Recipient Organization
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY
886 CHESTNUT RIDGE RD RM 202
MORGANTOWN,WV 26505-2742
Performing Department
Forestry
Non Technical Summary
No other time in history have humans been so connected, with global supply chains and trade of commodities linking seemingly far off localities to one another. But in a world of greater connectivity also comes increased vulnerability to water and food security as ecosystems, infrastructure, and supply chains are subjected to more extreme events. Floods inundate homes, businesses, and infrastructure while drought and water scarcity exacerbate water pollution issues and disrupt the production of water-intensive commodities. Over short periods of time, the ripple effects of disrupted water supplies and production and distribution of water intensive commodities such as food, can be felt across seemingly disparate localities, threatening community health and economic security over vast scales.Climate change poses considerable risks for already vulnerable communities and ecosystems of the central Appalachian Mountains region but also presents enormous opportunities for rethinking the region's fresh water and food potential. Understanding how climate change will affect water and food security in the region is crucial for developing policies and practices that decrease vulnerability and increase resilience of the regional economy in a time of unprecedented change. A better understanding of the region's coupled water-food nexus can provide the opportunity to reshape the regional economy by prioritizing fresh water and sustainable food production that can satiate the growing urban metabolism (Folke et al. 1997, Ahams et al. 2017, Lant et al. 2019).The overall goal of this project is to improve understanding of West Virginia's water-food nexus and explore the potential for reshaping the regional economy by prioritizing sustainable water resources management and food agricultural in light of climate change. Collectively, this research will provide information necessary to enhance water and food security throughout the region and reshape the agricultural economy by adapting to climate change in a way that enhances quality of life. Here we leverage existing datasets of future climate and water resources and food supply chains and build models that can be used to explore the availability of water resources and potential for food production to best prepare the region for changes in climate. Our research will provide information to answer questions such as: Where does our food come from and who are we dependent on? Is the current water & food supply chain vulnerable to climate-driven shocks & stresses locally and elsewhere? How can we reduce vulnerability and increase opportunity? Who is dependent on West Virginia's water resources and how much are they worth? Is the current way of doing business the best use of West Virginia's resources?Collectively, this research aims to provide information necessary to enhance water and food security throughout the region and reshape the Appalachian agricultural economy by adapting to climate change in a way that enhances quality of life.
Animal Health Component
65%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
65%
Developmental
25%
Goals / Objectives
Given its physiography, continental location, large-scale climate controls, land cover, and land use change history (Zegre et al. 2014, Fernandez and Zegre 2019, Kutta and Hubbart 2019), WV is representative of the broader central Appalachian Region making it an ideal location to investigate both vulnerabilities and opportunities of the Appalachian water-food nexus associated with climate change. This project, therefore, will improve understanding of the Appalachian water-food nexus and explore the potential for reshaping the regional economy by prioritizing sustainable water resources management and food agricultural in light of climate change. Collectively, this research aims to provide information necessary to enhance water and food security throughout the region and reshape the Appalachian agricultural economy by adapting to climate change in a way that enhances quality of life.This will be accomplished through a state-wide inventory of fresh water resources and detailed mapping of the region's fresh food supply chain to identify critical dependencies and vulnerabilities of the region's water and food system. The central hypotheses guiding this project are: Fresh water resources generated in West Virginia are essential to downstream economies for producing water-intensive goods and services and changes in climate will create more favorable conditions for the production of fresh water and food-based agricultural.The specific research objectives of this project are: 1. Quantify water resources (e.g., supply, withdrawal, consumption, & quality) throughout West Virginia and map critical areas of fresh water production and upstream-downstream dependencies.2. Map West Virginia's fresh food supply chain and quantify dependence, leverage, circularity, vulnerability, and resilience of its current configuration.3. Quantify potential fresh water and food production under future climate conditions to explore the efficacy of reshaping West Virginia's economy by prioritizing fresh water and sustainable food production.Fulfilling these objectives will help answer critical questions such as:Where does our food come from and who are we dependent on? Is the current water & food supply chain vulnerable to climate-driven shocks & stresses locally and elsewhere? How can we reduce vulnerability and increase sustainable economic opportunity? Who is dependent on West Virginia's water resources and how much is West Virginia's water worth in terms of the production of water-intensive commodities? Is the current way of doing business the best use of West Virginia's resources?
