PARTNERSHIP: CROPPING SYSTEM TRANSITIONS FOR MULTI-BENEFIT STEWARDSHIP OF WATER-LIMITED FARMLAND PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE OF CALIFORNIA

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: ACTIVE
• Funding Source: AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1030344
• Grant No.: 2023-67019-39707
• Cumulative Award Amt.: $900,000.00
• Proposal No.: 2022-09523
• Project Start Date: Jun 1, 2023
• Project End Date: May 31, 2026
• Grant Year: 2023
• Program Code: [A1411]- Foundational Program: Agricultural Water Science

Recipient Organization
PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE OF CALIFORNIA
500 WASHINGTON ST STE 600
SAN FRANCISCO,CA 94111

Performing Department
(N/A)

Non Technical Summary
California's San Joaquin Valley--a major agricultural region--faces transformative change. Local agencies are advancing actions to achieve groundwater sustainability, but this could result in at least 500,000 acres of cropland losing reliable access to irrigation. Our prior research shows that water-limited systems (dryland crops, especially with small amounts of supplemental irrigation to aid establishment) hold promise for stewarding lands facing irrigation cutbacks. These systems could provide a high-value use of water and a cost-effective way to manage hydrologic risk and reduce soil erosion and dust-related externalities of land fallowing. But many knowledge gaps remain.This interdisciplinary project will support data-informed land use decisions to manage water demand. Three inter-related activities will address knowledge gaps: 1) trialing and fine-tuning water-limited crops and management systems, 2) quantifying the implications of these systems for local water balances, and 3) advancing appropriate valuation of co-benefits of these systems relative to fallow, including dust mitigation in low-income rural communities. The broad aim is to generate agronomic, hydrological, and economic insights on the system-level benefits and tradeoffs at play in transitioning to water-limited cropping systems. This work will help land-use planners, resource managers, and public agencies at all levels understand where cropping system transitions may deliver net benefits for a broad set of stakeholders while also tracking and minimizing potential harm to vulnerable populations. Our focus is on the San Joaquin Valley, but the research is relevant for a much broader region of the western U.S. facing growing water scarcity in a changing climate.

Animal Health Component

80%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

0%

Applied

80%

Developmental

20%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
131	0210	3010	35%
111	0210	2050	30%
102	2410	1070	35%

Knowledge Area
102 - Soil, Plant, Water, Nutrient Relationships; 111 - Conservation and Efficient Use of Water; 131 - Alternative Uses of Land;

Subject Of Investigation
0210 - Water resources; 2410 - Cross-commodity research--multiple crops;

Field Of Science
2050 - Hydrology; 1070 - Ecology; 3010 - Economics;

Keywords

water

evapotranspiration

field trials

land use

non-market valuation

remote sensing

Goals / Objectives
The long-term goal of this research is to ensure that land use and groundwater sustainability planning and implementation in the San Joaquin Valley are informed by targeted data and careful analysis. The San Joaquin Valley is in the midst of a major transformative moment, and there are likely to be winners and losers from changes in the use of scarce natural resources. Our goal is for this research to inform pathways towards more sustainable water use that maximize net benefits for a broad set of stakeholders while also tracking and minimizing potential harm to vulnerable populations. And while our focus is on one major farming region, we expect that the research will inform water and land management efforts across the American West, which is grappling with similar challenges of groundwater sustainability and water scarcity in a changing climate.Our research focuses on three interrelated scientific objectives:1. Pilot water-limited crop varieties and management approaches to better understand suitability and agronomic potential of water-limited crop substitution across the San Joaquin Valley.We will conduct controlled field trials to evaluate the genetic and management components of successful water-limited crop production at key sites. The activities under this objective will bolster empirical datasets for verification of novel dryland crop model parameterizations, as well as provide practical, extension-oriented advice and recommendations to growers and land managers implementing these systems.2.Develop a more nuanced understanding of net water balances for water-limited crops and other alternatives to fallowing on lands slated for groundwater demand reduction. This objective will generate data and approaches of direct relevance to land managers and planners as they devise and implement groundwater demand reduction programs.3. Assess the value of the potential benefits of water-limited cropping systems relative to fallow land across market and non-market dimensions. In addition to crop revenues, water-limited cropping and other alternatives to fallow may create benefits not only for water conservation, but also for soil health, air pollution mitigation, and other areas. However, primary valuation studies on relevant willingness to pay for these benefits are scarce. Better understanding the economic value of these benefits will help to inform public programs to incentivize improved land stewardship in response to the large-scale land transitions needed to manage growing water scarcity.

