributed crop modeling. Created and evaluated potential irrigation, cropping area, planting date, and cultivar climate change adaptation scenarios for corn and soy across the Central United States (Partridge et al., in review).

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Glose, T., S. Zipper, D.W. Hyndman, A.D. Kendall, and J.J. Butler, 2022, Quantifying the impact of lagged hydrological responses on the effectiveness of groundwater conservation, Water Resources Research, DOI: 10.1029/2022WR032295.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Hamlin, QF, SL Martin, AD Kendall, and DW Hyndman, 2022, Examining Relationships Between Groundwater Nitrate Concentrations in Drinking Water and Landscape Characteristics to Understand Health Risks, GeoHealth, e2021GH000524, DOI:10.1029/2021GH000524.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Stid, J.T., S. Shukla, A. Anctil, A.D. Kendall, J. Rapp, and D. W. Hyndman, 2022, Solar array placement, electricity generation, and cropland displacement across Californias Central Valley. Science of The Total Environment, DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155240
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Coffel, E.D., C. Lesk, J.M. Winter, E.C. Osterberg, J.S. Mankin, 2022, Crop-climate feedbacks boost U.S. maize and soy yields. Environmental Research Letters, 17(2), 024012.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Lopez, J.R., J.M. Winter, J. Elliott, A.C. Ruane, C. Porter, G. Hoogenboom, M. Anderson, C. Hain, 2021, Sustainable Use of Groundwater Dramatically Reduces Irrigated Production of Maize, Soybean, and Wheat. Earths Future, 10(1), p.e2021EF002018.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Bassi, C., Maysels, R. and Anex, R., 2022. Declining greenhouse gas emissions in the US diet (20032018): Drivers and demographic trends. Journal of Cleaner Production, p.131465. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131465
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., G.C. Bohling, S.P. Perkins, D.O. Whittemore, G. Liu, and B.B. Wilson, 2022, Net inflow: An important target on the path to aquifer sustainability, Groundwater, in press, doi: 10.1111/gwat.13233.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Liu, G., B.B. Wilson, G.C. Bohling, D.O. Whittemore, and J.J. Butler, Jr., 2022, Estimation of specific yield for regional groundwater models: Pitfalls, ramifications, and a promising path forward, Water Resour. Res., 58(1), doi: 10.1029/2021WR030761.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., J.J. Gomez-Hernandez, D. Perrone, and D.W. Hyndman, 2021, Introduction to special section: The quest for sustainability of heavily stressed aquifers at regional to global scales, Water Resour. Res., 57(8), doi: 10.1029/2021WR030446.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Partridge, T.F., J.M. Winter, A.D. Kendall, B. Basso, L. Pei, and D.W. Hyndman. How feasible is irrigation as a climate change adaptation strategy in the United States? Nature Communications
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Whittemore, D.O., J.J. Butler, Jr., and B.B. Wilson, 2021, Precipitation and pumping relationships: A simple approach to assess the effectiveness of groundwater conservation measures, Abstract H12C-05 presented at 2021 Hybrid Fall Meeting: American Geophysical Union, Dec. 13.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., and B.B. Wilson, 2021, Water Levels and County-based Water Use vs Water Level Relationships, Annual Meeting of Western Kansas Groundwater Management District #1, Scott City, August 11, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., and B.B. Wilson, 2021, An overview of the groundwater resources of Kansas, presentation to the Kansas House Water Committee, Jan. 25, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2022 Citation: Stid, J.T., Shukla, S., Anctil, A., Kendal, A.D., Rapp, J., Hyndman, D.W., Implications of Agriculturally Co-Located Solar PV Installations on the FEW Nexus in the Central Valley, IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, Philadelphia, PA, June 8. 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2022 Citation: Anctil A, 2022, How Anticipatory Sustainability Assessment Can Help PV Deployment, Plenary presentation, IEEE- Photovoltaics Specialists Conference, Jun 8, 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2022 Citation: Stid, J.T., Shukla, S., Anctil, A., Kendal, A.D., Hyndman, D.W., The Food, Energy, Water, Carbon, and Economic Impacts of Solar Photovoltaic Co-Location in Californias Central Valley, USDA-NSF INFEWS PI Workshop, February 9, 2022
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Stid, J.T., Shukla, S., Anctil, A., Kendal, A.D., Hyndman, D.W., Detection and Analysis of Food, Energy, Water, Carbon, and Economic Impacts of Solar Photovoltaic Co-Location in Californias Central Valley, AGU Fall Meeting, December 13, 2021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Stid, J.T., Shukla, S., Anctil, A., Kendal, A.D., Hyndman, D.W., Detection and analysis of food, energy, water, carbon, and economic impacts of solar photovoltaic co-location in Californias Central Valley, Solar Power and Wildlife/Natural Resources Symposium, December 1, 2021
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Smidt, SJ, EMK Haacker, AD Kendall, and DW Hyndman. Natural and Artificial Recharge Across the Southern High Plains Aquifer. Water Resources Research
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Whittemore, D.O., J.J. Butler, Jr., and B.B. Wilson, Are we saving water? Simple methods for assessing the effectiveness of groundwater conservation measures and the impact of climate change, Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (invited).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2022 Citation: Winter, J.M., T.F. Partridge, A.D. Kendall, B. Basso, L. Pei, and D.W. Hyndman: The Climate Change Adaptation Potential of Irrigation in the Central United States. American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Virtual, 25 February 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Partridge, T.F. , J.M. Winter, A.D. Kendall, B. Basso, L. Pei, and D.W. Hyndman: Projected Climate Change Adaptation Potential of Existing and Future Irrigation in the Central United States. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, Virtual, 16 December 2021.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Schulte, Lisa, Bruce E Dale, Stefano Bozzetto, Matt Liebman, Glaucia M Souza, Nick Haddad, Tom L Richard, Bruno Basso, Robert C Brown, Jorge A Hilbert, J Gordon Arbuckle. 2021. Meeting global challenges with regenerative agriculture producing food and energy. Nature Sustainability 1-5
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2022 Citation: Rapp, J., A.D. Kendall, and D.W. Hyndman, 2022, Estimating anthropogenic water use using remote sensing: A prototype hydrology product for Michigan, USA, Abstract 523-05 presented at 2022 Frontiers in Hydrology Meeting (FIHM), June 24 2022.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Winter, J.M., B. Basso, S. McDermid, and A.C. Ruane. Improving the Simulation of Climate Impacts on Agriculture: AgMIP and Related Research, AGU Fall Meeting 2021, New Orleans, Dec 13-17.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2022 Citation: Winter, J.M., S.M. Quiring, E. Burchfield, E. Coffel, and M.A. Cunningham. Agricultural Landscape Transitions, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2022, Online, Apr 7-11.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2022 Citation: Kendall, A.D., Conservation, Efficiency, and Expansion: New Perspectives on High Plains Irrigation from Remote Sensing and Systems Modeling, University of Nebraska Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Stout Lecture Series, Apr 1 2022
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Kendall, A.D., Brady, A.J., Deines, J.M., Glose, T.J., Zipper, S.Z., Liu, X., Butler, J.J.Jr., and D.W. Hyndman, Simulating the Hydrologic Effects of Aquifer-wide Adoption of Efficient Irrigation Technologies, AGU Fall Meeting 2021, New Orleans, Dec 13-17 2022
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Bassi, C.L. 2021. Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions Associated with the American Diet: Sources and Demographic Trends. Masters thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B. (2021). Precision conservation for a changing climate. Nature Food, 2, 322-323. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00283-z
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Shuai, B Basso. 2022. Subfield maize yield prediction improves when in-season crop water deficit is included in remote sensing imagery-based models. Remote Sensing of Environment 272, 1129381.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Northrup, D.L., Basso, B., Wang, M.Q., Morgan, C.L., Benfey, P.N. (2021). Novel technologies for emission reduction complement conservation agriculture to achieve negative emissions from row-crop production. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(28). doi: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2022666118
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., Jones, J.W., Antle, J., Martinez-Feria, R.A., Verma, B. (2021). Enabling circularity in grain production systems with novel technologies and policy. Agricultural Systems, 193. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2021.103244
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., Martinez-Feria, R.A., Rill, L., Ritchie, J.T. (2021). Contrasting long-term temperature trends reveal minor changes in projected potential evapotranspiration in the US Midwest. Nature Communications, 12(1476). doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21763-7
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Maestrini,B., Basso, B. 2021.Subfield crop yields and temporal stability in thousands of US Midwest fields. Precision Agriculture 22 (6), 1749-1767
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Hussain, M.Z., SK Hamilton, GP Robertson, B Basso. 2021 Phosphorus availability and leaching losses in annual and perennial cropping systems in an upper US Midwest landscape Scientific reports 11 (1), 1-12
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Brooker, A., Renner, K., Price, R., Basso, B. (2021). Evaluating high-resolution optical and thermal reflectance of maize interseeded with cover crops across spatial scales using remotely sensed imagery. Agronomy Journal. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/agj2.20592
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Saha, D., Basso, B., Robertson, G.P. (2021). Machine learning improves predictions of agricultural nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from intensively managed cropping systems. Environmental Research Letters, 16(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abd2f3
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Wallach, D. et al. (2021). The chaos in calibrating crop models: Lessons learned from a multi-model calibration exercise. Environmental Modelling & Software, 145. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2021.105206
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Ford, Chanse, 2022, Snowmelt Hydrologic Changes Due to Warming Winter Temperatures in Michigan and the Eastern United States, PhD Thesis
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Brady, Allyson, 2021, Assessing Irrigation in the High Plains Aquifer Region: Comparing Irrigation Trends and Mapping Efficient Irrigation Use, MS Thesis
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: McCarthy, Benjamin, 2022, Energy Trends in Irrigation: a Method for Estimating Local and Large-scale Energy Use in Agriculture, MS Thesis
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2022 Citation: Shukla, Siddarth, 2022, Design, economic, and environmental assessment of renewable energy systems, PhD Thesis
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Stid, Jacob, 2021, Detection and Assessment of Food, Energy, and Water Impacts of Solar Photovoltaic Co-Location in the Californias Central Valley, MS Thesis


Progress 01/01/20 to 12/31/20

