Irrigation at the new 100th Meridian: Adaptation to manage climate risks and preserve water resources in the Eastern Kansas River Basin - UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS CENTER FOR RESEARCH, INC.

IRRIGATION AT THE NEW 100TH MERIDIAN: ADAPTATION TO MANAGE CLIMATE RISKS AND PRESERVE WATER RESOURCES IN THE EASTERN KANSAS RIVER BASIN

Sponsoring Institution

National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Project Status

ACTIVE

Funding Source

AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT

Reporting Frequency

Annual

Accession No.

1027978

Grant No.

2022-67019-37181

Cumulative Award Amt.

$750,000.00

Proposal No.

2021-09132

Multistate No.

(N/A)

Project Start Date

May 15, 2022

Project End Date

May 14, 2026

Grant Year

2022

Program Code

[A1411]- Foundational Program: Agricultural Water Science

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS CENTER FOR RESEARCH, INC.
2385 IRVING HILL RD
LAWRENCE,KS 66045-7563

Performing Department
Kansas Geological Survey

Non Technical Summary
Historically, the 100th meridian has been thought of as the dividing line between the arid western US and the humid eastern US. However, much of the US' eastern Great Plains is projected to get drier throughout the 21st century, forming a "new 100th meridian" on the eastern Great Plains where agriculture and water resources may be stressed by these changes. In particular, agricultural systems in the eastern Great Plains are likely to require increased use of irrigation to support agricultural production, with potential impacts to surface water and groundwater resources and the communities that depend on these agricultural and water resources. Sustaining crop production, communities, and environmental resources in the eastern Great Plains requires proactive research and planning to ensure that these agricultural communities can thrive in the future.This project will use the Eastern Kansas River Basin, located in the heart of the 'new 100th meridian', as a case study to explore potential climate risks, adaptation strategies, and environmental and socio-economic impacts. We will accomplish this by developing improved regional climate projections to better understand potential future climate risks in the region, incorporating these climate projections in environmental models to identify a portfolio of effective land and water management strategies, and assessing how water resources and rural communities would respond to these climate and management scenarios. Our activities will be guided by a stakeholder advisory group representing the agricultural, governmental, and environmental sectors to ensure that our methods, results, and products have a high degree of local relevance and are appropriately suited to the management needs of local communities.This project will help communities on the eastern Great Plains manage agricultural and water resources in the present, and prepare for potential future climate conditions. We will produce improved local climate and water use projections that can be used for planning purposes, identify strategies to help agricultural producers adapt to changing environmental conditions, and understand how these changes will affect rural communities. Furthermore, we will contribute to a highly skilled workforce in the region through the training of at least eight students, interns, and postdoctoral scholars, and educate the next generation by creating teaching toolkits for K-12 teachers across the state of Kansas.

Animal Health Component

60%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

40%

Applied

60%

Developmental

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
112	0320	2050	20%
803	6050	2060	20%
102	0210	2050	20%
132	5360	2070	20%
111	0210	2030	20%

Knowledge Area
803 - Sociological and Technological Change Affecting Individuals, Families, and Communities; 102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 112 - Watershed Protection and Management; 111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water; 132 - Weather and Climate;

Subject Of Investigation
0320 - Watersheds; 0210 - Water resources; 6050 - Communities, areas, and regions; 5360 - Drainage and irrigation facilities and systems;

Field Of Science
2070 - Meteorology and climatology; 2050 - Hydrology; 2030 - Geology; 2060 - Geography;

Keywords

socio-environmental systems

Goals / Objectives
Our overarching goal is to identify water and nutrient management strategies to enhance crop productivity, protect water quantity/quality, and sustain agricultural communities in the face of novel climate risks in the eastern Great Plains. We will accomplish this through a case study of the Eastern Kansas River Basin (EKSRB), an exemplar region exposed to these challenges, employing a blend of research, education, and outreach activities.Our research goals are equivalent to our project's four integrative research objectives:Objective 1: Simulate crop productivity, irrigation requirements, and nutrient loading under different climate and water/nutrient management scenarios.Objective 2: Scale field-level water quantity and quality impacts to subwatershed and basin-scale outcomesObjective 3: Assess current & future community resilience of the social-environmental systemObjective 4: Identify field- to landscape-scale agricultural management strategies to minimize trade-offs across outcomes and sectors under different climate scenariosTo accomplish these goals, we have discretized these four broad objectives into a series of 12 actionable sub-objectives, which we will accomplish through the research methods detailed in the 'Methods' section of the initiation report:Objective 1.1: Develop process-based models of yield, water use, and nitrate dynamics for rainfed and irrigated crops, calibrated using historical dataObjective 1.2: Downscale and bias-correct regional climate scenarios to quantify climate change scenario impacts on crop, water, and nutrient managementObjective 1.3: Simulate future yield, water use, and nitrate under different climate and water/nutrient management scenariosObjective 2.1: Quantify the response of the interconnected groundwater-surface water system to anthropogenic stress using time-series analysisObjective 2.2: Scale field-scale model outputs to subwatershed- and basin-scale water quality using statistical models at annual time scalesObjective 2.3: Use high-frequency sensor data to quantify sub-annual water quality dynamicsObjective 3.1: Relate agricultural and economic outcomes in rural communitiesObjective 3.2: Relate agricultural community economics and regional socio-economic trendsObjective 3.3: Quantify current and projected community resilience under different climate scenarios based on social, economic, and environmental conditionsObjective 4.1: Quantify surface water and groundwater quantity and quality needs for non-agricultural water users in the EKSRBObjective 4.2: Integrate agricultural, hydrologic, and socio-economic modeling toolsObjective 4.3: Optimize composition and management of agriculture to minimize trade-offs among water users and outcomesOur education goals are to recruit and train junior project personnel in integrative socio-environmental science techniques through participation in our research activities. This will involve at least three graduate students (M.S. or Ph.D. level), one postdoctoral scholar, two interns, and multiple undergraduate research assistants.Our outreach goals are to develop a strong group of stakeholders that are invested in our project's outcomes and contribute to our analyses in order to ensure local relevance of our products and results. To accomplish this goal, we have assembled a stakeholder advisory group that is made up of members of the state water management, policy, extension, and NGO community.