Project Methods
Objective 1 methods:Multi-year field trials will examine crop genotypes and management innovations that maximize crop performance under water-limited conditions.The trials will test 12 crop genotypes, including 3-4 varieties each of wheat, triticale, and barley, under fully irrigated and water-limited conditions. Genotype treatments will be crossed with early and late planting dates, with and without the addition of irrigation at sowing.We will implement a "mother and baby" trial design, with the full complement of treatments implemented at the UC West Side Research and Education Center (WSREC) near Five Points, CA, and a subset of treatments at the University Agricultural Laboratory at California State University, Fresno. Measurements to be collected at each site will include pre- and post-harvest soil water content, timing of key phenological stages (e.g., emergence, tillering, boot, flowering, maturity), and forage and grain yields for each genotype x irrigation x planting date combination, along with a fallow treatment. Soil cores collected at these trials will also contribute to objective 2, where they will be used to develop soil water retention curves for the purposes of parameterizing soil hydrological balance models. We will consider differences in representative soil types across trial plot locations--with clay loams at Five Points, and sandy loam at Fresno State. These differences may be relevant both for the assessment of water-limited crop establishment and yield performance and for the soil hydrological modeling under Objective 2.Objective 2 methods:We will leverage methods to estimate both above- and below-ground elements of net water balance in water-limited crops relative to fallow land.For the above-ground component, we will partner with OpenET to quantify consumptive water use across crop categories for reference sites (including the field trial sites described above) using the latest available land use classifications for the San Joaquin Valley. Land use classifications will be ground-truthed where necessary to improve confidence in comparative estimates of water balance between fallow and water-limited cropping alternatives. Additional exploratory work may expand this analysis to include consumptive water use from active habitat restoration areas and other non-irrigated land use alternatives to fallow, such as rangelands.For the below-ground component, we will use soil hydrological modeling to better estimate potential water returns to the system, considering consumptive use and water transport through the soil profile. Modeling will include testing of varying soil types, as soil hydraulic parameters mediate the balance between evaporation, transpiration, infiltration, and percolation. HYDRUS, a water flow and solute transport model, will be used to develop estimates for these elements of annual soil water balance at the reference sites mentioned above. As with the OpenET analysis, treatments to compare will include fallow, water-limited and fully irrigated winter crops across contrasting soil types. The Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) will be used to develop initial parameterizations of soil hydraulic parameters. Where needed, parameter specification will be fine-tuned with data from intact soil cores assessed for soil water retention and development of the van Genuchten soil hydraulic parameters that govern water flow. Management data will be gathered as inputs to the time-variable boundary conditions including: amounts and timing of irrigation and amounts of precipitation and fertilizer. Model outputs will be evaluated against yields and soil moisture from measurements taken in Objective 1.Objective 3 methods:The valuation exercise will consider three main benefit margins: dust mitigation, potential water use savings, and carbon sequestration. Quantification of net differences in these outcomes will be based on novel empirical estimation by the research team, inputs from other project objectives (for example, net water use estimation from Objective 2), and existing estimates from the literature. Valuation of these differences will rely on established benefit transfer techniques, market information (where applicable), and estimates of the social cost of carbon.Reductions in dust emissions on lands with established vegetative cover, relative to fallow, will be estimated based on an extension of Ayres et al. (2022). In this project, we will increase the spatial resolution of the observational units used in the estimation and test the robustness of the results to alternative methods for determining land cover types. Valuation of reduced particulate matter concentrations will proceed according to benefit-transfer of comprehensive willingness-to-pay estimates from Singh et al. (2018); an alternative estimate based on health damages from prevailing estimates of the value of a statistical life will also be produced (see for example Jones and Fleck 2020).Differences in water use on water-limited versus fallow parcels can impact future water availability in two ways: increased (or decreased) groundwater percolation and accumulation, and increased (decreased) soil water retention. Altered groundwater accumulation that results from adoption of water-limited systems will be valued as a shift in stored water according to the marginal value product generated by its use in a similar cropping system, as derived from the agronomic models improved as part of Objective 1. Valuation of net soil water retention, similarly, will be based on the profitability difference incurred in subsequent periods of agricultural production; production relationships (including those regarding establishment probabilities) from Objective 1 will inform a net profitability calculation for subsequent water-limited cropping relative to a fallow scenario that retains a different level of soil water.Previous work has identified important controls on the likely soil carbon sequestration potential of water-limited cropping systems relative to tilled fallow. Building on this understanding, we will construct a range of estimates for sequestered soil carbon relative to a baseline tilled fallow system and apply estimates of the social cost of carbon to monetize these spillover benefits. In particular, we will bound these benefits by drawing estimates of the marginal value of emissions from California's Cap-and-Trade auction results and more comprehensive estimates of the global value of avoided emissions from the environmental economics literature, as summarized by Ayres (2021).The profitability analysis will investigate profitability and break-even thresholds of water-limited cropping systems based on on-farm (private) revenues and non-market benefits streams. This analysis will draw on updated and improved agronomic modeling tools developed as part of Objective 1, as well as the valuation exercise's assessment of the three potential spillover, or non-market benefits described above (dust mitigation, water use savings, carbon sequestration).