Project Methods
This project is based on collaborations between the WVU Mountain Hydrology Lab, the WVU Food Justice Lab, and the FEWSION, a multi-institution based in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University. PI Zegre has an on-going collaboration with FEWSION project that stemmed from a 6-month sabbatical in the fall 2018 semester. For this project, we will couple (1) high-resolution datasets of historic and future climate and water resources with (2) county-level mapping of economic supply chains and water footprints of the US food, energy, and water system, and (3) local/community-scale information on West Virginia's food.Objective 1 - Quantify water resources (e.g., supply, withdrawal) throughout West Virginia, map fresh water production and upstream-downstream dependencies. Historic and future climate and water resources - This study leverages the recently released Appalachian Freshwater Initiative (AFI) Hydroclimatic Dataset (Fernandez and Zegre 2019) developed by the WVU Mountain Hydrology Lab that provides historic and future climate variables for 420 counties, 13 states, and 20 major river basins across the Appalachian Region (Appalachian Regional Commission 2009). The dataset includes climate variables important to water security, water and natural resources management, ecosystem health, and economic supply chains such as precipitation, air temperature, evaporation, wind speed, and relative humidity. Ensemble climate data for the region was developed using data from MACAv2-METDATA (Abatzoglou 2013) for 17 General Circulation Models (GCMs) at daily timescale from 1950 to 2100 and spatial resolution of approximately 4-km. Our dataset consists of two future greenhouse gas emission scenarios, a 'best case' scenario (RCP 4.5) based on the stabilization of global emissions, and a "worst case" scenario (RCP 8.5) where emissions continue to increase (Moss et al. 2010). Climatic data are being used to force modeling of historic and future water resources for the region using the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model (Hamman et al. 2018).Hydro-Economic Modelling - Given the region's high rainfall, steep topography, and runoff production, we believe that the region plays a disproportionately larger role in providing freshwater to downstream communities. This situation creates the potential for hydrologic dependence between downstream communities (& ecosystems) and upstream water producers (Viviroli et al. 2007). The nature and economic value of this dependency has yet to be quantified for watersheds in West Virginia but could provide insight for developing a framework that prioritizes water and natural resources management upstream to protect water supply used by downstream users (e.g. municipalities, businesses).For this effort, we will use a gridded economic water tower model that we developed and tested in the Potomac River basin to explore hydrologic dependence and water security of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area (Zégre et al. 2018). Our model advances the water tower model developed by Viviroli et al., (2007) for global analysis by incorporating spatially-disaggregated water yield, withdrawal, consumption and virtual water footprints to explore hydrologic dependence and hydroeconomic value at the landscape and community scales. Relative water yield, a spatially distributed index that relates the volume (& landscape location) of runoff production to the total volume of streamflow available for use by downstream economies and the water resources contribution index, a spatially distributed ratio of downstream water availability to water supplied from upstream locations, will be used to quantify how much water is generated, where water supply is generated, where water is consumed and by whom (economic water use sector), and quantify downstream dependence on upstream water resources. The following datasets will be used for water tower modeling: AFI Hydroclimatic Dataset of historic and future climate and water resources (Fernandez and Zegre 2019) and a spatially downscaled, gridded, 4-km water use datasets that will be used to spatially disaggregate county-level economic supply chains and water footprints data of the US food, energy, and water system (Rushforth and Ruddell 2018).Objective 2 - Map West Virginia's fresh food supply chain and quantify dependence, leverage, circularity, vulnerability, and resilience of its current configuration.This objective will be accomplished by analyzing county-level data of economic supply chains and water footprints of the US (Rushforth and Ruddell 2018) produced by the FEWSION Project and community-scale food system information from the FOODLINK database produced by the WVU Food Justice Lab.FEWSION documents county-to-county economic supply chains and water footprints for the US food, energy, and water system using data from the United States Geological Survey, the United States Department of Agriculture, the US Energy Information Administration, the US Department of Transportation, the US Department of Energy, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. These data will be used to calculate the following characteristics of West Virginia's existing fresh food system: dependence (relative measure of how large a supplier is in a supply chain is for importing goods to an area), leverage (relative measure of how large a supplier is in a supply chain is for exporting goods from an area), circularity (how much an area depends on itself), resilience (measure of the potential for disruptions in a commodity supply chain), and vulnerability (measure of exposure to drought in a supply chain) (Rushforth and Ruddell 2019)Community (local)-scale food insecurity will be mapped using data from the WV FOODLINK that includes information on food retail (grocery, convenience, and dollar stores, farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA), nutritional programs (SNAP, WIC, school nutrition, TEFAP), and charitable food assistance. WV FOODLINK was developed using ethnographic approaches and collaborations between anti-hunger advocacy groups, farmers, community development organizations, and governmental organizations to understand the integrated and complex social dynamics that contribute to food injustice in the Appalachian food system.Objective 3 - Quantify potential for fresh water and food production under future climate conditions to explore the efficacy of reshaping West Virginia's economy by prioritizing fresh water and sustainable food production.Results from Objective 1 will be used to quantify the potential for fresh water production in the future by identifying water resources availability and critical areas of runoff production, and for mapping surplus/deficit of future water resources. This information will be used to prioritize water resources management and identify locations in West Virginia that favorable for expanding food-based agriculture with respect to water availability.The potential food production will be estimated using the growing degree days (GDD) method (McMaster and Wilhelm 1997). Climate data for the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios will be extracted from the AFI Hydroclimatic Dataset (Fernandez and Zegre 2019). A range of TBase values will be used to explore the suitability of different fruits and vegetables grown in West Virginia under future climate conditions. GDD for the different crops will be mapped at the native 4-km grid scale of the AFI dataset.Spatially explicit representation of GDD, combined with future water resources availability, will provide natural resource managers, extension personnel, businesses (e.g., farmers, foresters), and decisions makers with information that prioritizes water and food production by optimizing geographic locations throughout the state with the most potential.