Project Methods
Our project will employ an interdisciplinary blend of methods drawn from the agronomy, hydrology/hydrogeology, biogeochemistry, and geography communities, as well as socio-environmental synthesis tools to achieve our project goals and objectives:Objective 1: Simulate crop productivity, irrigation requirements, and nutrient loading under different climate and water/nutrient management scenarios.We will assess the impact of different management strategies under multiple climate change scenarios, including hydroclimatic extremes, on the linked agro-hydrological system, including crop yield, irrigation use, return flows, and nitrate leaching. To accomplish this, we will develop regional downscaled and bias-corrected climate scenarios and use those as inputs to locally-calibrated agronomic models. For climate scenarios, we will develop downscaled general circulation model (GCM) outputs for the EKSRB. The GCM outputs will be obtained from CMIP6 for the baseline (1981-2010), near-term (2010-2039), mid-term (2040-2069), and long-term (2070-2099) future. Since CMIP6 underestimates aridity over the continental US, we will conduct seasonal bias-correction using historic Kansas Mesonet data within the EKSRB. We will calibrate and validate the DSSAT agro-hydrological model for the region using long-term historic datasets including yield, water use, and soil nitrogen. The calibrated model will be used to simulate crop productivity, irrigation water requirements, return flows, and nutrient loading for the historical period and future climate scenarios with alternative crop, water, and nutrient management practices. We will conduct a sensitivity analysis to identify the most critical environmental factors driving the variability in crop yield, crop water use, and nutrient loading in the EKSRB. Outcomes include field-resolution predictions of crop productivity, water quantity, and water quality for multiple management and climate scenarios, which will be used for analysis in Obj. 2, 3, and 4.Objective 2: Scale field-level water quantity and quality impacts to subwatershed and basin-scale outcomes.We will use statistical modeling approaches to identify the dominant drivers and potential future change of water quantity/quality in the EKSRB. To quantify the effects of irrigation on water resources, we will develop time-series models for groundwater-level data to aquifer stresses such as precipitation, evapotranspiration, pumping, and surface water levels. To understand how field-scale processes influence subwatershed- and basin-scale water quality, we will develop statistical models that relate watershed-scale pollutant sources and transport mechanisms to average annual N loads, and allow us to predict how climate and management affect nitrate loading within selected climate scenarios. To understand how land use and climate variability influence loading, we will leverage data from a network of high-frequency water quality sensors on the Kansas River. We will calculate nitrate export at event, seasonal, and annual time scales for the period of record at each water quality monitoring location. This will allow comparison of how measured annual yields for a given water year compare to longer-term mean annual yield estimates, as well as quantification of the importance of event export for total annual nitrate yields. Outcomes include groundwater storage, streamflow, and nitrate concentrations for current conditions and each of the scenarios from Obj. 1, and will be used for analysis in Obj. 3 and 4.Objective 3: Assess current & future community resilience of the social-environmental system.We will estimate socio-economic changes in EKSRB communities using statistical inference and map current and projected community resilience. First, the impacts of crop output metrics on associated economic outcomes will be evaluated using Bayesian statistical models. These models will be used to develop projections of credible economic outcomes that can be under future climate conditions. Second, Bayesian spatial and network models will be used to estimate the relationships between local agricultural economic outcomes and rural-urban development trends. Lastly, the examined socio-economic factors will be combined with measures of environmental capacities (sourced from Obj. 1 and 2) in the EKSRB to develop a measure of community resilience. Statistical and machine learning approaches will be used to examine the ability of the constructed index to reflect expected outcomes of improved community resilience. Community resilience will be calculated for census tracts and subwatersheds in the EKSRB for the baseline period and for each decade in projected climate and management scenarios.Objective 4: Identify field- to landscape-scale agricultural management strategies to minimize trade-offs across outcomes and sectors under different climate scenarios.We will use constrained optimization techniques to synthesize information and outcomes from Objectives 1-3 and identify optimal distributions of agricultural land and water use under different climate scenarios to enhance agricultural productivity while reducing impacts on water resources and minimizing trade-offs with environmental, municipal, and industrial users. We will identify current and projected future water quantity and quality needs for the environmental, municipal, and industrial sectors in the EKSRB. We will then synthesize the disciplinary modeling tools developed in Obj. 1-3 into an integrated approach that can evaluate interlinked agricultural, hydrological, and socio-economic processes. We will use constrained optimization to identify optimal irrigation, nutrient, and land use for each projected climate scenario. We will conduct separate optimizations for different targets (maximizing overall rainfed and irrigated crop yield, minimizing nitrate runoff, maximizing agricultural socio-economic community resilience) while subject to water quantity, water quality, and hydrostratigraphic constraints. We plan to work closely with our stakeholder advisory group to identify specific, locally-relevant optimization targets and weighting schemes which will build on the adaptation conversations from Obj. 3. This objective will identify sustainable transition pathways for the agricultural communities of the EKSRB to manage emerging climate risks without depleting or degrading water resources.EvaluationOur project also has a significant evaluation component. We will conduct regular internal and external assessments during our project meetings each academic term. Prior to these meetings, we will distribute a feedback questionnaire to the project team (spring and summer meetings) and the stakeholder advisory group (fall meeting) to collect both quantitative data (i.e., ratings on Likert scale) and qualitative feedback (through open-ended questions). Within the project team, we will self-assess the effectiveness of our internal procedures and communication, status of each objective, and potential interdependencies among project objectives. The stakeholder group will assess how actionable and relevant our work is to their group, effective strategies to communicate these results to stakeholders and the public; and what future research needs and questions are prompted by this work. Findings from these assessments will be incorporated into our annual project reports and used to ensure that we provide actionable information to relevant stakeholders.