Progress 06/01/24 to 05/31/25

Outputs
Target Audience:The target audience for this work is broad and diverse. It includes individuals involved in making farm management decisions (i.e. farmers, crop consultants, agricultural support and input industry), institutions and individuals involved in training and educational support for these individuals and groups (e.g. state universities, community colleges, Cooperative Extension personnel and staff), policy and non-profit groups, and others involved in agricultural systems research. It also includes the diverse group of Valley stakeholders affected by groundwater demand management who will need to develop programs thatmitigate downsides of fallowing, such as local officials, water/land managers, farmers,community representatives, business groups, and environmental non-profits). Finally, this work targets federal agency and legislative audiences, whose actions and programs can support beneficial farmland transitions, the media, who can help disseminate key findings and stories about solutions, and other researchers, who can build on our work to further develop productive alternatives for farmland losing access to irrigation water. The project concept and activities were presented to a group of San Joaquin Valley growers, agricultural input dealers, students, and extension professionals at a field day at the Center for Irrigation Technology on the campus of California State University, Fresno (April 2025). This was a demonstration field day where participants could see first-hand how the effects of genotype, planting timing, and targeted irrigation interact to produce a wide range of crop productivity outcomes. Preliminary findings from the CSU Fresno field trial were also presented at the University of California Cooperative Extension Kearney Agronomy and Forages Field Day in Fresno County (September 2024). In addition, project team members discussed problem framings and preliminary results with other scholars studying soil health and organic matter storage dynamics in modified agricultural systems at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (May 2025). In total, project partners participated in 8 educational/outreach events that featured presentations of the results and initial outcomes from field trials. These included 6 industry-oriented outreach events and 2 presentations in academic research forums. These events were attended by a range of parties interested in crop management, statewide agricultural policy, and agricultural research. For practitioners, the research and demonstration outputs from grant activities provided practical information on how management decisions affect outcomes under limited water scenarios. For individuals and groups in policy roles, they illustrated the range of possible outcomes and helped to ground planning and policymaking in tangible and realistic possibilities. For other researchers, they stimulated conversation about statewide research needs and initiated potential research collaborations. Changes/Problems:Overall, grant activity is on track in terms of deliverables but slightly behind in terms of costs. Due to the timing of award contract finalizations and delayed accounting and billing during the first two years, the rate of expenditure has been delayed. We expect a significant uptick in spending during the next reporting period to make up for the billing delays from previous years. The work and billing from this portion of the grant are projected to conclude in advance of the overall 3-year grant activities. Therefore, all billing should be complete within the projected grant period. One limitation that remains for the water balances team is the identification of a robust dataset of fields with known water management strategies. Recently, we acquired data from one set of fields to start fine-tuning the model and workflow, but we hope to acquire more observations in the coming reporting period. The economic valuation team continues to investigate how best to develop a well-supported relationship between evidence of PM2.5 concentration impacts and PM10 concentrations, which is vital for effective implementation of the EPA BenMAP-informed valuation. Should formal translation prove difficult, we will employ a sensitivity analysis of different conversion ratios to highlight the importance of key assumptions. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Individual study and one-on-one mentoring in 1) cropland soil mitigation modeling and 2) advanced data management and analysis techniques for four project team members (2 PPIC research associates, 1 UC Davis undergraduate, and 1 UC Davis graduate student). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The events mentioned above attracted a broad range of individuals involved or interested in learning about winter cropping systems possibilities in the state of California. Events were advertised across a wide range of media and cooperative extension networks and resulted in diverse audiences that included farmers, students and instructors at community college and state universities, the agricultural advisory and support industry, and researchers and non-profit actors with interests in resource management and policy making related to water use in the state. Preliminary results from economic valuation exercises were discussed with scholars in this field at the May 2025 AERE Annual Meeting. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Goal 1: With data collection from two field seasons complete, during the next reporting period we will focus on data analysis, interpretation, and publication. We will update and refine analyses and related summaries of the experimental outcomes and their implications for crop management and winter water use in the state. We will continue to communicate the results and implications in extension and outreach forums in a similar manner to what has been achieved to date. We plan to submit 2-3 academic journal articles related to the field trials. We are tentatively planning for these findings to contribute to a Public Policy Institute of California policy brief to be prepared during the next reporting period. Goal 2: A second year of data collection will focus on both direct measurement and remote sensing of on-farm evapotranspiration in water-limited winter crops and fallow. We will continue paramaterizing the Hydrus and APSIM models with the soil hydraulic properties and water use data collected from other team members as inputs for the model. We will finalize data analysis and model development for soil evaporation from 2 years of measurements at WSREC and submit a manuscript for review. Finally, we will complete data analysis of OpenET data for fallowed fields, winter wheat, and other land cover type to support writing of a second PPIC policy brief led by PD Peterson. Goal 3: We will complete the analysis of relationships between land cover change and local particulate matter concentrations in furtherance of the benefit transfer evaluation of air quality benefits of water-limited cropping systems. This will include integration with the EPA's BenMAP valuation methods. In addition, we plan to integrate results from soil health modeling into a broader economic evaluation of the economics of water-limited cropping and begin to evaluate evidence of on-farm consumptive water use changes from water-limited cropping systems. Results from the broader economic analysis will likely be presented at one or more scholarly venues, such as conferences or seminar series.