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our research results is farmers, policymakers, extension specialists and scientists (undergraduate and graduate students) working across the nexus of water, energy and food. Our team has had numerous interactions and presentations with all of these portions of our target audience. We had numerous presentations of our research to the public, local chapters of scientific organizations, and at scientific conferences. Informal presentations were also given to personnel from groundwater management districts in Kansas, the state's water planning and management agencies. Multiple conference presentations were given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and ASA-CSSA-SSSA conferences; preliminary analysis of the environmental impacts of historical changes in irrigation technology were presented at an AGU Chapman meeting on Heavily Stressed Aquifers, planned by the PI and one of the Co-PI's. Changes/Problems:COVID Impact Statement: Like all research teams, this project year's accomplishments come despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The effects of the pandemic have been pervasive, impacting both individual and group productivity across our project. In particular: We have been unable to organize a full group meeting during this project period, which have historically been major opportunities for planning and organizing new papers and other activities in the project. Our graduate students and postdoctoral scholars report that they have encountered delays equivalent to at least four semesters of research progress. This is most tangibly felt in a shortage of publications in review relative to prior years. However, as research backlogs clear we now have a large number of manuscripts nearing submission. Our more senior project members have been disrupted in a variety of different ways, from disrupted travel schedules, to a host of new administrative and service duties, to additional time spent preparing course material. These challenges have been met, and while not reducing overall effort, our PI and Co-PIs have been less flexible in their scheduling, contributing to overall project delays. One PhD student (Brockton Feltman) had planned to conduct in-person surveys of water use decision making in Kansas during the summer of 2020. Instead, he was able to complete interviews via either phone or video conferencing. This meant fewers interviews, but more time spent per individual. Over the last 15 months, we have adapted to the disruption of the pandemic, and largely overcome the obstacles encountered in the prior year. We anticipate holding a full group meeting this project year, and have observed student productivity and manuscript preparation returning to approximately normal levels. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?7 graduate students are conducting their research on the project (5 at MSU, 1 at Dartmouth, and 1 at Wisconsin). 2 postdocs are also engaged in the project research (1 at MSU, 1 at the Kansas Geological Survey). All students and postdocs are being trained in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary science through regular meetings and interactions with the project team. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During this project year, the team had 44 peer-reviewed articles published on project related work, with many additional submitted and in review, and a large number in preparation for submission in the coming year. The team also gave 32 formal presentations at scientific conferences and to stakeholder groups and collaborative science teams. A course developed under this project titled "Environmental modeling, water and food security" precisely to teach students the critical interaction occurring at the nexus of food-water and energy was again taught at MSU. Students explore interdisciplinary research from literature and are taught how to use crop models and image data analysis to simulate what-if scenarios as potential solutions to the unsustainable use of water and nutrients in agriculture. Winter integrated research on the impacts of the Central US warming hole on crop yields in his class, Climate Change and the Future of Agriculture, including a guest lecture by graduate student Trevor Partridge. Winter also produced a video for Dartmouth's "Expert Series" on the role of agriculture in climate change mitigation: https://faculty.dartmouth.edu/dean/news/2021/04/video-jonathan-winter-climate-change-mitigation. Kendall taught graduate students how to build models in LHM, an integrated surface and subsurface hydrologic model. Project postdoc Tom Glose (Kansas Geological Survey) organized a webinar series co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Hydrology Section Student Subcommittee and the Consortium of University for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc (CUAHSI). The webinar series consisted of five monthly webinars and focused on essential career skills for student and early career scientists. The webinars had an average attendance of ~150 participants and were uploaded to CUAHSI's YouTube Channel as a resource for future students and early career scientists. In addition, he is a co-author on the White paper titled "Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the AGU Hydrology Community" which led to a town hall at the Annual AGU Fall Meeting in 2020 and the establishment of the AGU Hydrology Section Justice, Equity Diversity and Inclusion Standing Committee. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Complete annual irrigation maps of the three project regions (CA Central Valley, High Plains, and Upper Midwest) using neural networks. Finish the subsurface component of the CA Central Valley model and simulate groundwater recharge under the effects of changing irrigation practices. Build SALUS simulations of major CA Central Valley crops Evaluate historical patterns of precipitation variability in Kansas and across the High Plains Aquifer, and how they relate to groundwater use. Objective 2 Examine the relationship between the irrigation use and the expansion/abandonment of cropland in the Continental United States, including the role of efficient irrigation technology in facilitating cropland expansion. Complete our assessment of the effects of increasing solar PV adoption in the CA Central Valley, including the tradeoffs among crop production, energy generation, carbon emissions, and water use. Objective 3: Complete the Kansas energy demand for irrigation and energy system modeling by including water storage as well as grid/off-grid systems with grid sell-back opportunities for farmers. The irrigation electricity demand for Michigan will be calculated similarly to what was done for Kansas and added to the total energy demand to model energy system capacity. The environmental and economic impact of each option will also be compared. Expand the satellite solar farm estimation approach to other regions of the project and use LCA to quantify the life cycle impact of expansion of solar systems onto agricultural land by characterizing effects on categories such as greenhouse gases, water footprint, and cost. Evaluate the ability of remotely-sensed products for estimating the effectiveness of groundwater conservation measures via comparison to well water use data. Complete the evaluation of a simple approach for estimating the effectiveness of groundwater conservation measures using water-use and climate data. Complete a comparative analysis of the Kansas and California groundwater laws and regulations. Objective 4 Improve detailed groundwater and Landscape Hydrology Models across High Plains Aquifer to serve as the basis to evaluate impacts of different water management strategies and climatic conditions on projected water storage. Complete the analysis of a new approach for incorporating specific yield into groundwater models of the High Plains aquifer. Complete the development of the net inflow concept for assessing the near-term impact of pumping reductions in the High Plains aquifer. Objective 5 Assess the effects of climate change on water availability in the Republican River Basin, where an interstate compact has forced water use restrictions in Nebraska. Analyze the impacts of climate change on corn and soy production in the Central United States Create and evaluate potential irrigation, planting date, and cultivar climate change adaptation scenarios for corn and soy across the Central United States. Quantify feedbacks between agricultural climate change adaptation and climate for the Central United States.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Objective 1: Quantify feedbacks between crop yields, climate, and use of water and energy. Developed and tested a new irrigation module that we developed for the Noah-Mosaic Land Surface Model within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF 4.1) regional climate model. Adapted this module for use within the Noah-MP Land Surface Model as well. We have used these new modules to characterize the effects of irrigation on temperature and precipitation extremes across the Continental US from 1979 - 2018. (presented by Pei et al. 2020, and manuscripts in preparation) Built a workflow to apply TensorFlow AI methods using Google's cloud-hosted infrastructure (Colab, Earth Engine, and Cloud Computing). Developed preliminary maps of California's Central Valley, and prepared the data assets for larger-scale mapping. (presented by Rapp et al. 2020, manuscript in preparation) Employed object-based image segmentation and analysis to identify solar panels co-located with agriculture across California's Central Valley. We then applied a remote sensing change detection algorithm to identify the most likely year of installation for each array. The energy generation, efficiency, water, food, carbon, and energy footprints, were then computed. (manuscripts in preparation) Calculate the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints of irrigation Analyzed feedbacks between increasing corn and soy production and climate (Coffel et al., in review) Objective 2: Quantify tradeoffs among four key aspects of sustainability: economic prosperity, water supply, energy use, and food production. Examined the widespread adoption of low-energy precision application (LEPA) and related technologies across the Kansas High Plains Aquifer (Mccarthy et al., 2020) Developed annual estimates of energy use and carbon emissions from 1994 to 2016 by integrating detailed water use, irrigation type, and pump energy source data with aquifer water level and groundwater chemistry information to (Mccarthy et al., 2020). Assessed the food, energy, water (FEW) and carbon resource impacts (including a simple economic budget) of co-located solar installations in the CCV through the 25 year expected lifespan of each array. Analyzed the potential and limitations of irrigation to reduce climate change impacts on future corn and soy yield. Analyzed the life-cycle impacts of changes in crop production on the carbon and energy footprints of the U.S. diet. Examined the variation among demographic groups in the carbon and energy footprints of the U.S. diet, showing significantly different trends over time according to gender, race, and income. Objective 3: Quantify benefits of adopting improved irrigation technologies and renewable energy, and their efficient utilization Assessed the differences and similarities between three most commonly used reports of irrigation nationwide and one remotely-sensed irrigation dataset. (Brady Master's Thesis, manuscript in preparation) Evaluated how implementation of more efficient irrigation technologies caused significant increases in irrigated area. Also, developed an map of efficient irrigation adoption across the High Plains aquifer based on changes to satellite remotely-sensed irrigated area (Brady Master's Thesis, manuscript in preparation) Quantified how lagged responses, such as reduced groundwater recharge due to more efficient irrigation, may impact the ultimate effectiveness of these policy changes that reduced irrigation amounts in part of the Kansas HPA. (Butler et al., 2020; Glose et al., in review) Objective 4: Quantify effects of farmer decision making, water laws, and policies on irrigation practices, technology adoption, and crop choices. Assessed the efficacy of a new Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) program to move a portion of the Kansas High Plains toward sustainability with a process-based crop model driven by well records and satellite-derived annual land use. (Deines et al., 2021) Conducted an interdisciplinary evaluation of two distinct policy approaches toward water conservation to determine whether they reduced the depletion rate of the High Plains Aquifer in the Central United States (Zwickle et al., 2021). Analyzed the effect of different policy choices using a political, sociological, and economic theoretical framework, which demonstrates that states should seek to replicate localized groups rather than expanding management boundaries to incorporate larger geographic areas (Zwickle et al., 2021). Developed a new approach for assessing the impact of new management frameworks on water-level decline rates (Butler et al., 2020). Assessed the impact of water-use metering strategies on future projections of aquifer conditions (Bohling et al., 2021). Assessed the potential of machine-learning approaches to estimate pumping using the Kansas water-use dataset (Majumdar et al., 2020). Conducted interviews of farmers in western Kansas to understand the factors that lead to local organizing for self-imposed irrigation limits. Completed an analysis of the project-relevant information embedded in water well hydrographs from the High Plains aquifer (Butler et al., in press). Objective 5: Quantify implications of global change including altered food demand, diets, and projected climate changes. Downloaded and processed the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) monthly climate model archive outputs, and prepared these for use in modeling. Analyzed the ability of WRF-Noah-MP-Crop to reproduce observed climate feedbacks of agriculture across the American Midwest, and examine the role of model spatial resolution in capturing observed climate and crop yields (Partridge et al., 2020). Prepared bias-corrected boundary conditions for WRF 1976-2100 for two sets of global climate model simulations (NCAR Community Earth System Model and Max Planck Institute Earth System Model).