Progress 05/15/24 to 05/14/25

Outputs
Target Audience:Broadly speaking, this project has two target audiences: (i) stakeholders in the Eastern Kansas River Basin (EKSRB), and (ii) the academic socio-environmental research community. In this section, we focus specifically on the first group (stakeholders), as the academic socio-environmental research community is more directly addressed through our products described below. Relevant stakeholders include water management and planning agencies in the state government, local agricultural extension agents and the producers that they serve, and environmental groups. In Y3, we engaged with a diversity of stakeholder groups spanning these different constituencies as described below. Stakeholder advisory group In Y3, we continued to work with our project's stakeholder advisory group to ensure our project is targeting decision-relevant processes and questions. The stakeholder advisory group includes representatives of diverse constituencies that all have a stake in the future of the Kansas River: the agricultural community (Meadowlark Extension District, Kansas Department of Agriculture), state/federal agencies (Kansas Water Office, U.S. Geological Survey), and non-governmental organizations (Friends of the Kaw, The Nature Conservancy, Kansas Rural Center, Kansas Alliance for Wetlands and Streams). We held a half-day meeting with this group in December 2024 focused on the theme of "levers of change". In this meeting, we worked collaboratively with the stakeholder group to share our findings and discuss what tools and practices are available to shape the future of the Kansas River Watershed. This was accomplished through a mixture of small group discussions in a 'world cafe' style setting where stakeholders focused on specific parts of the Kansas River Basin (agriculture, hydrology, climate, communities, etc.) combined with full-group discussion. Following the meeting, the researchers on the project systematically reviewed the feedback from the stakeholder advisory group meeting, categorizing it into low/medium/high effort and low/high impact groups to help prioritize efforts. On the basis of the needs identified by these stakeholders in previous meetnigs, we began a new project in September 2024 funded by the Kansas Water Office that is extending the work on hydroclimatic extremes developed as part of this USDA project beyond the Kansas River Basin to conduct a regional analysis. Other stakeholder engagement efforts Beyond the stakeholder advisory group, we have interacted closely with a wide range of stakeholders: The project team took a field trip to the Soldier Creek watershed, which is the headwaters of a tributary of the Kansas River. In Soldier Creek, one of our stakeholder advisory group members (Kansas Alliance for Wetlands and Streams) is working closely with local farmers, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to implement soil health management practices such as cover crops. KDHE and USGS are then conducting environmental monitoring to determine the effects of these practices on water quantity and quality. May 2025. PD Zipper participated in the Wakarusa River Valley Vision Plan - Conservation Focus Group Meeting. The Wakarusa River is a tributary of the Kansas River. April 2025. PD Zipper gave a presentation on "Climate change and water resources in the Kansas River Watershed", hosted by one of our stakeholder advisory group organizations (Friends of the Kaw), as part of their educational series. April 2025. PD Zipper participated in a discussion with a major food industry company, farmer, land holding company, and agricultural sensor company regarding water accounting and sustainability. March 2025. PD Zipper gave a presentation on "Climate change and water resources in Kansas" at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lawrence, February 2025. PD Zipper gave project update presentations to the Kansas and Missouri Regional Advisory Committees (RACs). RACs are stakeholder groups organized by the Kansas Water Office that provide guidance on watershed-scale management priorities, February 2025. PD Zipper gave a presentation on "Climate change and water resources in Kansas" to the Sierra Club - Kanza Chapter, November 2024. PD Zipper, co-PD Seybold, and KGS Outreach/Education staff had an educational table at the annual Beers of the Kaw fundraiser for Friends of the Kaw. November 2024. Co-PD Nelson participated in a facilitated workshop on developing a shared governance model for the Wildcat Creek Watershed in Manhattan, Kansas, May 2025. Co-PD Nelson led the organization of, and facilitated, a strategic planning workshop with faculty and nearly 20 water stakeholder group representatives for the Missouri Water Center, May 2025. Nelson now serves as the Associate Director of the Missouri Water Center. Co-PD Seybold participated in/presented on "Watershed controls on nitrate dynamics & export in Kansas" at the Water Research Regional Planning Workshop at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Co-PD Seybold participated in a series of interagency coordination meetings/webinars hosted by the Kansas Water Office on water quality in the Kansas River watershed and represented project activities. Co-PD Seybold gave a seminar on project water quality research entitled "Exploring Multi-Scale Controls on Nitrate Export in the Kansas River Watershed" at the University of Kansas 75th Annual Environmental Engineering Conference in Lawrence, KS. Student Onyekwelu gave a talk at the Corteva Agriscience New Frontiers Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Selected as one of the 8 graduate students New Frontier Scholars in North America, June 2024. Student Onyekwelu gave a talk at the Corteva Agriscience DELTA Symposium in Johnston, IA, September 2024. Staff member Howlader and students Hatley and Chatterjee presented posters at the Kansas Governer's Water Conference in Manhattan KS in November 2024. Changes/Problems:Postdoc Talukdar successfully obtained a tenure-track faculty position and left the project. While this is a major accomplishment for him and represents a positive project outcome for training and professional development, it has left the project short-staffed and slowed progress on Objective 4. Staff data analyst Howlader has filled some of these responsibilities and we are in the process of back-filling this position. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This project is currently training four Ph.D. students and one postdoctoral scholar in a variety of disciplines, and each Ph.D. student is being mentored by a project co-PD: Seybold mentoring students Hatley and Chatterjee Nelson mentoring student Chavez Sharda mentoring student Onyekwelu Zipper mentoring postdoc Talukdar Additionally, a summer intern (Sumiaya Amin Preota) participated in the project in Summer 2024 (supervised by postdoc Talukdar and PD Zipper) and conducted a comparison of hydroclimatic extremes calculated from gridded and station-based data. This work was published as a KGS Open-File Report (Preota et al., 2025). This work is now being continued by staff data analyst Howlader. Following her internship, Preota returned to her graduate work as a M.S. student in the School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV). Ph.D. students have been undergoing training through appropriate disciplinary coursework as well as regular one-on-one mentoring from their supervisors and project-wide mentoring from other project participants during regular meetings. Ph.D. student Onyekwelu completed his PhD in May 2025 and was named Dr. Naiqian Zhang Graduate Student of the Year by his department for outstanding academic performance, research excellence, and leadership. Overall, Onyekwelu attended 7 conferences, gave 8 presentations, and received a total of 11 awards in 2024/2025 academic year. PhD student Chavez successfully completed her preliminary exams in December 2024. PhD student Chavez was selected for the Bill Anderson Foundation Fellowship that is dedicated to addressing disaster disparities and focused on providing fellows with professional development training. Postdoc Talukdar successfully moved on to a tenure-track faculty position in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, India. Project members have also attended a diversity of conferences and workshops to gain increased knowledge and skill in related topics. During Y3, project participants attended and/or presented at the following conferences: Zipper: WaterSciCon (June 2024); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2024). Seybold: WaterSciCon (June 2024); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2024). Sharda: American Society of Biological and Agricultural Engineers (July 2024) Nelson: American Association of Geographers (March 2025) Chatterjee: WaterSciCon (June 2024); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2024). Hatley: WaterSciCon (June 2024); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2024). Chavez: Annual Natural Hazards Research and Application Workshop (July 2025) Onyekwelu: Corteva Agriscience New Frontiers Conference (June 2024), ASABE Conf. (July 2024), Corteva DELTA Symposium (September 2024), South Dakota State University Student Water Conference (October 2024), ASA-CSSA-SSSA (November 2024), Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2024). Talukdar: WaterSciCon (June 2024); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2024); American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (December 2024). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? One primary mechanism for dissemination of the stakeholder advisory group meeting held in December 2024 and described in the target audience section (above). During this meeting, we described planned objectives and methods and preliminary analysis and received feedback on our planned work. Additionally, project participants have met to discuss this project with other groups including farmers, environmental NGOs, policy groups, energy utilities, and a variety of other stakeholders. These one-on-one and small group meetings have provided a venue to both share our results and receive feedback and guidance to ensure management-relevant activities. These efforts are described in detail in the 'Target Audience' section, above. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Finalize manuscript submission to a journal. Data-sharing and collaboration among different teams of the project to integrate crop yield and irrigation models with other disciplinary objectives. Extend the use of the gridded outcomes for improving yield component predictions by model fusion (machine learning and mechanistic models). Objective 2: Finalize publication of the event-scale nitrate manuscript (currently in review). Submit publication on annual scale nitrate flux model (currently in prep). Finalize analysis on alluvial aquifer time series modeling and move towards drafting manuscript. Work with project team on ways to incorporate interannual climate variability into future climate projections and model outputs. Objective 3: Finalize analysis and manuscript on external validation of the adaptive capacity index. Work with team to integrate water and crop projections into models and develop assumptions for story based scenarios in order to finalize projections of social and economic factors, and an associated resilience metric. Hire an undergraduate student on Fall 2025 to assist in data organization and sharing activities and finalize visualizations of projections or fine-tune the dashboard prototype. Objective 4: Finalize coupled modeling framework that will be used in optimization. Conduct single-objective and multi-objective optimization for different targets to assess impacts. Present Objective 4 findings at a conference and share with stakeholders for feedback. Additionally, we will continue to meet regularly with stakeholders to guide all project objectives.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Impact paragraph Our project seeks to understand how climate and agricultural management practices will affect the linked agricultural-hydrological-social system in the Kansas River Watershed. To accomplish this, we first developed models of crop productivity, water resources, and community socio-economics that will be used to explore different future scenarios. In the third year of our project, we have developed functional models to predict the majority of our needed agronomic, hydrologic, and social components of the Kansas River Watershed system including crop yield, irrigation requirements, annual and event-scale nitrate transport, and producer income, and community adaptive capacity. These models have been presented at various conferences and several manuscripts have been submitted to journals. To bring these separate disciplinary modeling tools together, in Y3 we developed a framework for coupling these models and performing optimization for different objectives. We have conducted preliminary test optimizations in our framework, and are in the process of finalizing necessary input data and models. All this work has been guided by stakeholders from across the watershed, and we held a successful stakeholder advisory group meeting with representatives from agricultural extension, state agencies, and watershed environmental groups to understand their research needs and priorities for the watershed, and also carried out a project field trip to an agricultural region with substantial cover crop integration. In sum, we have built the analytical infrastructure and personnel group that will allow our project to link human actions to key outcomes such as crop productivity, irrigation requirements, and socio-economic change in the watershed. Objective 1 Assessed the impacts of root proliferation adaptation strategies on rainfed maize production under current and future climate conditions, including both yield and water productivity metrics. Developed a Bayesian framework for sampling photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), a very important energy variable required by plants for photosynthesis. Sampled PAR inputs led to improvement in traditional methods and soybean yield prediction in EKSRB. Used biophysical crop models for spatially-distributed quantification of climate impacts under different irrigation management scenarios in EKSRB. Developed high-resolution in-silico adaptation strategies for improving irrigated maize productivity in EKSRB. Objective 2 Completed a correlation analysis to identify the drivers of event-scale nitrate export from the EKSRB. This analysis revealed differential controls on nitrate export across the spatial extent of the basin depending on local land covers. In predominantly agricultural regions, drier antecedent moisture conditions consistently led to greater degrees of nitrate enrichment in the Kansas River following a storm event. In more urban areas, however, the intensity of rainfall was more strongly linked to nitrate enrichment and antecedent conditions were less important. The correlation analysis also revealed how reservoir operations within the EKSRB had variable impacts on downstream water quality depending on the individual properties of the reservoirs releasing water during a flow event. Developed a statistical time series model that can accurately reproduce historical groundwater levels in the Kansas River Alluvial Aquifer using inputs of precipitation, temperature, and irrigation water use. Future climate and irrigation scenarios produced and used throughout the other objectives of this project will be fed into the model to project long-term trends in groundwater availability in the connected groundwater-surface water system. Developed a multi linear regression (MLR) model to identify key drivers of annual nitrate flux in the EKSRB. Our analysis revealed that climate variables (precipitation, SPEI and precipitation percentile change) and irrigation water use were the most significant predictors of annual nitrate export during the historical period (1998-2022). Used the MLR model trained on historical data, coupled with downscaled GCM projections (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5), to predict future annual nitrate flux (2025-2099) in the EKSRB. Predictions indicated a slight increasing trend in median nitrate export across both scenarios, with high interannual variability under future climate scenarios. Objective 3 A manuscript evaluating different adaptive capacity indicators was submitted to the journal Natural Hazards for peer review. Stakeholder feedback from the fall 2024 meeting was aggregated into a set of "story based" scenarios for anchoring future projections. A workflow for projecting socioeconomic measures associated with adaptive capacity and resilience was developed and preliminary projections for six versions of one of the story based scenarios, integrating the team's climate-based yield projections, have been completed. Objective 4 Developed an optimization framework coupling crop productivity, irrigation water use, water quality, and socio-economics using land use and irrigation practices as a decision variable. Conducted preliminary optimization tests to evaluate different land cover impacts on nitrate loading. Identified suite of optimization targets and constraints that will be used for research study. We are in the process of compiling data and integrating models to carry out our planned multi-objective optimization.