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Major Goal 1: Pilot water-limited crop varieties and management approaches to better understand suitability and agronomic potential of water-limited crop substitution across the San Joaquin Valley. The second year of crop variety trials for water-limited small grains and forages is complete at two locations in the San Joaquin Valley. Winter forages (wheat, triticale, and barley) were successfully planted and established, and data were collected on grain/biomass yield, crop phenology, applied water, and soil moisture at intervals throughout the cropping season. Project partners monitored the trial under rainfed conditions. Pre-planting and post-harvest soil samples were collected, dried, and analyzed for moisture and nitrogen content. Once analyzed, these data will contribute to understanding of appropriate agronomic management strategies for water-limited forages as an alternative to land fallowing in water-scarce areas of the San Joaquin Valley. Deliverables: Recommendations on best management practices and crop types (e.g., extension materials and field days); Data on crop growth and performance Presentations and California Dairy Management Conference, WSREC Open House, California Plant and Soil Conference, Fresno State field day, UC Davis field day to explain and illustrate preliminary results and provide practical outcomes of project to date. Year 2 of multi-factorial trial established between October and December 2024 and harvested in May 2025. At WSREC, three crop types with four genotypes per crop type were planted at one of three planting times between mid-October and mid-December. Two of the three trials were germinated and established with irrigation and a third was established with rainfall and soil moisture alone. Over the two experimental years, eight total planting date and irrigation management treatments containing 12 genotypes were successfully established. At Fresno State, a subset of these genotypes were assessed under similar irrigation treatments. Soil moisture measurements to 90cm soil depth were taken at the start of the season, at periodic intervals during the season, and post-harvest. These samples are being analyzed for gravimetric water content. Crop growth and development was measured on a periodic basis. Observations included crop growth stage and canopy reflectance measurements from uav-based multi-spectral cameras, biomass yield at an early reproductive growth stage, and grain yield at physiological maturity. A wide range of crop productivity resulted from the planting date x irrigation management treatment (i.e. grain yields across these treatments combinations were approximately 38%, 45%, 73%, 88% and 100% of maximum yields). Processing and analysis of samples is ongoing. When finalized, these data will provide valuable opportunities to analyze and improve understanding of the crop types and varietal characteristics that best confer adaptation to water-limited management of winter cereals. Major Goal 2: Develop a more nuanced understanding of net water balances for water-limited crops and other alternatives to fallowing on lands slated for groundwater demand reduction. Deliverables: Methodology and data for net water balance estimation for fallow fields and various land use alternatives to support groundwater sustainability planning and decision making; Quantification of the net benefits of water-limited crops for soil water balances; Methodology and data for net water balance estimation for fallow fields and winter fallow alternatives. Two years of data have been collected on evapotranspiration from bare soil fallows and winter cropped parcels in the San Joaquin Valley to better understand net water balances of winter vegetation relative to fallow. At WSREC, a lysimeter was installed in a fallow field and used to monitor bare soil evapotranspiration (ET). An eddy covariance tower on the same field was installed and logged data to compare with the lysimeter measurements. Data are currently being processed and analyzed. We completed analysis of soil cores for soil water retention curves to extract soil hydraulic parameters to calibrate the water transport process-based model, Hydrus. Work has begun to calibrate Hydrus and crosswalk to the APSIM crop and agricultural systems model. We completed measurement of evaporation and relevant environmental variables to support ground evaluation of fallowed field evaporation from OpenET. On-ground data will be used to evaluate the accuracy of OpenET-based net water balance and effective precipitation model development. Continued data curation of ET from a defined crop type and fallowed field. We advanced the development of an effective precipitation and water balance model on Goggle Earth Engine for testing an application programming interface end point that automatically computes ET from irrigation for a defined location. We curated crowd-sourced field boundaries to evaluate OpenET data using the OpenET geodatabase along with county reported land use information. Major Goal 3: Assess the value of the potential benefits of water-limited cropping systems relative to fallow land across market and non-market dimensions. Deliverables: Quantification and monetization of non-market benefits and/or costs of adopting water-limited cropping systems relative to tilled fallow systems; Recommendations for structuring incentive programs to support multi-benefit stewardship of water-limited farmland The project team completed various data manipulation and cleaning efforts related to the air quality and soil health analyses. This included wildfire, land cover, and particulate matter concentration data that underlie the benefit transfer evaluation of air quality improvements offered by water-limited cropping systems. They also undertook preliminary econometric analysis exploring the proposed relationships between land cover change and local particulate matter concentrations. Further refinement of COMET-Farm modeling outputs also informed an evaluation of the feasibility of soil health related subsidies for water-limited cropping.