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso B., and J. Antle. 2020. Digital Agriculture to Design Sustainable Agricultural Systems. Nature Sustainability, 3,4, 254-256
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B. 2021. Precision Conservation For Food, Climate and Environment. Nature Food, Vol 2, 322-333
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., Martinez-Feria, R., Ryll, L., Ritchie, J.T. 2021. Contrasting long-term temperature trends reveal minor changes in projected potential evapotranspiration in the US Midwest. Nature Communications, 12, 1476
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Bohling, G.C., J.J. Butler Jr., D.O. Whittemore, and B. B. Wilson, 2021, Evaluation of data needs for assessments of aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture, Water Resour. Res., 57 (4), DOI: 10.1029/2020WR028320.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Brooker, A.P. Renner, A.P., Basso, B. 2020. Interseeding cover crops in corn: Establishment, biomass, and competitiveness in on-farm trials. Agronomy Journal, 112, 5, 3733-3743
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., G.C. Bohling, D.O. Whittemore, and B.B. Wilson, 2020, Charting pathways towards sustainability for aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture, Water Resour. Res., 56 (10), DOI: 10.1029/2020WR027961.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2021 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., S. Knobbe, E.C. Reboulet, D.O. Whittemore, B.B. Wilson, and G.C. Bohling, Water well hydrographs: An underutilized resource for characterizing subsurface conditions, Groundwater, in press.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., J Jones, T Richard, C Sukup, L Verma, M Matlock, R Mohtar 2021. Designing Circularity into Corn-Soybean Systems Resource Magazine 28 (2), 10-14
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., JW Jones, J Antle, RA Martinez-Feria, B Verma. 2021 Enabling circularity in grain production systems with novel technologies and policy. Agricultural Systems 193, 1032442021
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Cammarano, D., Basso; B., Holland, J., Gianinetti, A., Baronchelli, M., Ronga, D. 2021. Modeling spatial and temporal optimal N fertilizer rates to reduce nitrate leaching while improving grain yield and quality in malting barley. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Dahl, T., A.D. Kendall, and D.W. Hyndman, 2021, Climate and Hydrologic Ensembling Lead to Differing Streamflow and Sediment Yield Predictions. Climatic Change. 165,8, DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03011-5
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: De Rosa, Basso, B., Fasiolo, M., Friedl, J., Fulkerson, B., Grace, P.R., Rowlings, D. 2020. Predicting pasture biomass using a statistical model and machine learning algorithm implemented with remotely sensed images. Computer and Electronics in Agriculture, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2020.105880.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Deines, J. Kendall, A., Butler, J., Basso, B., Hyndman, D.W. 2021 Combining remote sensing and crop models to assess the sustainability of stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the High Plains Aquifer. Water Resources Research https://doi.org/10.1029/2020WR027756
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Deines, J., A.D. Kendall, J.J. Butler, B. Basso, and D.W. Hyndman, 2021, Combining remote sensing and crop models to assess the sustainability of stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the High Plains Aquifer, Water Resources Research, DOI: 10.1029/2020WR027756
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ford, C., A.D. Kendall, and D.W. Hyndman, 2020, Changes to Spring Streamflow Resulting from Changes to Snowmelt Dynamics in Michigan. Journal of Hydrology, DOI: 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125517
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ford, C.M., A. D. Kendall, D. W. Hyndman, 2021, Snowpacks decrease and streamflows shift across the eastern US as winters warm, Science of The Total Environment, 793. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148483.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hatfield, J.L., Cryder, M., Basso, B. 2020. Remote sensing: advancing the science and the applications to transform agriculture. IT Professional, IEEE, 22, 42-45
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Hussain M.Z., Robertson, G.P., Basso, B. Hamilton, S.K. 2020. Leaching losses of dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen from agricultural soils in the upper US Midwest. Science of the total Environment, 734 (2020) 139379
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Jones, J.W. B Verma, B Basso, R Mohtar, M Matlock. 2021. Transforming Food and Agriculture to Circular Systems: A Perspective for 2050 Resource Magazine 28 (2), 7-9
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Kuhl, A., A. Kendall, R.L. Van Dam, S. K. Hamilton and D. W. Hyndman, 2021, Root water uptake of biofuel crops revealed by coupled electrical resistivity and soil water content measurements, Vadose Zone Journal, doi: 10.1002/vzj2.20124.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Liu, L., Basso, B. 2020. Impacts of climate variability and adaptation strategies on crop yields and soil organic carbon in the US Midwest. PLOS One, 1 e0225433
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Lupi, F., Basso, B., Garnache, C Herriges, J.A., Hyndman, D.W., Stevenson, R.J. 2020. Linking Agricultural Nutrient Pollution to the Value of Freshwater Ecosystem Services. Land Economics 96 (4), 493-50912020
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Insua, J.R., Garcia, S.C., Berone, G.D., Basso, B., Utsumi, S.A. 2020. Field indicators of leaf nutritive value for perennial ryegrass and tall fescue pastures under different growing and management conditions Grass and Forage Science, 75, 2,159-168Peters, D,PC, Rivers, A., Hatfield, J.H., Lemay, D.G., Liu,S., Basso, B. 2020. Harnessing AI to Transform Agriculture and Inform Agricultural Research. IT Professional, IEEE, 22, 16-21
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: M Khanna, L Chen, B Basso, X Cai, JL Field, K Guan, C Jiang, TJ Lark; Richard, T.M., Spawn-Lee, S.A, Yang, P., Zipp, K.Y. 2021. Redefining marginal land for bioenergy crop production. Global Change Biology Bioenergy; https://doi.org/10.1111/gcbb.12877
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Maestrini, B. and Basso, B. 2021. Subfield crop yields and temporal stability in thousands of US Midwest fields. Precision Agriculture https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-021-09810-1
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Majumdar, S., R. Smith, J.J. Butler, Jr., and V. Lakshmi, Groundwater withdrawal prediction using integrated multi-temporal remote sensing datasets and machine learning, Water Resour. Res., 56 (11), DOI: 10.1029/2020WR028059.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Martinez-Feria R., and B. Basso. 2020. Unstable crop yields reveal opportunities for site-specific adaptations to climate variability. Scientific Reports (2020) 10:2885 |https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-59494-2
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Martinez-Feria, R., Basso B. 2020. Predicting soil carbon changes in switchgrass grown on marginal lands under climate change and adaptation strategies. Global Change Biology Bioenergy, 12, 9, 742-755
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: McCarthy, B., R. Anex, Y. Wang, A.D. Kendall, A. Anctil, E. Haacker, and D.W. Hyndman, 2020, Trends in Water, Energy, and Carbon Emissions from Irrigation: Role of Shifting Technologies and Energy Sources, Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.0c02897
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Nichols, V., Martinez-Feria, R., Weisberger, D., Carlson, S. Basso, B., Basche, A. Cover crops reduce weed biomass but maize-soybean management limits their weed suppression. Agricultural and Environmental Letters,
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Northrup, D.L., Basso, B., Wang, M.Q., Morgan, C.L.S, Benfey, P.N. 2021. Novel Technologies for Emission Reduction Complement Conservation Agriculture To Achieve Negative Emissions From Row Crop Production. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 118 No. 28
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Partridge, T., J. Winter, A. Kendall, and D.W. Hyndman, 2021, Cross-scale evaluation of dynamic crop growth in WRF/Noah-MP-Crop, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. DOI:10.1016/j.agrformet.2020.108217
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Robertson, L.D., Davidson, A.M., McNairn, H., Hosseini, M., Mitchell, M. de Abelleyra, D., Ver�n, G., le Maire, G., Plannells, M., Valero, S., Ahmadian, N., Coffin, A., Bosch, D., Cosh, M.H., Basso, B. and Saliendra, N. 2020 C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery for the classification of diverse cropping systems. International Journal of Remote Sensing, Volume 41, 2020 - Issue 24 Pages 9628-9649
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Saha, D., Basso, B., Robertson, G.P. 2021. Machine learning improves predictions of agricultural nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from intensively managed cropping systems. Environmental Research Letters 16 0024004
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: S�ndor, R., Ehrhardt, F., Grace, P.R., Recous, S., Smith, P., Snow,V., Soussana, J.F., Basso, B. (24 co-authors).2020. Ensemble modelling of carbon fluxes in grasslands and croplands. Field Crop Research, 252, 107791
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Spera, S.A., J.M. Winter, and T.F. Partridge, 2020, Brazilian maize yields negatively affected by climate after land clearing, Nature Sustainability.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Zhang, W., H. Li, and D.W. Hyndman, 2020, Water quality trends under rapid agricultural expansion and enhanced in-stream interception in a hilly watershed in Eastern China, Environmental Research Letters, DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab8981
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Zwickle, A., B. Feltman, A. Brady, A.D. Kendall, and D.W. Hyndman, 2021, Sustainable Irrigation Through Local Collaborative Governance: Evidence for a structural fix. Environmental Science and Policy. DOI: 10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.021
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Glose, T., S. Zipper, D.W. Hyndman, A.D. Kendall and JJ Butler., Quantifying the impact of lagged hydrological responses on the effectiveness of groundwater conservation, Water Resources Research.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2021 Citation: Coffel, E.D., C. Lesk, J.M. Winter, E.C. Osterberg, J.S. Mankin, Crop-climate feedbacks boost U.S. maize and soy yields. Environmental Research Letters.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Lopez, J.R., J.M. Winter, J. Elliott, A.C. Ruane, C. Porter, G. Hoogenboom, M. Anderson, C. Hain, Sustainable Use of Groundwater Dramatically Reduces Irrigated Production of Maize, Soybean, and Wheat. Earths Future.