Publications

Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Chatterjee S, Seybold EC, Zipper S. (2024). Assessing future nitrate yield in the Eastern Kansas River Basin: Implications of Climate Variability. Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Hatley C, Seybold EC, Zipper S. (2024). Future groundwater availability in the Kansas River Alluvial Aquifer. Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Howlader A, S Zipper, E Seybold (2024). Decreasing streamflow trends in the Kansas River Watershed. Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Chatterjee S, Seybold EC. Zipper SC. (2024). Exploring Temporal Dynamics of Nitrate Export in the Eastern Kansas River Basin. WaterSciCon24, St. Paul, MN.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Hatley CM, Seybold EC, Zipper SC, Kincaid DW, Underwood KL, Rizzo DM, Perdrial JN, Li L, Burgin AM. (2024). Event-scale concentration-discharge relationships in a strongly reservoir-impacted regional river basin. WaterSciCon24, St. Paul, MN.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Seybold EC. Exploring Multi-Scale Controls on Nitrate Export in the Kansas River Watershed. University of Kansas 75th Annual Environmental Engineering Conference, Lawrence, KS.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Chavez Reyes D, Nelson K, Zipper S (2025). Variability of an adaptive capacity index to construction method and socio-economic context. Paper presentation hosted by 50th Annual Natural Hazards Research and Application Workshop, Broomfield, CO.
Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Preota, S.A., Talukdar, G., Zipper, S., 2025. Evaluating annual precipitation extremes in the U.S. Great Plains using PRISM data (KGS Open-File Report No. 20251). Kansas Geological Survey, Lawrence KS.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., & Welch, S.M. (2024). in silico Evidence for Improving Irrigated Maize Productivity based on Doubled-Haploid and Agronomic Management under Climate Change. ASA-CSSA-SSSA Meeting.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., & Welch, S.M. (2024). Evidence for Improving Irrigated Maize Yield Potential and Water Use based on Doubled-Haploid and Agronomic Management under Climate Change. South Dakota State University Student Water Conference.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I. (2024). Improving Irrigated Maize Yield Potential and Water Use based on Doubled Haploid Traits and Agronomic Management under Climate Change. Corteva DELTA Symposium.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., & Welch, S.M. (2024). Fine-Scale Spatial Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Maize Productivity and Water Use Dynamics in the US Great Plains. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Conference.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2024). A Bayesian Regression Approach for Estimating Photosynthetically Active Radiation using Satellite Data: Implications for Soybean Yield Prediction using the CROPGRO Model. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Conference.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I. (2024). Root Proliferation Adaptation Strategy Impacts Maize Productivity: Insights from Crop Simulation Model under Future Climate Change. Corteva New Frontiers Conference.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., & Welch, S.M. (2024). in silico Evidence for Improving Irrigated Maize Productivity based on Doubled-Haploid and Agronomic Management under Climate Change. Kansas Governors Water Conference.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Talukdar G, SA Preota, C Hatley, A Custard, EC Seybold, S Zipper (2024). Increasing Compound Wet Extremes in the US Great Plains over last 100 years. American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Talukdar G, S Preota, C Hatley, A Custard, E Seybold, S Zipper (2024). Increasing compound wet extremes in the US Great Plains over last 100 years. Governors Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Talukdar G, S Zipper, A Custard, C Hatley, EC Seybold (2024). Unraveling Changing Precipitation Patterns over US Great Plains. WaterSciCon24.
Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Zipper, S., Welch, S., & Sharda, V. (2025). Quantifying future climate impacts on maize productivity under different irrigation management strategies: A high-resolution spatial analysis in the U.S. Great Plains. Agricultural Water Management, (313), 109490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2025.109490
Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Sen, R., Sharda, V., Zambreski, Z.T., Onyekwelu, I., & Nelson, K.S. (2024) Effects of future climate on suitability of major crops in Eastern Kansas River Basin. Journal of Water and Land Development, (63), 145-157. https://www.jwld.pl/files/2024-04-JWLD-17.pdf
Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2024). A Bayesian Regression Approach for Estimating Photosynthetically Active Radiation using Satellite Data: Implications for Soybean Yield Prediction using the CROPGRO Model. Earth Systems and Environment, 8(2). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41748-024-00391-3
Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2024). Root Proliferation Adaptation Strategy Improved Maize Productivity in the US Great Plains: Insights from Crop Simulation Model under Future Climate Change. Science of the Total Environment, 927, 172205 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.172205