Publications

• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2025 Citation: Title: Water Productivity of Winter Cereal Crops in the San Joaquin Valley: Research Update Authors: Maya Shydlowski, Caitlin Peterson, Josh Hegarty, Mark Lundy https://ucanr.edu/blog/uc-small-grains-blog/article/water-productivity-winter-cereal-crops-san-joaquin-valley
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Title: On-Ground Observations of Water Fluxes Over Bare Soil  San Joaquin Valley, CA Authors: Michael Biedebach, Ryan Solymar, AJ Purdy, Lee Johnson, Florence Cassel-Sharma, Forrest S. Melton https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024AGUFMH11Q.0918B/abstract
• Type: Conference Papers and Presentations Status: Awaiting Publication Year Published: 2025 Citation: Title: How Do Planting Date, Water Availability and Genotype Affect the Water Productivity of Winter Cereal Crops in a Semi-Arid Climate? Authors: Maya Shydlowski-Besmer, Joshua Hegarty, Caitlin A Peterson, Mark Lundy
• Type: Other Status: Published Year Published: 2024 Citation: Title: Evaluating Harvest Index and Soil Moisture in Irrigated Vs. Rain-Fed Grain Crops Authors: Alonso Bustos, Caitlin A Peterson, Ranjit Riar, Jose Sandoval https://scisoc.confex.com/scisoc/2024am/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/162764