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2021 Citation: Ford, C., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman (2021). Scripts for "Changes in Snowmelt Hydrology across the Eastern US as Winters Warm, HydroShare, DOI: 10.4211/hs.7734e04b7c4f40eb96b08c2e8ab124a7
  • Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Ford, C. (2020). Scripts for "Effects of Shifting Snowmelt Regimes on the Hydrology of Non-Alpine Temperate Landscapes", HydroShare, DOI: 10.4211/hs.2ab10feef5d74b849563dba6b854dea8
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., Feb 2020, Keynote ICROPM2020: Second International Crop Modelling Symposium, Montpelier, France
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., April 2020 US National Academy of Sciences presentation Committee on Dynamic Soil Information Systems
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., May 2020 Keynote at the Digital Agriculture Conference, Washington State University
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., Sept 2020 Keynote at the Italian Society of Agronomy Annual Conference
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Sept 2020 Keynote at the European Society of Agronomy Annual Conference
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., Oct 2020 Keynote at the PhenoRob International Conference, Germany
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., AGU 2020, Keynote: Pathways to sustainability with digital agriculture, December 2020
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., AGU 2020, Sub-field Variability of Nitrate Leaching in the Midwest: A Process Based Crop Simulation Approach, December 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., AGU 2020, Flow-oriented Discretization Using the Land Surface Stream Function, December 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., AGU 2020, Improving the Simulation of Climate Impacts on Agriculture: AgMIP and Related Research II Poster Session, December 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Coupling Crop Simulation and Machine Learning Models for Scaling up Predictions of Switchgrass Productivity on Marginal Soils, November 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Crop Simulation Model Apply to Sugarcane Nitrogen Fertilizer Management, November 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Mapping Subfield Spatial Variability of Bioenergy Switchgrass and Native Prairie Yield and Quality, November 2020
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Phosphorus Concentrations in Soil and Subsurface Soil Water: A Field Study Among Diversified Cropping Systems in the Upper US Midwest, November 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Prediction of Evapotranspiration and Yields of Maize: Phase 1 and 2 of an Inter-Comparison Among 42 Maize Models and Future Plans, November 2020. ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Spatio-Temporal Variability of Maize Emergence Effects on Crop Yield and Growth, November 2020.
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Synergies between AI and Crop Models for Long-Term Agricultural Sustainability, November 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Uncertainties of Roots Dynamics in Perennial Grasses and Their Impact on Simulating Soil Carbon Sequestration of Bioenergy Cropping Systems November 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., Great Lakes Crop Summit, Comparing Methods from Industry, University to Forecast Yield and Nitrogen Fertilizer Management in Corn, January 29, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: AGU 2020, Improving the Simulation of Climate Impacts on Agriculture: AgMIP and Related Research I Poster Session, December 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., Michigan Corn Education, Networking, and Training Program (MICENT) from the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan, Remotely Sensed Imagery (UAVs, Airborne, and Satellite Systems) & Integration with Precision Ag Technologies, February 5, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., Agricultural Research Data Network, National Agricultural Laboratory, May 4, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., ASA-CSSA-SSSA 2020, Coupling Crop Modeling with Remote Sensing to Estimate Subfield Maize Yield, November 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Basso, B., Michigan Corn Marketing Program and Michigan Soybean Promotion Committee, Checkoff Check-In, Virtual Interview, October 28, 2020.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Basso, B., Michigan Corn Marketing Program, Mapping Greener Future Farms, Virtual Interview, February 16, 2021.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Bassi, C. and Anex, R.P. (2020). Corn in the US Diet: A Tool to Evaluate Diet-Level Significance of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Energy in Corn Production. ACLCA 2020 Conference, Online, September 22-24.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2020 Citation: Coffel, E.D., C. Lesk, J.M.Winter, E.C. Osterberg, and J.S. Mankin, Crop-driven cooling boosts agricultural yields, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Glose, T. Challenges of quantifying environmental flows: from rivers and streams to irrigated landscapes, invited seminar at Kansas State University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Seminar series, March 11.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Glose, T. Zipper, S., Deines, J.M., Kendall, A.D., Hyndman, D.W. and J.J. Butler Jr, Time Lags Between Pumping Reductions and Recharge Response Under Groundwater Conservation, North-Central South-Central GSA Joint Meeting, April 17-20 2021, Online
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Rapp, J., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, Classifying Irrigation: Developing a CONUS-wide Neural Network Classifier, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Spera, S.A., J.M. Winter, and T.F. Partridge. Agricultural Land Clearing in Brazils Heartland Degrades Weather and Decreases Maize Yields, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Winter, J.M., J.R. Lopez, J. Elliott, A.C. Ruane, C. Porter, G. Hoogenboom, M. Anderson, and C. Hain, Sustainable use of groundwater dramatically reduces maize, soybean, and wheat production in the United States, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2021, Online, Apr 7-11
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Winter, J.M., J.R. Lopez, J. Elliott, A.C. Ruane, C. Porter, G. Hoogenboom, M. Anderson, and C. Hain, Sustainable use of groundwater dramatically reduces maize, soybean, and wheat production in the United States. AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Glose, T.J., Zipper, S., Deines, J.M., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, Projecting the long-term effectiveness of groundwater conservation initiatives: A western Kansas case study, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Winter, J.M., B. Basso, S. McDermid, A.C. Ruane, Improving the Simulation of Climate Impacts on Agriculture: AgMIP and Related Research, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Partridge, T., Winter, J., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, The Effect of Agricultural Adaptation on Future Land Atmosphere Coupling over the Central United States, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Book Chapters Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Pei, L., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, Irrigations effects on summer precipitation and temperature over the CONUS in 1979-2018, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Rapp, J., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, Classifying Irrigation Using Cloud Computing: An Overview of an Earth Observation powered Neural Network Classifier, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Nocco, M., McGill, B.M., Zipper, S.C., and A.D. Kendall, Agrohydrology in a Changing World: From Global Processes to Local Outcomes, AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Online, Dec 1-17.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2021 Citation: Winter, J.M and S.M. Quiring, Climate Change and the Future of Agriculture, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting 2021, Online, Apr 7-11
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Zipper, S. Climate Change and Groundwater Resources in Kansas. Kansas Department of Agriculture-Division of Water Resources seminar series, Sept 24, 2020.