Progress 05/15/23 to 05/14/24

Outputs
Target Audience:Broadly speaking, this project has two target audiences: (i) stakeholders in the Eastern Kansas River Basin (EKSRB), and (ii) the academic socio-environmental research community. In this section, we focus specifically on the first group (stakeholders), as the academic socio-environmental research community is more directly addressed through our products described below. Relevant stakeholders include water management and planning agencies in the state government, local agricultural extension agents and the producers that they serve, and environmental groups. In Y2, we engaged with a diversity of stakeholder groups spanning these different constituencies as described below. Stakeholder advisory group In Y2, we continued to work with our project's stakeholder advisory group to ensure our project is targeting decision-relevant processes and questions. The stakeholder advisory group includes representatives of diverse constituencies that all have a stake in the future of the Kansas River: the agricultural community (Meadowlark Extension District, Kansas Department of Agriculture), state/federal agencies (Kansas Water Office, Kansas Department of Health and Environment, U.S. Geological Survey), and non-governmental organizations (Friends of the Kaw, The Nature Conservancy, Kansas Rural Center). We held a half-day meeting with this group in October 2023 in which we shared the concept map developed during our Y1 stakeholder advisory group meeting, and then asked each of the participants to rank the aspects of the map most important to address for a resilient future of the Kansas River. This prompt was used to seed full-group discussion and development of a "group consensus" concept map with variable rankings. PhD student Chavez then digitized the individual and group information which she and Co-PD Nelson used to descriptively analyze differences in perceived importance of system variables across researchers and stakeholders. The preliminary results point to the importance of stakeholder participation as a balancing perspective, even on an interdisciplinary team, that can help refocus researcher efforts outside of their primary areas of expertise. Following the meeting, the researchers on the project systematically reviewed the feedback from the stakeholder advisory group meeting, categorizing it into low/medium/high effort and low/high impact groups to help prioritize efforts. This process led to several key insights, for instance that stakeholders in the basin are particularly interested in extreme events (droughts and floods), as this is the period in which the linked social-agricultural-hydrological system is under the greatest stress. On the basis of the needs identified by these stakeholders, we applied for and received funding from the Kansas Water Office to extend the work on hydroclimatic extremes developed during this USDA project beyond the Kansas River Basin to a statewide analysis. Other stakeholder engagement efforts Beyond the stakeholder advisory group, we have interacted closely with a wide range of stakeholders: PD Zipper represented our project at a Kansas River Cleanup organized by Friends of the Kaw, a local watershed NGO. April 2024. PD Zipper met with Lawrence Arts Center and KGS Outreach/Education staff about opportunities for science-art integration focused around Kansas' water resources. February 2024. Graduate student Hatley and KGS Outreach/Education staff had an educational table at the annual Beers of the Kaw fundraiser for Friends of the Kaw. PD Zipper organized a discussion with the Kansas Department of Agriculture-Division of Water Resources about the potential role of deep learning in water management. October 2023. PD Zipper met with an NGO (The Nature Conservancy) and water tech company (Foundry Spatial) on appropriate tools for streamflow depletion assessment in well permitting. October 2023. PD Zipper met with the Kansas Department of Agriculture-Division of Water Resources on current state-level water research priorities. July 2023. PD Zipper met with Savion and Evergy about ecology and hydrology aspects of proposed Kansas Sky Energy Project solar development in the Kansas River Watershed near Lawrence KS. June 2023. PD Zipper met with Evergy Corporate Strategy and Corporate Sustainability staff on climate resiliency in Kansas. June 2023. Co-PD Nelson attended a Natural Stormwater Solution Forum to discuss flood mitigation opportunities in Paxico, KS. December 2023. Co-PD Nelson discussed wheat production sustainability challenges with Kansas producers at the Wheat Value Chain Sustainability Summit held in Manhattan, KS. March 2024. Ph.D. student Chavez attended the 2023 Food and Farm Conference held by the Kansas Rural Center and distributed informational flyers to engage more stakeholders in Topeka,KS. November 2023. Changes/Problems:Co-PD Nelson has accepted a position at the University of Missouri, and will be moving away from Kansas State University in summer 2024. We are in the process of altering the subaward for Kansas State to create a new subrecipient at the University of Missouri to support Dr. Nelson. Ph.D. student Chavez will complete her graduate work at Kansas State University with the continued support of co-PD Nelson but an alternate formal advisor. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This project is currently training four Ph.D. students and one postdoctoral scholar in a variety of disciplines, and each Ph.D. student is being mentored by a project co-PD: Seybold mentoring students Hatley and Chatterjee Nelson mentoring student Chavez Sharda mentoring student Onyekwelu Zipper mentoring postdoc Talukdar Ph.D. students are all in their second or third years, and therefore have been undergoing training through appropriate disciplinary coursework as well as regular one-on-one mentoring from their supervisors and project-wide mentoring from other project participants during regular meetings. Additionally, a summer intern (Alaura Custard) participated in the project in Summer 2023 (supervised by Co-PD Seybold and graduate student Hatley) and conducted preliminary analysis on historical trends in hydroclimatic extremes. This work is now being continued by postdoc Talukdar. Following her internship, Custard entered the M.S. program in Geology at the University of Kansas. Project members have also attended a diversity of conferences and workshops to gain increased knowledge and skill in related topics. During Y2, project participants attended and/or presented at the following conferences: Zipper: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2023); American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (December 2023). Seybold: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2023) Nelson: DA3 - Digital Ag & Advanced Analytics Symposium (2023); American Association of Geographers (April 2024) Chatterjee: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2023) Hatley: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2023) Chavez: Kansas Rural Center Annual Conference (November 2023); Regional American Association of Geographers (November 2023) Onyekwelu: DA3 - Digital Ag & Advanced Analytics Symposium (October 2023); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2023); ASA-CSSA-SSSA Meeting (October 2023); South Dakota State University Student Water Conference (October 2023); BioKansas Innovation Festival (August 2023); American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) (July 2023) Talukdar: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2023) Ph.D. student Camden Hatley was awarded the Frank C. Foley Groundwater Student Travel Award ($300) by the Kansas Geological Survey, which will allow him to present his work at the American Geophysical Union's Water Science Conference (WaterSciCon) in June 2024. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? One primary mechanism for dissemination of the stakeholder advisory group meeting held in October 2023 and described in the target audience section (above). During this meeting, we described planned objectives and methods and preliminary analysis and received feedback on our planned work. Additionally, project participants have met to discuss this project with other groups including farmers, environmental NGOs, policy groups, energy utilities, and a variety of other stakeholders. These one-on-one and small group meetings have provided a venue to both share our results and receive feedback and guidance to ensure management-relevant activities. These efforts are described in detail in the 'Target Audience' section, above. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Complete long-term characterization of changes in annual and seasonal climatic extremes. Evaluate fine-scale spatial analysis of irrigated maize productivity and water use dynamics under future climate change. This will be carried out through a case study focused on Shawnee County, KS, which is in the center of our study domain. Evaluate the roles of stacked adaptation strategies on irrigated maize productivity based on doubled haploid genetic evidence under future climate change. This will be accomplished through varying plant biophysical parameters in the process-based DSSAT models developed as part of Obj. 1 in Y1 and Y2. Objective 2: Convert results of event-scale concentration-discharge analysis to an assessment of high-nitrate event risk under future climate projections, to be used in the synthesis modeling. This will be accomplished through simulating additional scenarios using the event-scale nitrate models developed as part of Obj. 2 in Y1 and Y2. Conduct time series analysis of groundwater levels in a network of groundwater monitoring wells along the Kansas River alluvial aquifer to identify impacts of climate and irrigation pumping on the aquifer-river system. We will also conduct targeted sampling of groundwater quality at these wells, including supporting a Summer 2024 intern, to characterize water quality impacts. We will quantify changes in annual-resolution nitrate flux under future climate scenarios. We will accomplish this by utilizing aggregated MACA v2 Climate Data (2025-2100) as inputs into the annual-resolution nitrate models developed as part of Obj. 2 in Y1 and Y2. Objective 3: Finalize egression models linking farm economics to community economics to enable additional social variable projections. Develop a workflow for producing climate projection variables in formats compatible with the resilience index data. This will allow us to analyze potential changes in community resilience in future climate scenarios. In Y3, preliminary projections of social and economic factors, and resulting resilience projections, will be produced using an automated workflow (to enable updates based on adaptation scenarios). In addition, external validation of the developed adaptive capacity index will be finalized for at least one type of adverse climate conditions (drought). Objective 4: Integrate different disciplinary modeling tools (hydrology, agriculture, socio-economic) to develope a holistic approach to understand the future of the Kansas River Basin. This will be used to simulate different climate and management scenarios to investigate the response of key outcome variables such as crop yield, irrigation requirements, and water quality. Develop optimization approach for simulating potential strategies for achieving different targest, which will be parameterized as alternative objectives within the model. Additionally, we will continue to meet regularly with stakeholders, including holding a third stakeholder advisory group meeting in Fall 2024