Progress 06/01/23 to 05/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:The project concept and activities were presented to a group of San Joaquin Valley growers and extension professionals at the "Cool Season Forages Field Day" at the West Side Research and Education Center near Five Points, CA. This was a demonstration field day where participants could see first-hand and in real-time how the effects of genotype, planting timing and targeted irrigation interacted to produce a wide range of crop productivity outcomes. A second event-the UC Davis Small Grains and Alfalfa Field Day- targeted an audience engaged in small grain and forage production, including growers and downstream processors, from across a wide geography in the state. In total, these events directly reached more than 180 individuals involved in various aspects of crop management, research, education, and policy making in the state. The project team reached researchers, conservation NGO staff, water district managers and others by presenting on "capturing the nuances in net water balance" for land use alternatives to fallowing in California's San Joaquin Valley at an expert workshop hosted by Stanford University. We participated in a series of additional expert workshops hosted by the CA Department of Food and Agriculture on cover cropping in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) era. Changes/Problems:The CSUMB team adapted to focus on ground-based observations at a fallowed field. The observations collected in the past year will provide a valuable dataset to evaluate the efficacy of satellite-driven models to compute net water balances. One limitation that remains is the identification of a robust dataset of fields with known water management strategies. Recently, we acquired data from one set of fields to start fine-tuning the model and workflow, but we hope to acquire more fields as part of this project. Developing a well-supported relationship between knowledge/evidence of PM2.5 pollutant concentrations and PM10 pollutant concentrations is difficult, which is necessary for us to reliably interpret the results of our analysis of the impact of various cropping systems on local particulate matter concentrations. As a backstop, we will employ sensitivity analysis of different ratios to highlight how our assumptions matter. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Professional development: individual study and one-on-one mentoring in 1) soil science field methods/data collection, and 2) advanced data management and analysis techniques for two professionals (PPIC research associates). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Events mentioned above attracted a broad range of individuals involved or interested in learning about winter cropping systems possibilities in the state of California. Events were advertised across a wide range of media and cooperative extension networks and resulted in diverse audiences that included students and instructors at community college and state universities, members of the agricultural practitioner, advisory, and support industry, and researchers and non-profit actors with interests in resource management and policy making related to water use in the state. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Goal 1: A second field season will focus on a repeat variety trial and opportunity to collect more data for a robust analysis of preferred management techniques for water-limited forage varieties. As data collection and processing is completed, we will begin to develop more refined summaries of the experimental outcomes and their implications for crop management and winter water use in the state. In addition, we will continue to communicate the results and implications in extension and outreach forums in a similar manner to what has been achieved to date. Goal 2: A second year of data collection will focus on both direct measurement and remote sensing of on-farm evapotranspiration in water-limited winter crops and fallow. Will begin to parameterize the hydrological model with the soil hydraulic properties and use data collected from other team members as inputs for the model. Remote sensing data collected will be used to submit an abstract for presenting preliminary results at a scientific conference. Additionally, we plan to evaluate the satellite-derived net water balance at sets of fields with known water-limited management practices based on identified candidate fields to evaluate. Goal 3: Finalize cleaning of collected datasets that will underlie our analysis of the impact of various cropping systems on local particulate matter concentrations. Plan to become accomplished at implementing BenMAP for analysis of the damages from air pollution on health. Also continue to explore how the scientific literature has addressed the possible relationships between PM2.5 and PM10 on multiple dimensions, including (i) fate and transport, (ii) dose-response, and (iii) monetization of damages. Further refine modeling results that will inform our understanding of the potential carbon storage impacts of water-limited cropping.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Major Goal 1: The first year of crop variety trials for water-limited small grains and forages is complete at two locations in the San Joaquin Valley. Data were collected on grain/biomass yield, crop phenology, applied water, and soil moisture throughout the cropping season to gain understanding of appropriate agronomic management strategies for water-limited forages as an alternative to land fallowing in water-scarce areas of the valley. Major Goal 2: Data are being collected on evapotranspiration from bare soil fallows and winter cropped parcels in the San Joaquin Valley to better understand net water balances of winter vegetation relative to fallow. Major Goal 3: Efforts to date have included (i) reviewing the literature on health effects of particulate matter exposure and valuation of such impacts, (ii) discussing various proposed valuation procedures with experts, and (iii) engaging with EPA experts/scientists who have either developed and/or used BenMAP, an USEPA program developed to provide a plug-and-play platform for estimating damages from this air pollution exposure. In addition, we have collected basic datasets to evaluate the impact of various cropping systems on local particulate concentrations. We have also undertaken literature review and some modeling, using COMET-Farm, to evaluate the potential impact of water-limited cropping systems on soil carbon dynamics.

Publications