Progress 01/01/19 to 12/31/19

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our research results is farmers, policymakers, extension specialists and scientists (undergraduate and graduate students) working across the nexus of water, energy and food. In this first year of the project, our team had numerous interactions and presentations with all of these portions of our target audience. We had numerous presentations of our research to the general public, local chapters of scientific organizations, and at scientific conferences. Informal presentations were also given to personnel from groundwater management districts in Kansas, the state's water planning and management agencies. Multiple conference presentations were given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and ASA-CSSA-SSSA conferences; preliminary analysis of the environmental impacts of historical changes in irrigation technology were presented at an AGU Chapman meeting on Heavily Stressed Aquifers, planned by the PI and one of the Co-PI's. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Eight graduate students are conducting their research on the project (6 at MSU, 1 at Dartmouth, and 1 at Wisconsin). Three postdocs are also engaged in the project research (2 at MSU, 1 at the Kansas Geological Survey). All students and postdocs are being trained in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary science through regular meetings and interactions with the project team. Hyndman and Butler co-chaired a Chapman Conference of the American Geophysical Union entitled "The Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales", which had 94 attendees from 21 countries; 23 were students. The conference was an excellent opportunity for these students to learn more about the critical issues affecting the prospects for aquifer sustainability. A course developed at MSU entitled "Environmental modeling, water and food security" precisely to teach students the critical interaction occurring at the nexus of food-water and energy was again offered. Students are asked to get familiar with the interdisciplinary research available in the literature on this topic and are then are taught the use of different tools (crop modeling and image data analysis) to simulate different what-if scenarios proposed as potential solutions to the unsustainable use of water and nutrients in agriculture. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? During the year, the team had 19 peer-reviewed articles published on project related work, with many additional submitted and in review, and a large number in preparation for submission in the coming year. The team also gave 60 formal presentations at scientific conferences and to stakeholder groups and collaborative science teams (e.g., CA department of water resources, USGS offices, Kansas groundwater management districts and the KS water planning and management agencies). A course developed under this project titled "Environmental modeling, water and food security" precisely to teach students the critical interaction occurring at the nexus of food-water and energy was again taught at MSU. Students explore interdisciplinary research from literature and are taught how to use crop models and image data analysis to simulate what-if scenarios as potential solutions to the unsustainable use of water and nutrients in agriculture. Hyndman and Kendall again taught a module on Global Change, Crop Production, and Impacts on Hydrology in the fall of 2019 as part of the CUAHSI Virtual University; 8 universities participated and sent graduate students to this course. Winter integrated the warming hole research into his class, Climate Change and the Future of Agriculture. Kendall taught graduate students how to build models in LHM, an integrated surface and subsurface hydrologic model. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Complete annual irrigation maps of the three project regions (CA Central Valley, High Plains, and Upper Midwest) using neural networks. Finish the subsurface component of the CA Central Valley model and simulate groundwater recharge under the effects of changing irrigation practices. Build SALUS simulations of major CA Central Valley crops Complete simulations of all years 1979 - 2018 within WRF, quantifying irrigation feedback effects on CONUS-wide temperatures and precipitation Analyze the ability of WRF-Noah-MP-Crop to reproduce observed climate feedbacks of agriculture across the American Midwest, and examine the role of model spatial resolution in capturing observed climate and crop yields Objective 2 Quantify the likely effects of Groundwater Sustainability Plans formulated by stakeholders in response to the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), including tradeoffs among economic prosperity, water supply, energy use and food production. Complete our assessment of the effects of increasing solar PV adoption in the CA Central Valley, including the tradeoffs among crop production, energy generation, carbon emissions, and water use. Objective 3: Complete the Kansas energy demand for irrigation and energy system modeling by including water storage as well as grid/off-grid systems with grid sell-back opportunities for farmers. The irrigation electricity demand for Michigan will be calculated similarly to what was done for Kansas and added to the total energy demand to model energy system capacity. The environmental and economic impact of each options will be compared. Expand the satellite solar farm estimation approach to other regions of the project and use LCA to quantify the life cycle impact of expansion of solar systems onto agricultural land by characterizing effects on categories such as greenhouse gases, water footprint, and cost. Objective 4 Publish a synthesis manuscript highlighting the success of collaborative governance in encouraging sustainable levels of irrigation and describing the barriers to its implementation. Conduct interviews of farmers in western Kansas to understand the factors that lead to local organizing for self-imposed irrigation limits. Improve detailed groundwater and Landscape Hydrology Models for multiple areas of the High Plains Aquifer to serve as the basis to evaluate impacts of different water management strategies and climatic conditions on projected water storage. Examine detailed water well records from these irrigation wells across the HPA to assess how irrigation practices have changed over the last decade. Objective 5 Assess the effects of climate change on water availability in the Republican River Basin, where an interstate compact has forced water use restrictions in Nebraska.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Summary Helped define pathways toward sustainable irrigated agriculture in the US using process-based systems models. Quantified irrigation adaptation strategies in the first large-scale demonstration of pumping reductions in a Kansas portion of the High Plains Aquifer. Presented project results 19 peer reviewed articles in year 2. Identified constantly low yielding areas across the Midwest to be allocated to alternative systems such as native vegetation pollinators, bioenergy crops or agrivoltaics. Delivered 60 presentations including invited keynote presentations at International meetings and outreach venue to share the advances in digital agriculture and crop modeling to enhance the sustainability of agricultural systems. Objective 1: Quantify feedbacks between crop yields, climate, and use of water and energy. Completed a new irrigation module for the Noah-Mosaic Land Surface Model running within the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF 4.1) regional climate model with a high-resolution (9 km) CONUS-wide regional climate simulation, driven by the latest ERA-5 forcing dataset. We have completed runs during 3 dry and 3 wet years to quantify the effects of irrigation on precipitation and temperature. Developing integrated surface and subsurface hydrologic model simulations of California's Central Valley using the Landscape Hydrology Model (LHM). Surface simulations will be ready for the December 2019 American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference. Built SALUS crop model simulations across the corn belt for comparison to statistical models developed using random forests. The paired models were used to show the benefits of the central US "warming hole" on crop yields over the last six decades (Partridge et al. 2019). Built annual irrigation maps using remote sensing and tree-based classification algorithms for two of our three simulation regions (Xu et al. 2019, Deines et al. 2019), and progressed toward using a deep convolutional neural network architecture to quantify irrigation in both of those regions along with the CA Central Valley. Early results of the neural network work will be presented at the AGU 2019 conference. Built a new classification methodology for agricultural solar photovoltaic panels, and applied it to California's Central Valley. Developed an algorithm to calculate the solar capacity for individual farms in Kansas using hourly modelled energy demand for irrigation from LHM. Running WRF simulations with a land surface model that incorporates crops (Noah-MP-Crop) in a triple nested domain (25 km, 5 km, 1 km) centered over Iowa. Early results will be presented at the AGU 2019 conference. Objective 2: Quantify tradeoffs among four key aspects of sustainability: economic prosperity, water supply, energy use, and food production. Modeled daily energy demand of an average Michigan farm and calculated the solar and battery system capacity needed to meet the energy demand. Identified solar panel installations on farms in California to quantify the solar system electricity generation, area of crops loss and resultant effects on food and fiber production, and water consumption change over time. Objective 3: Quantify benefits of adopting improved irrigation technologies and renewable energy, and their efficient utilization Computed the change in the full life cycle carbon footprint and cumulative energy demand of irrigation in the Central High Plains Aquifer resulting from the adoption of energy-efficient irrigation technologies. We plan to submit this work for publication in 2019. Developed yield stability maps using satellite imagery for 4,468,829 acres of corn and soybeans in Nebraska. and 869,220 acres of corn and soybeans in Kansas. Added additional yield maps from yield monitored combines to extend the validation across the 80 million acres of yield stability maps already developed Added features to the SALUS process-based crop model (new way of developing roots, and improvements in shoot/root ratios) Ingested crop management data into the SALUS to run the model using different modeling scenarios to address the research questions proposed in this project Performed preliminary runs across the entire Midwest region to simulate water and nitrogen use efficiency using the SALUS model Updated the SALUS Online model, to allow independent user to run the model across the Midwest by selecting their own fields using Google map.. Objective 4: Quantify effects of farmer decision making, water laws, and policies on irrigation practices, technology adoption, and crop choices. Conducted extensive literature review of collaborative governance approaches to natural resource management to synthesize with team's remote sensing data and expertise. Showed that reliable pathways toward sustainable irrigated agriculture require accurate aquifer specific yield estimates; values used in previous models of the High Plains aquifer and likely in many other heavily stressed aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture, are too large. This underestimates the impact of pumping reductions and has profound ramifications for defining pathways for sustainable irrigated agriculture. Developed a new method to estimate the usable aquifer lifetime and on the legal ramifications of pumping reductions within the context of western water law and the team's water-balance approach. Quantified the spread of irrigation technology in Kansas using an econometrics approach, estimating the effects of policy incentives. Objective 5: Quantify implications of global change including altered food demand, diets, and projected climate changes. Identified that the U.S. warming hole increased maize yields from 5% to 10% per year, in contrast to many agricultural regions throughout the world that have experienced yield losses due to high temperatures. These increased yields are primarily (62%) caused by reduced temperatures, with enhanced summer precipitation responsible for the remaining 38% of the simulated yield increase. Increased yields are also attributable to a prolonged time to maturation and lower drought stress (Partridge et al. 2019). Used the Weather Research and Forecasting regional climate model with a land surface model that includes crops and are calibrating and evaluating the initial results.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Partridge, T.F., J.M. Winter, L. Liu, A.D. Kendall, B. Basso, D.W. Hyndman: Mid-20th Century Warming Hole Boosts U.S. Maize Yield. Environmental Research Letters, 14, 114008.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2019 Citation: Lopez, J.R., J.M. Winter, J. Elliott, A.C. Ruane, C.H. Porter, and G. Hoogenboom: Sustainable use of groundwater dramatically reduces maize, soy, and wheat production. Nature Sustainability, in review.
  • Type: Other Status: Under Review Year Published: 2019 Citation: Spera, S.A., J.M. Winter, and T.F. Partridge. Land Clearing in Brazil Degrades Weather for Agriculture. Nature Sustainability, in review.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Deines, J.M., A.D. Kendall, J.J. Butler, Jr., and D.W. Hyndman, Quantifying irrigation adaptation strategies in response to stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the US High Plains Aquifer, Environ. Res. Lett., 14, 044014, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aafe39, 2019.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Griggs, B.W., Interstate litigation, state reaction, and federalism in the age of groundwater, Rocky Mt. Min. L. Fdn. Proc. vol. 65, ch. 26, 2019.
  • Type: Other Status: Under Review Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., D.O. Whittemore, B.B. Wilson, and G.C. Bohling, A roadblock on the path to sustainability: Underestimating the impact of pumping reductions (in external review).