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Impact paragraph Our project seeks to understand how climate and agricultural management practices will affect the linked agricultural-hydrological-social system in the Kansas River Watershed. To accomplish this, we first need to develop models of how crop productivity, water resources, and communities have varied in the past so that we can then explore different future scenarios. In the second year of our project, we have developed functional models to predict key agronomic, hydrologic, and social components of the Kansas River Watershed system including crop yield, irrigation requirements, annual and event-scale nitrate transport, and producer income, and community adaptive capacity. These models include a range of process-based and statistical approaches, depending on the specific target variables being predicted, and all have been presented at various conferences and are in the process of writing up manuscripts for submissions to journals. This modeling work has provided insights into the key drivers of change for our study region, which are described in relation to each objective below. To bring these separate disicplinary modeling tools together, in Y2 we onboarded a new postdoctoral scholar, Gaurav Talukdar, to the project who has begun developing a framework for coupling these models and performing optimization for different objectives. All this work has been guided by stakeholders from across the watershed, including holding a stakeholder advisory group meeting with representatives from agricultural extension, state agencies, and watershed environmental groups to understand their research needs and priorities for the watershed. In sum, we have built the analytical infrastructure and personnel group that will allow our project to link human actions to key outcomes such as crop productivity, irrigation requirements, and socio-economic change in the watershed. Objective 1 Developed process-based irrigated crop models of maize yield and rainfed crop models of maize, soybean, and winter wheat using the DSSAT framework, including validation against historical data. Simulation results showed that yield would likely be reduced consistent irrigation levels under future climate change, with magnitude of impacts controlled by soil variability. We also tested the impacts of a novel root proliferation adaptation strategy on rainfed maize production under future climate change, finding that it could reduce yield reductions.. We developed an improved approach to obtain photosynthetically active radiation input using Bayesian regression approach for soybean yield prediction, leading to an improvement in model performance. We aggregated a regional-scale database of hydroclimatic data (precipitation, etc.) and assessed long-term trends in both average and extreme conditions within the Kansas River basin. These results showed that there have primarily been increases in annual precipitation or non-significant changes over the past 120 years, with relatively few areas of decreasing precipitation. We also assessed a variety of approaches to quantify changing hydroclimatic extremes (drought and deluge) at the annual scale, and found that there has been a long-term increasing trend in wet extremes over the past 120 years. Objective 2 We applied various statistical methods (correlation analysis, linear/multilinear regression, hierarchical clustering, and random forest) to identify links between Kansas River flow event characteristics (precipitation amounts, antecedent conditions, reservoir releases, etc.) and event-scale nitrate concentration dynamics. Results show that higher precipitation intensities and drier antecedent conditions (both short- and long-term) lead to greater levels of nitrate enrichment during a storm event, but only in the southern and eastern portions of the basin; nitrate dynamics at the basin outlet seem to be insensitive to hydroclimatic conditions in the distal regions of the basin due to long water travel times and/or interception by major reservoirs. We employed Weighted Regressions on Time, Discharge and Season (WRTDS) models for Kasnas River stream gaging stations at DeSoto (USGS gage 06892350), Lecompton (USGS gage 06891000) and Wamego (USGS gage 06887500) to estimate the average daily nitrate flux from 1998-2022. We then developed regression models to examine the relationship of precipitation, temperature, land use, drought index, fertilizer application, growing degree days and well water irrigation with annual and seasonal nitrate flux in the EKSRB under historical conditions. Objective 3 We finalized the construction method for developing an index for the adaptive capacity component of resilience, and code for automating this process. We extended this analysis from Y1 through incorporating more environmental variables linked to other project objectives and that reflect stakeholder concerns. We continue to work on external validation of the index in the context of adverse climate conditions continues. We developed panel regression models linking crop yields and crop acreage to farm income and farm employment. These generalized models indicate positive relationships between farm income and yields, irrigated acres, and livestock purchases and a positive relationship between farm employment and crop acreage and the number of operations. These models will be used for generating projections of social factors included in the resilience index. We are working on developing a workflow for processing climate projections to a form compatible with other variables used for the resilience metric to enable resilience projections is in progress. Objective 4 During Y2, we hired and onboarded a postdoctoral scholar, Gaurav Talukdar, at the Kansas Geological Survey/University of Kansas who will lead project-wide synthesis efforts (supervised by project PD Zipper). Talukdar began in October 2023. We developed a conceptual model and framework for linking together agricultural, hydrologic, and socio-economic modeling tools being created in Objectives 1-3. This includes detailed metadata on the variables that will be exchanged between models, and the relevant spatial and temporal reslutions at which models will be coupled. Based on this model coupling, we then identified different optimization targets relevant to hydrologic, agronomic, and social project objectives. This is the basis for the optimization framework we will focus on developing in Y3.

Publications

Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., Welch, S.M., & Lin, X. (2023). Managing irrigation water resources under novel climate risks in the Eastern Kansas River Basin of the US Great Plains. BioKansas Innovation Festival, Kansas City MO. August 3-5, 2023
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., Welch, S.M., & Lin, X. (2023). Towards managing and preserving irrigation resources under novel climate risks in the Eastern Kansas River Basin of the US Great Plains. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Conference, Omaha NE. July 9-12, 2023
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Chavez, D. & Nelson. K. (2023, October). Adaptive Capacity in Kansas: An Uncertainty Analysis. Great Plains/Rocky Mountains Division of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, Sioux Falls, SD.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2023, November). Beyond Water Stress: Modeling Future Maize Productivity in the Eastern Kansas River Basin. Graduate Student Poster Session, Kansas Governors Water Conference, Manhattan, Kansas, USA.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2023). Agricultural adaptation to future climate risks: modeling irrigation water use in Eastern Kansas River Basin. DA3: Digital Ag & Advanced Analytics Symposium. Manhattan, KS. October 23, 2023
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Hatley C., Seybold E., Zipper S., Burgin, A., Kincaid, D., Underwood K., Perdria J., Li, L., (2023, November). Event-Scale Nitrate Transport Dynamics in the Kansas River Basin. Kansas Governor's Water Conference, Manhattan, Kansas, USA
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Chatterjee, S., Seybold, E., Zipper, S., (2023 November). Exploring Temporal Trends of Nitrate Export in the Eastern Kansas River Basin. Kansas Governor's Water Conference, Manhattan, Kansas, USA
Type: Websites Status: Published Year Published: 2023 Citation: Project website published at https://safekaw-ku.hub.arcgis.com/
Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2024). A Bayesian Regression Approach for Estimating Photosynthetically Active Radiation Using Satellite Data: Implications for Soybean Yield Prediction using the CROPGRO Model. Earth Systems and Environment, 1-18.
Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2024). Root proliferation adaptation strategy improved maize productivity in the US Great Plains: Insights from crop simulation model under future climate change. Science of the Total Environment, 927, 172205.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., Zipper, S., Lin, X., & Welch, S.M. (2024, March). Understanding the Dynamics of Maize Productivity and Water Use in the US Great Plains under Changing Climate: A Fine-Scale Spatial Analysis. K-GRAD Oral Presentation Session for Graduate Students, Kansas State University, USA.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2023). A Bayesian regression approach to estimating photosynthetically active radiation using satellite data: application to soybean crop model. ASA-CSSA-SSSA Meeting, St. Louis, MO. October 28 November 01, 2023
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., Sharda, V., & Zipper, S. (2023). Managing irrigation water resources under novel climate risks: A Spatial Crop Model Framework for the Eastern Kansas River Basin of the US Great Plains. South Dakota Student Water Conference. Brookings, SD. October 10-11, 2023

Progress 05/15/22 to 05/14/23

Outputs
Target Audience:Broadly speaking, this project has two target audiences: (i) stakeholders in the Eastern Kansas River Basin (EKSRB), and (ii) the academic socio-environmental research community. In this section, we focus specifically on the first group (stakeholders), as the academic socio-environmental research community is more directly addressed through our products described below. Relevant stakeholders include water management and planning agencies in the state government, local agricultural extension agents and the producers that they serve, and environmental groups. In Y1, we engaged with a diversity of stakeholder groups spanning these different constituencies as described below. Stakeholder advisory group In Y1, we assembled a stakeholder advisory group to meet regularly with our research team and ensure our project is targeting decision-relevant processes and questions. The stakeholder advisory group includes representatives of diverse constituencies that all have a stake in the future of the Kansas River: the agricultural community (Meadowlark Extension District), state agencies (Kansas Water Office, Kansas Department of Health and Environment), and non-governmental organizations (Friends of the Kaw, The Nature Conservancy). We held a half-day meeting with this group in October 2022 in which we asked each of the participants to envision the future of the Kansas River Watershed, and their role in it, using the following prompts: Draw a picture/diagram of how you see climate change impacting the Kansas River Basin Think about... Where will primary impacts be felt first/most strongly? What will be secondary impacts and what will control their propagation? Where is your organization working in the system? What would you like the basin to look like in 2100 and how do we get there? This prompt was used to seed full-group discussion, during which Co-PD Dr. Nelson developed a concept map showing key concepts discussed and links between them: This process led to several key insights, for instance that stakeholders in the basin are particularly interested in extreme events (droughts and floods), as this is the period in which the linked social-agricultural-hydrological system is under the greatest stress. We have regularly referred back to this concept map as we design and conduct analyses. ? Other stakeholder engagement efforts Beyond the stakeholder advisory group, we have interacted closely with a wide range of stakeholders: PD Zipper and co-PD Seybold met with the Kansas River watershed coordinator for the Kansas Alliance for Wetlands and Streams, a water quality-focused NGO. PD Zipper and co-PD Seybold presented a seminar at the US Geological Survey's Kansas Water Science Center highlighting work so far related to water quality in the Kansas River. PD Zipper and co-PDs Seybold and Sharda attended the Kansas Governor's Water Conferences, hosted by the Kansas Water Office, which is widely attended by both the research and stakeholder communities. At this conference, we met with a variety of relevant stakeholders. PD Zipper and co-PD Seybold met with BNIM Architecture staff, a Kansas City-based architecture firm, about the potential for collaboration on an Inland Water Institute in the Kansas River Watershed. PD Zipper and co-PD Seybold are part of the US Army Corps of Engineers/The Nature Conservancy Sustainable Rivers Program working group and participated in a workshop in October 2022 to review and comment on environmental flow recommendations. Co-PD Seybold attended several meetings organized by the US Army Corps on a proposed water injection dredging pilot project in Tuttle Creek Reservoir, a part of the SAFEKAW study domain. This included a scientific advisory workshop to discuss monitoring potential environmental impacts in June 2022. Graduate student Camden Hatley presented his ongoing work to the NSF Critical Zone Collaborative Network "Big Data" research group to share his work and identify future collaboration points. Graduate student Camden Hatley attended and participated in a Time Series analysis workshop organized by the NSF Critical Zone Collaborative Network "Big Data" group to provide training on implementing statistical tools on large data sets. Graduate student Denise Chavez has met with local agricultural and rural community leaders to garner support for social science activities related to the project. These include meetings with the President of the Kansas Farmer Union, Executive Director of the Kansas Rural Center, and Executive Director of the Chapman Center for Rural Studies. Changes/Problems:Data availability for water quality data has been more discontinuous and limited than anticipated. This does not change the scope of the objectives or planned work, but has necessitated a re-evaluation of the most appropriate statistical modeling techniques to match the spatial and temporal data available in the region. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? This project is currently training four Ph.D. students in a variety of disciplines, and each Ph.D. student is being mentored by a project co-PD: Seybold mentoring Hatley and Chatterjee Nelson mentoring Chavez Sharda mentoring Onyekwelu Ph.D. students are all in their first or second years, and therefore have been undergoing training through appropriate disciplinary coursework as well as regular one-on-one mentoring from their supervisors and project-wide mentoring from other project participants during regular meetings. Additionally, we have recruited a summer intern that will begin in May 2023 conducting hydrologic analysis. Project members have also attended a diversity of conferences and workshops to gain increased knowledge and skill in related topics. During Y1, project participants attended and/or presented at the following conferences: Zipper: Geological Society of America (October 2022), Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2022); Water for Food Global Conference (May 2023). Seybold: American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (December 2022). Sharda: American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America International Conference in Baltimore (November 2022). Nelson: American Association of Geographers Annual Conference (March 2023); Kansas Association of Mappers (October 2022); A Community on Ecosystem Services (ACES) Annual Conference (December 2022); and Digital Agriculture and Advanced Analytics (DA3) Ideation and Networking (February 2023) Chatterjee: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2022) Hatley: Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2022); American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (December 2022); CZCN Big Data Time Series workshop (March - April 2023) Chavez: American Association of Geographers Annual Conference (March 2023) & Farm & Food Conference by the Kansas Rural Center (Nov 2022) Onyekwelu: American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America International Conference in Baltimore (November 2022); Kansas Governor's Water Conference (November 2022); Water for Food Global Conference (May, 2023). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? One primary mechanism for dissemination of the stakeholder advisory group meeting held in October 2022 and described in the Target Audience section of the annual report. During this meeting, we described planned objectives and methods and preliminary analysis and received feedback on our planned work. Additionally, project participants have met to discuss this project with other groups including: Kansas Alliance for Wetlands and Streams US Geological Survey Kansas Water Science Center Kansas Farmer Union Kansas Rural Center Chapman Center for Rural Studies BNIM Architecture US Army Corps of Engineers These one-on-one and small group meetings have provided a venue to both share our results and receive feedback and guidance to ensure management-relevant activities. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Objective 1: In Y2, we will conduct a case study of crop productivity under different irrigation management strategies focused on Shawnee County, which is in our study domain. We are assembling and converting necessary crop model inputs to model specific formats for the basin-wide project. Simulated model outputs will be compared to yield and irrigation data to assess model performance. We have already drafted an abstract for this study titled: "Towards managing and preserving irrigation resources under novel climate risks in the Eastern Kansas River Basin" and have been accepted for the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers conference this coming July (2023). Objective 2: We will aggregate all index well time series data as well as descriptive metadata such as electrical conductivity profiles and geographical coordinates. We will continue data aggregation of predictor and response variables for models to predict water quality over event time scales. After reviewing data availability, we will finalize planned statistical modeling approaches and begin developing predictive models for historical nitrate export. Objective 3: We will update our conceptual model of resilience by incorporating updated mental models from current and new stakeholders. We will finalize development of a resilience index validation method. We will conduct statistical inference modeling to examine the feedbacks and interdependencies between environmental conditions and farms, and farms and local communities. We will develop probabilistic estimates of projected resilience using climate and population projections and the relationships developed on environment-farm and farm-community interdependencies. Objective 4: Efforts related to Objective 4 will begin in Y2. During Y2, we plan to hire and onboard a postdoctoral scholar at the Kansas Geological Survey/University of Kansas that will lead project-wide synthesis efforts (supervised by project PD Zipper). To move this forwards, planned initial activities for the postdoc include: Charting methodological and data interdependencies among Objectives 1-3 Reviewing coupled social-agricultural-hydrological modeling frameworks for applicability Developing a small-scale pilot analysis integrating methods and concepts from each of Objectives 1-3. Additionally, we will continue to meet regularly with stakeholders, including holding a second stakeholder advisory group meeting in Fall 2023.