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Griggs, B.W., and J.J. Butler, Jr., Groundwater pumping reductions enhance property rights protection (in preparation).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2020 Citation: Griggs, B.W., The model groundwater right (law review article under preparation for Year 3 submission).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Smidt, A.D. Kendall, and D.W. Hyndman, 2019, Increased Dependence on Irrigated Crop Production across the CONUS, Water, 11, 1458; DOI:10.3390/w11071458
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Xu, T., J. Deines, A. D. Kendall, B. Basso, and D. W. Hyndman, 2019, Addressing Challenges for Mapping Irrigated Fields in Subhumid Temperate U.S. Systems by Integrating Remote Sensing and Hydroclimatic Data, Remote Sensing, 11(3), 370; DOI: 10.3390/rs11030370.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Haacker, E., K. Cotterman, S. Smidt, A. Kendall, and D. Hyndman, 2019, Effects of Management Areas, Drought, and Commodity Prices on Groundwater Decline Patterns across the High Plains Aquifer, Agricultural Water Management, 218, p.259-273, DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2019.04.002.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Deines, J., A. Kendall, J. J. Butler, and D.W. Hyndman, 2019, Quantifying irrigation adaptation strategies in response to novel stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the US High Plains Aquifer, Environmental Research Letters. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aafe39
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., The High Plains aquifer in Kansas: What's happening with your neighbor to the south? 2019 Kremer Memorial Lecture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Feb. 27, 2019 (invited oral presentation for general public  video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAn-F3TJK5A&list=PLZoL49rIs C8Tf5VCmWibtkKBeLf Vaoc Fv& index=5&t=269s).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Whittemore, D.O., J.J. Butler, Jr., and B.B. Wilson, Spatial variation in inflow to the High Plains aquifer in Kansas derived from a new water-balance approach, Geological Society of America Joint South-Central, North-Central, and Rocky Mountain Sections Meeting, Manhattan, KS, March 25, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., The High Plains aquifer in Kansas: Current status and future prospects, Science on Screen, Salina Arts Center Cinema, Salina, KS, April 1, 2019 (invited oral presentation for general public  video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVvFxiw0rfE).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Griggs, B.W., Interstate litigation, state reaction, and federalism in the age of groundwater, Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, 65th Annual Institute, Monterey, California, July 19, 2019 (invited presentation).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., Ground-based methods for assessing the future of aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture, Invited panelist presentation, Groundwater Recharge and Flow Workshop, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington, D.C., July 27, 2019 (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLs6unlxCNw&list=PLi6VVot- VxseDqVsWoRLJn7xHRPCMQl2WY&index=18&t=0s).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., A roadblock on the pathway to aquifer sustainability: Underestimating the impact of pumping reductions, Geology Department Seminar, Kansas State University, Sept 12, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Whittemore, D.O., J.J. Butler, Jr., B.B. Wilson, G. Liu, and G.C. Bohling, Spatial variations in specific yield in the High Plains aquifer in Kansas derived from a new water-balance approach, Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, Sept. 23, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., The High Plains aquifer in Kansas: Current status and future prospects, American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference: The Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales, Valencia, Spain, October 21, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Griggs, B.W., Effective property: Integrating geohydrological science into American groundwater law, American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference, Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales, Valencia, Spain, October 21, 2019 (invited presentation).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Deines, J.M., A.D. Kendall, J.J. Butler, B. Basso, and D.W. Hyndman, Combining remote sensing data and crop models to assess the sustainability of stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the US High Plains Aquifer, American Geophysical Union Chapman Conference: The Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales, Valencia, Spain, October 24, 2019 (presentation given by D.W. Hyndman).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., A roadblock on the pathway to aquifer sustainability: Underestimating the impact of pumping reductions, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research  UFZ, Leipzig, Germany, Oct. 30, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Liu, G., G. Bohling, B. Wilson, J. Butler, and D. Whittemore, Specific yield in regional groundwater modeling: Pitfalls, implications, and solutions, presentation to be given at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 11, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., S. Knobbe, and E.C. Reboulet, Exploiting an underutilized trove of agrohydrology information: Interpretation of hydrographs from aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture, eLightning presentation to be presented at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 11, 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Spera, S.A. and J.M. Winter: Tradeoffs Between Land-Management and Regional Climate in the Brazilian Cerrado. American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, USA, 3 April 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Partridge, T.F., J.M. Winter, A.D. Kendall, D.W. Hyndman, and S.A. Spera: Cross-Scale Evaluation of WRF / Noah-MP-Crop Yield Simulations American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, USA, 13 December 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Feltman, B., A. Zwickle. Adoption of water-efficient technologies and increased water loss in Kansas: Jevons Paradox in water policy. Presented at the International Symposium for Society and Resource Management, June 22, 2019, Oshkosh, WI.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Zwickle, A., B. Feltman. Environmental Governance of the High Plains Aquifer: What irrigation policy looks like on, or below, the ground. Presented at the International Society for Risk Analysis, December 10, 2019, Arlington, VA.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Winter, J.M., B. Basso, S. McDermid, A.C. Ruane: Improving the Simulation of Climate Impacts on Agriculture: AgMIP and Related Research. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, USA, 11 December 2019.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Anex, R.P., McCarthy, B.M., and A. Anctil. 2018. Carbon emissions from irrigation in the High Plains Aquifer. 2018 Wisconsin Energy Institute, Research Symposium, Madison, WI, July 16, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Tamakloe S, Shukla S, Anctil A, Economic Benefit of Photovoltaics in Michigan Field Crop Farms, Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experiences, Michigan State University, July 2019.
  • Type: Other Status: Under Review Year Published: 2019 Citation: Mooney, R.J., Stanley, E.H., Rosenthal, W., Esselman, P.C., Kendall, A.D., and P.B. McIntyre, A day in the life of a Great Lake: A comprehensive estimate of tributary nutrient loads, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: in review
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., Quantifying the Effects of Human Activities on Hydrology: From the US High Plains to the Brazilian Amazon, University of Florida, Feb. 19, 2019
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., and A.D. Kendall, Using Integrated Hydrologic Models to Quantify the Effects of Human Activities, California Department of Water Resources, July 25, 2019
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., Quantifying the Effects of Human Activities on Hydrology, University of Illinois, Chicago, March 6, 2019.
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., Quantifying the Effects of Human Activities on Hydrology, USGS Office in San Diego, CA, May 15, 2019.
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., and others, Water Availability in the West Use Cases, Workshop on Integrated Hydro-Terrestrial Modeling: Development of a National Capability, Sept. 4, 2019.
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hyndman, D.W., Quantifying the Effects of Changes in Climate and Land Use on Streamflows and Groundwater Levels for Regional Water Energy Food Systems, Water Security Week Workshop, Morelos Mexico, September 9-12, 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Kuhl, A.S., Kendall, A.D., Van Dam, R.L., and D.W. Hyndman, Modeling root processes along a successional forest transect using a coupled hydrogeophysical inversion approach, NovCare 2019 International Conference, Waterloo, ON, CN May 28-31 2019
  • Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Smidt, S.J., A.D. Kendall and D.W. Hyndman, Modeling Irrigated Crop Production to Backfill Missing Water Data, Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, Sep 22-25 2019
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Xu, T., J. M. Deines, A. D. Kendall, B. Basso, and D. W. Hyndman, Addressing Challenges for Mapping Irrigated Fields in Subhumid Temperate U.S. Systems by Integrating Remote Sensing and Hydroclimatic Data, CUAHSI Hydroinformatics Conference, April 2019
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, B., Antle. J, Robertson, GP. (2019). Digital Agronomy to Design and Scale Sustainable Agricultural Systems. Accepted in Nature Sustainability
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, B., & Liu, L. (2019). Seasonal crop yield forecast: Methods, applications, and accuracies. Advances in Agronomy, 154, 201-255 doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.agron.2018.11.002
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, B., Shuai, G., Zhang, J., Robertson, G.P. (2019). Yield stability analysis reveals sources of large-scale nitrogen loss from the US Midwest. Scientific Reports, 9(5774). doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-42271-1
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hussain, M.Z., Bhardwaj, A.K., Basso, B., Robertson, G.P., Hamilton, S.K. (2019). Nitrate Leaching from Continuous Corn, Perennial Grasses, and Poplar in the US Midwest. Journal of Environmental Quality. doi: https://doi.org/10.2134/jeq2019.04.0156
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Hussain, M.Z., Hamilton, S.K., Bhardwaj, A.K., Basso, B., Thelen, K.D., Robertson, G.P. (2019). Evapotranspiration and water use efficiency of continuous maize and maize and soybean in rotation in the upper Midwest U.S. Agricultural Water Management, 221, 92-98. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2019.02.049
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Insua, J.R., Agnusdei, M.G., Berone, G.D., Basso, B., Machado, C.F. (2019). Modeling the Nutritive Value of Defoliated Tall Fescue Pastures Based on Leaf Morphogenesis. Agronomy Journal, 111(1), 1-11. doi: 10.2134/agronj2018.07.0439
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Insua, J.R., Utsumi, S., Basso, B. (2019). Assessing and Modeling Pasture Growth under Different Nitrogen Fertilizer and Defoliation Rates in Argentina and the United States. Agronomy Journal, 111(2), 1-12. doi: 10.2134/agronj2018.07.0438
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Insua, J.R., Utsumi, S., Basso, B. (2019). Estimation of spatial and temporal variability of pasture growth and digestibility in grazing rotations coupling unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with crop simulation models. PLOS ONE, 14(3), 1-21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212773
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Kimball, B.A. et al. (2019). Simulation of maize evapotranspiration: An inter-comparison among 29 maize models. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 271, 264-284. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.02.037
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Shuai, G., Martinez-Feria, R.A., Zhang, J., Li, S., Price, R., Basso, B. (2019). Capturing Maize Stand Heterogeneity Across Yield-Stability Zones Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). Sensors, 19(20). doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/s19204446
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Shuai, G. et al. (2019). Multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 polarimetric SAR for maize mapping supported by segmentations from high-resolution optical image. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 74, 1-15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2018.08.021
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Forecasting in-season plant available water to increase NUE in Corn: The role of thermal stability maps; Michigan Corn Marketing Program Office
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Aerial Imaging of Cash Crop Response to Cover Crops; Michigan Agri-Business Association Winter Conference
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Commodity-Based Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Precision Agriculture Training; Crop & Soil Science Teaching and Research Farm
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Remote Sensing to Quantify Spatial Variability of Crop Nitrogen Status and to Optimize N Fertilizer in Potato Fields; Greenstone Farm Credit Services, c/o Michigan Potato Industry Commission
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Remote Sensing to Quantify Spatial Variability of Crop Nitrogen Status and to Optimize N Fertilizer in Potato Fields; Michigan Potato Industry Winter Conference
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, UAVs and Integration with Precision Agriculture Technologies; Michigan Corn Marketing Program Office
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Potato field day at Main Farms; Michigan Potato Industry Commission
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, UAVs and Remotely Sensed Imagery to Detect Spatial Variability of Bioenergy Crops; GLBRC BCSE Field Day
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Remote Sensing to Develop a Prescription Map (Rx); Ag Innovations Day at University Farms
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Remote Sensing and Precision Ag Technologies; The Agro-Expo
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Development of a New Procedure to Design In-Season Variable Rate Nitrogen (N) Fertilize Prescription Maps for Michigan Wheat Farmers; The Okemos Conference Center c/o The Michigan Wheat Program
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Pathways to Sustainability Through Digital Agriculture Technologies; Valencia Chapman Conference
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Using Remote Sensing to Assess Interseeded Cover Crop Establishment and Competitiveness in Maize; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Prediction of Evapotranspiration and Yields of Maize: an Inter-Comparison Among 29 Maize Models and Future Plans; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Quantifying and Mapping Yield Penalties in Midwestern Cropland Prone to Water Excess or Deficits Under Weather Extremes; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Integrating Remote Sensing with Crop Modeling for Variable Rate Nitrogen Prescription; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Evaluating Climate Change on Corn Yield at a Field Scale in Tanzania; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Water Use Efficiency: Opportunities to Decrease Soil Water Use; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Leaching of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) and Dissolved Organic Nitrogen (DON) from Agricultural Soils in Southern Michigan; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Perennializing a Simple Crop Model for Simulating Long-Term Crop-Soil Dynamics in Switchgrass Stands; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, N Management in Corn Using UAV Images, Yield Stability Maps and Crop Modeling; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Modeling Long-Term Effects of Crop Management on Yield and the Environment in Upper Midwest; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Application of Big-Data at Sub-Field Scale to Enhance the Sustainability of Cropping Systems; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, The Application and Integration of Data Sciences, Software Tools, and Systems Models to Enable Advanced Analytics for Managing the Food and Agricultural System; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Impact of Variable Rate Seeding and Delay in Emergence on Corn Yield; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, A Novel Application of Machine Learning in Predicting Long-Term Soil N2O Fluxes; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, North American Agriculture: Need for Sustainability and Resilience; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Modeling the Soil-Landscape-Management Interactions to Improve Resource Use Efficiency at Field Scale; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting;
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Improving Nitrogen Use Efficiency in Sugarcane Using Remote Sensing Data; ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meeting
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, 2019, Modeling bioenergy feedstocks on marginal land using ensemble crop modeling; GLBRC Annual Science Meeting


Progress 01/01/18 to 12/31/18

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for our research results is farmers, policymakers, extension specialists and scientists (undergraduate and graduate students) working across the nexus of water energy and food. In this first year of the project, our team had numerous interactions and presentations with all of these portions of our target audience. We had numerous presentations of our research to the general public, local chapters of scientific organizations, and at scientific conferences. Informal presentations were also given to personnel from the five groundwater management districts in Kansas, the state's water planning and management agencies, and to the science team at Gallo in Modesto California. Multiple conference presentations were given at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference; preliminary analysis of the environmental impacts of historical changes in irrigation technology in the high plains aquifer were presented to approximately 100 attendees of the Water@UW-Madison Spring Symposium. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided??At MSU, one PhD student finished her dissertation and 5 graduate students are conducting their research on the project. All students are being trained in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary science through regular meetings and interactions with the project team. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Our analysis of the environmental impacts of changes in irrigation technology in the high plains aquifer were presented in a Symposium. Basso developed a new course at MSU titled "Environmental modeling, water and food security" to teach students about critical interactions at the nexus of food-water and energy. Students explore interdisciplinary research from literature and are taught how to use crop models and image data analysis to simulate what-if scenarios as potential solutions to the unsustainable use of water and nutrients in agriculture. Hyndman and Kendall developed a module on Global Change, Crop Production, and Impacts on Hydrology, taught in the fall of 2018 (22 students) as part of the CUAHSI Virtual University; 8 universities participated and sent graduate students to this course. Winter integrated the warming hole research into his class, Climate Change and the Future of Agriculture. Kendall taught graduate students how to build models in LHM, an integrated surface and subsurface hydrologic model. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals??Objective 1:Publish a manuscript on the water, energy and environmental impacts of changes in irrigation technology and use in the Kansas HPA. Assess the full life cycle impacts of changes in the environmental profile of agricultural products due to changes in irrigation technology and use these in FEW scenarios. Complete a manuscript on water/energy consumption in Kansas with scenarios for changes in energy and irrigation technologies, and models of agricultural energy demand including irrigation and changing performance of wind/solar. Objective 2:Simulate the adoption of irrigation technology across the entire HPA region using the economic model developed by our team. Objective 3:Simulate the effects of changes in irrigation practices on groundwater levels and streamflows in our study regions. Finish developing a coupled surface water/ groundwater model for the whole Lower Peninsula of Michigan and use this to quantify the effects of irrigation. For the High Plains Aquifer, refine the LHM simulation we developed to address sustainable management decisions for the region's groundwater. For California, collaborate with scientists at the USGS to help update the model that is being used to address water policy choices in the Central Valley. Web will use our LHM code to estimate groundwater recharge for past conditions, and for scenarios including those where high flows are used to flood fields and increase recharge. Objective 4: We will construct a modeling framework that loosely couples the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) and SALUS. This will include calibrating WRF and SALUS over the central US and evaluating the ability of the models to simulate climate and yield. We will use this framework to explore the impacts of climate on crop yields, and agricultural land use and management on climate. Objective 5:Examine how implementation of efficient irrigation practices have affected water sustainability in ways that were not expected. This will involve the synthesis of detailed pumping data that we have from Kansas with high resolution remotely sensed data that our team generated from machine learning algorithms and remote sensing. Our hypothesis is that recharge has been reduced as a result of these new technologies because farmers expand their irrigated area with more efficient technology.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Summary The new approaches and insights developed from this project are already making a differenceon activities in Kansas; we are confident that they will prove of value far beyond the High Plains Aquifer where they were originally developed. We modeled the change in energy sources and electricity grid on the energy and carbon footprint for Kansas irrigation based on data using life cycle assessment. We quantified increases in energy consumption and reduction in solar performance due to climate change. We explored the effects of the smaller increases in temperatures from 1950-Present (the "warming hole") across the US midwest on crop yields, and quantified the benefits of that cooling on agricultural yields. Objective 1: Quantify the feedbacks between crop yields, climate, and use of water and energy. We synthesized remote sensing data to develop detailed land use, crop growth, and spatially variable yield products. This allowed us to quantify variations of the crop growth, nutrient uptake, energy use, environmental outcomes for different soils, weather, and management. The SALUS crop model then: 1) accounts for the effects of spatial variability, 2) identifies factors that cause such variability, and 3) designs spatially variable nutrient and irrigation to enhance resource use efficiency. There has been a rapid increase in irrigation over 35 years over the High Plains Aquifer (HPA) based on annual maps developed using Landsat imagery within Google Earth Engine (Deines et al. in review). Irrigation also nearly doubled over 19 years in a historically rainfed agricultural region of Michigan (Xu et al. 2019). We linked irrigationto energy demand using life cycle assessments (LCAs) of crops in our study regions. Climate change, cumulative energy demand impacts, and changes in irrigation technology were quantified. Objective 2: Quantify tradeoffs among four key aspects of sustainability: economic prosperity, water supply, energy use, and food production. We improved representations of irrigation technologies LAI in models using remote sensing and drone imagery. The SALUS code was used to simulate the effects of different irrigation technologies, timing and amount of water applied on nutrient fluxes and grain yield. We simulated irrigated fields across the Midwest US to quantify yield stability (Basso et al., 2019). The procedure has been applied on irrigated fields where yield maps and management data were provided by the owners of the fields the help optimize the use of irrigation for profits and water sustainability. The expansion of urban areas into agriculture was also simulated, showing that traditional land use planning is insufficient to protect agricultural land, with per-acre values for development often greatly exceeding continued agricultural use. We address how urbanization patterns might respond to policies that discourage encroachment into agricultural lands using the Land Transformation Model (Smidt et al. 2018). Protecting prime agricultural lands resulted in increasing density and compactness. Objective 3: Quantify benefits of adopting improved irrigation technologies and renewable energy, and their efficient utilization. The effects of a Kansas Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) that started in 2013 were quantified. Our analysis of this first-in-the-nation testbed for locally-driven self-imposed water use restrictions to preserve the life of the aquifer showed that feasible pumping reductions can stabilizewater-level declines while maintaining a vibrant agricultural economy (Deines et al. 2019). Such LEMA strategies can serve as a roadmap for others looking to chart a sustainable path for irrigated agriculture. Objective 4: Quantify implications of global change including altered food demand, diets, and projected climate changes. We characterized changes in regional cooling across the eastern U.S. due to irrigation. We developed scenarios with this warming hole removed, and used these to drive statistical and process-­based crop models. The warming hole increased maize yields from 5% to 10% per year, in contrast to regions throughout the world that have experienced higher temperatures. Increased yields are primarily caused by reduced temperatures while enhanced precipitation increased yields; yield gains can be linked toprolonged maturation times and lower drought stress (Partridge et al., In review). Objective 5: Quantify effects of farmer decision making, water laws, and policies on irrigation practices, technology adoption, and crop choices. We investigated the role of groundwater management on groundwater declines across the HPA. Haacker et al. (2019) used novel statistical methods to link changes in water level trajectories to drivers including crop price and drought, and extract a signal that is likely due to groundwater management policies. We examined the effects of a stakeholder-driven management approach in management in NW Kansas in which farmers voted to restrict their irrigation pumping by at least 20% relative to prior levels. Deines et al. (2019) showed that this program was successful with 31% reduction in pumping by reducing per-acre applications on traditional crops, planting less water-intensive crops, and reducing irrigated acreage. Irrigating with less water on the same crop types provided >70% of total water savings

Publications

  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., D.O. Whittemore, B.B. Wilson, and G.C. Bohling, The hour is late, but all is not lost: Striving for sustainability of the High Plains aquifer in Kansas, Abstract H33E-06 presented at 2018 Fall Meeting, American Geophysical Union, Washington, D.C.  oral presentation.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., D.O. Whittemore, B.B. Wilson, and G.C. Bohling, The High Plains aquifer in Kansas: New findings and future prospects, 27th Annual Kansas Hydrology Symposium, Topeka, KS, Nov. 16, 2018  oral presentation.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Griggs, B.W., Fear, loathing, and Kansas water law, Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas, Manhattan, KS, Nov. 14, 2018 (invited concluding keynote presentation to conference for water professionals and the general public - video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTkHwmSt5X0).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., Assessing the prospects for sustainability of aquifers supporting irrigated agriculture, Colorado Groundwater Association, Lakewood, CO, Oct. 18, 2018  invited oral presentation.