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Impact paragraph Our project seeks to understand how climate and agricultural management practices will affect the linked agricultural-hydrological-social system in the Kansas River Watershed. To accomplish this, we first need to develop models of how crop productivity, water resources, and communities have varied in the past so that we can then explore different future scenarios. In the first year of our project, our efforts focused primarily on compilation of historical data, development of models for the historical period, and determining how our the analysis from each subdiscipline will be interlinked. We had major achievements in each of these spheres, including collecting all necessary crop model input data and starting the calibrating the crop model for the Kansas River basin, aggregating long-term spatially distributed water quality, streamflow, and groundwater availability data, and devleoping a dataset of physical, social, and agricultural dynamics from diverse sources and has begun linking these into a model of community resilience. We have also begun developing strong relationships with stakeholders across the watershed, including holding a stakeholder advisory group meeting with representatives from agricultural extension, state agencies, and watershed environmental groups to understand their research needs and priorities for the watershed. In sum, we have built the analytical infrastructure and personnel group that will allow our project to link human actions to key outcomes such as crop productivity, irrigation requirements, and socio-economic change in the watershed. Objective 1 Calibrated four crop models (CERES-Maize, CROPGRO-Soybean, and CERES-Wheat) at a regional scale under rainfed and irrigated conditions using variety datasets from Kansas State Research and Extension Services. Each model has been validated using the same data source for the calibration exercise. Collected place of water use datasets for irrigation water use calibration of the CERES-Maize model. 92 well-data collected from WIMAS were used in the calibration exercise. Data collection spans from 2010 to 2019. Calibration revealed exciting results with p-value = 0.3, index of agreement = 0.89, NRMSE = 28.6%, KGE = 0.8, observed and simulated coefficients of variation = 50% and 45%, respectively. The first case study on adapting rainfed maize production in EKSRB under climate change based on CMIP6 climate models. The adaptation strategy implemented in this study was root proliferation. The product has been presented at two conferences, and campus events. Manuscript has been submitted to Agricultural Water Management journal. Results from this study showed that while future climate change is likely to decrease rainfed maize yield by 45% in the region, root proliferation adaptation strategy is likely to close the decline gap by 37%. Our results highlighted the importance of maize cultivar adaptation to root proliferation in deep soil layers in order to maximize absorption of deep soil water storage and boost maize productivity under a changing climate and limiting conditions. Objective 2 Delineated all streamflow events in the historical record for the Kansas River at DeSoto, KS (USGS gage 06892350) from 2014-2022. Streamflow events were defined as any significant spike in streamflow that could be linked to a distinct input of water into the river (e.g. an individual storm, a release from a major reservoir, a concurrence of the two, etc.). Within each event, we analyzed the relationship between nitrate concentrations and stream discharge and aggregated a suite of potential predictors variables for use in a statistical model with the goal of predicting the nitrate transport behavior of any given event. By delineating events with these drivers of streamflow in mind, we can now analyze how and why solute transport dynamics vary from event to event based on the different driver(s) in play (e.g. how a predominantly precipitation-driven event differs from a predominantly reservoir-driven event). Collected and aggregated water quality data from NWIS and STORET for major basins in the Kansas River watershed. Overall, data has been downloaded from 186 USGS gauges that collected data for nitrate, 371 gauges that collected data for nitrate+nitrite, 295 gauges that collected data for orthophosphate, 335 gauges that collected data for total ammonia, 282 gauges that collected data for total nitrogen, and 390 gauges that collected data for total phosphorus. However, the data is very unevenly distributed in time and the availability has decreased considerably over the past few decades. This data aggregation will provide the baseline for statistical modeling that will identify the key drivers of annual nitrogen loading in the EKSRB under historical climate. The Kansas Geological Survey's Kansas River Index well network was finalized and includes 16 wells along the alluvial aquifer, which is where most irrigated agriculture is within our study basin. This network collects hourly groundwater levels at 16 locations within the watershed. Additionally, vertical electrical conductivity profiles were collected at the time of well installation at each point, allowing us to characterize subsurface hydrostratigraphy. While this monitoring well network was funded through a separate Kansas Water Office program, it forms the backbone of our planned hydrogeological analysis and we actively participated in its development and location decisions to meet project objectives. Objective 3 Data for more than 60 variables related to social, economic, and biophysical factors of farms and communities in Kansas for the past decade and at a county or sub-county spatial resolution. This includes, for example, irrigation water used per crop-county-year, crop yields per county-year, farm ownership rates per county-year, chemical input expenditures per county-year, farm and forestry workers per census tract-year, median family income per census tract-year, population on SNAP food support per census tract-year, and unemployment rate per census tract-year. This data comes from USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), US Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS), Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), and the Kansas Water Information and Management System (WIMAS). The transcript of the stakeholder meeting was coded and translated into a network model illustrating the mental models of Eastern Kansas River Basin resilience issues articulated by stakeholders and researchers (see Target Audience section for mental model). The mental models from the stakeholder meeting suggest about five key concerns or areas of interest of the current stakeholder group with one additional key concern highlighted only by project researchers. Multiple methods (linear combination, factor analysis, random forests) for construction of a composite resilience index have been tested using the compiled dataset. The sensitivity of these index construction approaches to researcher assumptions or erroneous data and the internal consistency of the indices have been examined. A linear combination of many resilience variables results in a resilience index with high sensitivity to assumptions about the theoretical orientation of a specific variable with regards to resilience. For example, the final resilience index may vary by an average of more than 20% depending on whether the researcher assumes that more government payments to farmers has a positive or negative impact on resilience. However, the strength of this sensitivity is dependent on the aggregation method use in the linear combination. External validation methods for the developed resilience indices are in development. Objective 4 This objective is not scheduled to begin until project Y2.

Publications

Type: Journal Articles Status: Submitted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2023). Towards Adapting Rainfed Maize Production in Eastern Kansas River Basin: Implications of Root Proliferation on Yield under Climate Change, Agricultural Water Management Journal.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2022, November). Towards Adapting Rainfed Maize Production in Eastern Kansas River Basin: Implications of Root Proliferation on Yield under Climate Change, ASA-CSSA-SSSA Meeting, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2022 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2022, November). Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Photosynthetic Active Radiation (PAR) using Satellite-based Data: Application to CROPGRO Model. Graduate Students Poster Session, Kansas Governors Water Conference, Manhattan, Kansas, USA.
Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2023 Citation: Onyekwelu, I., & Sharda, V. (2023, May). Towards Adapting Rainfed Maize Production in Eastern Kansas River Basin: Implications of Root Proliferation on Yield under Climate Change, 2023 Water for Food Global Conference Poster Presentation, Lincoln, NE, USA.
Type: Websites Status: Other Year Published: 2023 Citation: We have drafted a project website, but it is still under development and not yet publicly available.