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kamath D and Anctil A Photovoltaics for Rural Electrification: Adding the climate change dimension. Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) Research Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, USA, November 2018
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shukla S and Anctil A, Changing residential electricity consumption as a result of climate change, Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) symposium, Michigan State University, November 2018
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Anex, Robert. US Biofuel Policy: Potential impact on the hydrologic cycle. Presented at the Water@UW-Madison Spring Symposium, May 9, 2018, Madison, WI.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Xu, T., J. Deines, A. D. Kendall, B. Basso, and D. W. Hyndman, 2019, Addressing Challenges for Mapping Irrigated Fields in Subhumid Temperate U.S. Systems by Integrating Remote Sensing and Hydroclimatic Data, Remote Sensing, 11(3), 370; DOI: 10.3390/rs11030370.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2019 Citation: Stenjem, R. S., A. M. Thompson, K.G. Karthikeyan, B.J. Lepore, A.D. Kendall, D.W. Hyndman, 2019-in press, Quantity and quality of water percolating below the root zone of three biofuel feedstock crop systems, Agricultural Water Management.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2019 Citation: Haacker, E., K. Cotterman, S. Smidt, A. Kendall, and D. Hyndman, 2019, Effects of Management Areas, Drought, and Commodity Prices on Groundwater Decline Patterns across the High Plains Aquifer, Agricultural Water Management, 218, p.259-273, DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2019.04.002. .
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2019 Citation: Deines, J., A. Kendall, J. J. Butler, and D.W. Hyndman, 2019, Quantifying water use and farmer adaptation strategies in response to novel stakeholder-driven groundwater management in the US High Plains Aquifer, Environmental Research Letters.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Parish, A., A.D. Kendall, A. Thompson, R. Stenjem, and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Perennial cellulosic biofuel crops significantly alter ET and recharge fluxes: Direct quantification using Automated Equilibrium Tension Lysimeters, GCB Bioenergy, DOI: 10.1111/gcbb.12585
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Smidt, S., A. Tayyebi, A.D. Kendall, B.C. Pijanowski, and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Agricultural and Economic Implications of Providing Soil-Based Constraints on Urban Expansion: Land Use Forecasts to 2050, Journal of Environmental Management, doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.03.042.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kuhl, A., A. Kendall, and D. W. Hyndman, 2018, Quantifying soil water and root dynamics using a joint hydrogeophysical inversion, Vadose Zone Journal, 17:170154. doi:10.2136/vzj2017.08.0154.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2018 Citation: Partridge, T., J. Winter, E. Osterberg, D.W. Hyndman, A. Kendall, F. Magilligan, 2018, Spatially Distinct Seasonal Patterns and Forcings of the U.S. Warming Hole, Geophysical Research Letters, doi: 10.1002/2017GL076463.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2018 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., D.O. Whittemore, B.B. Wilson, and G.C. Bohling, A roadblock on the path to sustainability: Underestimating the impact of pumping reductions (in internal review).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Griggs, B.W., and J.J. Butler, Jr., Non-regulatory takings in groundwater (in preparation).
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Basso, B, et al. (2018). Soil Organic Carbon and Nitrogen Feedbacks on Crop Yields under Climate Change. Agricultural & Environmental Letters, 3(1). American Society of Agronomy. doi: 10.2134/ael2018.05.0026
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Basso, B., G. Shuai, J. Zhang, and G. P. Robertson. 2019. Yield stability analysis reveals sources of large-scale nitrogen loss from the US Midwest. Scientific Reports. 9:5774 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-42271-1 2
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Basso, B.; & Liu, L. (2018). Seasonal crop yield forecast: Methods, applications, and accuracies. Advances in Agronomy, 154, 201-255. doi: 10.1016/bs.agron.2018.11.002
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Basso, B.; & Ritchie, J.T. (2018). Evapotranspiration in High-Yielding Maize and under Increased Vapor Pressure Deficit in the US Midwest. Agricultural & Environmental Letters, 3(1). doi: 10.2134/ael2017.11.0039
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Dahl, T.A., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Impacts of Projected Climate Change on Sediment Yield and Dredging Costs, Hydrologic Processes: 32(9), 1223-1234, DOI: 10.1002/hyp.11486
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2019 Citation: Deines, J.M., Kendall, A.D., Crowley, M.A., Rapp, J., Cardille, J.A., and D.W. Hyndman, In Review, Mapping three decades of annual irrigation across the US High Plains Aquifer using Landsat and Google Earth Engine, Remote Sensing and the Environment
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Hamilton, S.K.; Hussain, M.Z.; Lowrie, C.; Basso, B.; Robertson, G.P. (2018). Evapotranspiration is resilient in the face of land cover and climate change in a humid temperate catchment. Hydrological Processes, 32(5), 655-663. doi: 10.1002/hyp.1144
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Kimball, B.A.; et al. (2019) Simulation of maize evapotranspiration: An inter-comparison among 29 maize models. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 271, 264-284. doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2019.02.037
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Liu, B., et al. (2019) Global wheat production with 1.5 and 2.0� C above pre-industrial warming. Global Change Biology, 25 (4), 1428-1444 doi: 10.1111/gcb.14542
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Maestrini, B.; Basso, B. (2018). Drivers of within-field spatial and temporal variability of crop yield across the US Midwest. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 2045-2322. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-32779-3
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Maestrini, B.; Basso, B. (2018). Predicting spatial patterns of within-field crop yield variability. Field Crops Research, 219, 106-112. doi: 10.1016/j.fcr.2018.01.028 Link
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Under Review Year Published: 2019 Citation: Partridge, T., J. Winter, L. Liu, A. Kendall, B. Basso, and D.W. Hyndman, In Review, Mid-20th Century Warming Hole Boosts 1 U.S. Maize Yields, Nature Climate Change.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Shuai, G.; Zhang, J.; Basso, B.; Pan, Y.; Zhu, X.; Zhu, S.; Liu, H. (2019) Multi-temporal RADARSAT-2 polarimetric SAR for maize mapping supported by segmentations from high-resolution optical image. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 74, 1-15. doi: 10.1016/j.jag.2018.08.021
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Zhang, J.; Basso, B.; Price, R.F.; Putman, G.; Shuai, G. (2018). Estimating plant distance in maize using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). PLOS ONE, 13(4), 1-22. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195223
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2019 Citation: Butler, J.J., Jr., The High Plains aquifer in Kansas: What's happening with your neighbor to the south? 2019 Kremer Memorial Lecture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Feb. 27, 2019 (invited oral presentation for general public  video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAn-F3TJK5A&list=PLZoL49rIs C8Tf5VCmWibtkKBeLf Vaoc Fv& index=5&t=269s).
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kuhl, A., Kendall, A.D., Van Dam, R.L., Hamilton, S.K., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Modeling Root Processes Along a Successional Forest Transect using a Coupled Hydrogeophysical Inversion Approach, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Smidt, S.J., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, Increased Dependence on Irrigated Crop Production across the CONUS, 2018, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Deines, J.M., Kendall, A.D., Crowley, M.A., Rapp, J.R., Cardille, J.A., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Shifting irrigation patterns in response to policy, technology, and water availability: Mapping three decades of irrigation across the US High Plains Aquifer with Landsat satellite data, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Heerspink, B.P., Naghtalab, N., Cak, A.D., Kendall, A.D., Moore, N.J., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Investigating the effects of hydropower development, deforestation, and climate change on the hydrology of rivers in the Brazilian Amazon, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Haacker, E.M., Smidt, S.J., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Depletion of the Southern High Plains Aquifer: Simulating the Effects of Conserving Irrigation Water through Reduced Irrigated Area and Limited Application, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Partridge, T., Winter, J., Osterberg, E.C., Hyndman, D.W., Basso, B., and A.D. Kendall, 2018, The Impacts of the U.S. Warming Hole on Agricultural Yields, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: McCarthy, B.M., Kendall, A.D., Anex, R.P., Anctil, A., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Water, Energy, and Carbon Emissions from Irrigation over the Central High Plains Aquifer, USA, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Drippe, P., Kendall, A.D., Xu, T., Deines, J.M., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Improving classification of humid-region irrigation using the red-edge band of Sentinel-2: Comparing irrigated and non-irrigated corn and soy in southwestern Michigan, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Loheide, S.P., Ciruzzi, D.M., Lowry, C., Tague, C.N., Michael, H.A., Hyndman, D.W., Kendall, A.D., Tyler, S., Thompson, M., and E. Tran, 2018, CUAHSI Virtual University: An inter-institutional framework for graduate education applied to the hydrologic sciences, AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Hamlin, Q.F., Kendall, A.D., Martin, S.L., and D.W. Hyndman 2018, Quantifying Nutrient Loading Landscapes using Spatially Explicit Maps in the Great Lakes Basin. AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Wan, L., Kendall, A.D., Martin, S.L., and D.W. Hyndman 2018, Spatially Explicit Modeling of Nutrient Transport in the Great Lakes Basin. AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Martin, S.L., Kendall, A.D., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Land-use legacies, nutrient transport and attenuation along groundwater flowpaths. AGU Fall Meeting Washington D.C. December 10-14
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Hamlin, Q.F., Kendall, A.D., Martin, S.L., and D.W. Hyndman, 2018, Quantifying Nutrient Inputs in the Great Lakes Basin with SENSMap (Spatially Explicit Nutrient Source Map), IALE Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, USA April 8-12
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Shukla S* and Anctil A, Changing residential electricity consumption as a result of climate change, Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) symposium, Michigan State University, November 2018
  • Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2018 Citation: Kamath D* and Anctil A Photovoltaics for Rural Electrification: Adding the climate change dimension. Environmental Science and Public Policy (ESPP) Research Symposium, East Lansing, Michigan, USA, November 2018