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1. Integrated energy-water-land nexus planning to guide national policy: an example from Uruguay

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9389  

   Khan, Zarrar; Wild, Thomas B.; Silva Carrazzone, Maria Eugenia; Gaudioso, Rossana; Mascari, María Pía; Bianchi, Fabiana; Weinstein, Federico; Pérez, Federico; Pérez, William; Miralles-Wilhelm, Fernando; et al (August 2020, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract Despite broad consensus on the benefits of a nexus approach to multi-sector planning, actual implementation in government and other decision-making institutions is still rare. This study presents an approach to conducting integrated energy-water-land (EWL) planning, using Uruguay as an example. This stakeholder-driven study focuses on assessing the EWL nexus implications of actual planned policies aimed at strengthening three of Uruguay’s key exports (beef, soy, and rice), which account for more than 40% of total national export revenue. Five scenarios are analyzed in the study: a reference scenario, a climate impacts scenario, and three policy scenarios. The three policy scenarios include measures such as increasing the intensity of beef production while simultaneously decreasing emissions, increasing irrigated soybean production, and improving rice yields. This study supplements previous sector-specific planning efforts in Uruguay by conducting the first stakeholder-driven integrated multi-sector assessment of planned policies in Uruguay using a suite of integrated modeling tools. Key insights from the study are: as compared to a reference scenario, improving beef productivity could lead to cropland expansion (+30%) and significant indirect increases in water requirements (+20%); improving rice yields could lead to increases in total emissions (+3%), which may partially offset emissions reductions from other policies; expanding irrigated soy could have the least EWL impacts amongst the policies studied; and climate-driven changes could have significantly less impact on EWL systems as compared to human actions. The generalizable insights derived from this analysis are readily applicable to other countries facing similar multi-sector planning challenges. In particular, the study’s results reinforce the fact that policies often have multi-sector consequences, and thus policies can impact one another’s efficacy. Thus, policy design and implementation can benefit from coordination across sectors and decision-making institutions. 

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2. The Implications of Global Change for the Co‐Evolution of Argentina's Integrated Energy‐Water‐Land Systems

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001970  

   Wild, Thomas B.; Khan, Zarrar; Zhao, Mengqi; Suriano, Micaela; Bereslawski, Julia L.; Roberts, Paula; Casado, Jose; Gaviño‐Novillo, Marcelo; Clarke, Leon; Hejazi, Mohamad; et al (August 2021, Earth's Future)

   Abstract This study seeks to understand how Argentina's energy, water, and land (EWL) systems will co‐evolve under a representative array of human and earth system influences, including socioeconomic change, climate change, and climate policy. To capture Argentina's sub‐national EWL dynamics in the context of global change, we couple the Global Change Analysis Model with a suite of consistent, gridded sectoral downscaling models to explore multiple stakeholder‐engaged scenarios. Across scenarios, Argentina has the economic opportunity to use its vast land resources to satisfy growing domestic and international demand for crops, such as oil (e.g., soy) and biomass. The human (rather than earth) system produces the most dominant changes in mid‐century EWL resource use. A Reference scenario characterized by modest socioeconomic growth projects a 40% increase in Argentina's agricultural production by 2050 (relative to 2020) by using 50,000 km²of additional cropland and 40% more water. A Climate Policy scenario designed to achieve net‐zero carbon emissions globally shortly after mid‐century projects that Argentina could use 100,000 km²of additional land (and 65% more water) to grow biomass and other crops. The burden of navigating these national opportunities and challenges could fall disproportionately on a subset of Argentina's river basins. The Colorado and Negro basins could experience moderate‐to‐severe water scarcity as they simultaneously navigate substantial irrigated crop demand growth and climate‐induced declines in natural water availability. Argentina serves as a generalizable testbed to demonstrate that multi‐scale EWL planning challenges can be identified and managed more effectively via integrated analysis of coupled human‐earth systems. 

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3. Drivers of Future Physical Water Scarcity and Its Economic Impacts in Latin America and the Caribbean

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002764  

   Birnbaum, Abigail; Lamontagne, Jonathan; Wild, Thomas; Dolan, Flannery; Yarlagadda, Brinda (August 2022, Earth's Future)

   Abstract Future water scarcity is a global concern with impacts across the energy, water, and land (EWL) sectors. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are significant producers of agricultural goods, so disruptions resulting from water scarcity in LAC have global importance. Understanding where water scarcity in LAC could occur and what could exacerbate it is critical for strategic resource management and planning, both regionally and globally. Assessing future water scarcity in LAC is challenging given the complex interactions among the EWL sectors and the multiple uncertainties acting across spatial scales. To illuminate these dynamics, we use scenario discovery on a large ensemble representing diverse futures simulated using an integrated human‐environmental systems model. We quantify future water scarcity and its economic impacts across several physical and economic metrics. We find that future levels of reservoir storage expansion could be a significant driver of physical and economic water scarcity, highlighting the importance of strategic water infrastructure development in maintaining future water availability. Changes in crop profit are driven by both water supply and demand, emphasizing the complexity of EWL multisector dynamics. While most of LAC is poised to have abundant land and water resources available for future development, basins in Mexico and along the Pacific coast of South America experience high exposure to severe outcomes and uncertainty across outcomes for at least one metric. We find that drivers of severe scarcity vary spatially and across metrics, highlighting the region's heterogeneity and the importance of considering multiple metrics to assess water scarcity. 

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4. Regional Drivers of Stream Chemical Behavior: Leveraging Lithology, Land Use, and Climate Gradients Across the Colorado River, Texas USA

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR032155  

   Goldrich‐Middaugh, G. M.; Ma, L.; Engle, M. A.; Ricketts, J. W.; Soto‐Montero, P.; Sullivan, P. L. (November 2022, Water Resources Research)

   Abstract Understanding relationships between stream chemistry and watershed factors: land use/land cover, climate, and lithology are crucial to improving our knowledge of critical zone processes that influence water quality. We compiled major ion data from >100 monitoring stations collected over 60 years (1958–2018) across the Colorado River Watershed in Texas (103,000 km²). We paired this river chemistry data with complementary lithology, land use, climate, and stream discharge information. Machine learning techniques were used to produce new insights on controls of stream water chemical behavior, which were validated using traditional multivariate analyses. Studies on stream flow and chemistry in the American west and globally have shown strong relationships between major ion chemical composition, climate, and lithology which hold true for the Colorado River basin in this study. Reactive minerals, including carbonates and evaporites, dominate major ion chemistry across the upper, low‐precipitation regions of the watershed. Upstream and middle reaches of the Colorado River showed shifts from Na‐Cl‐SO₄dominated water from multiple sources including dissolution of gypsum and halite in shallow groundwater, and agricultural activities, to Ca‐HCO₃water types controlled by carbonate dissolution. In the lower portion of the watershed multiple analyses demonstrate that stream chemistry is more influenced by greater precipitation and the presence of silicate minerals than the middle and upstream reaches. This study demonstrates the power of applying machine learning approaches to publicly available long term water chemistry data sets to improve the understanding of watershed interactions with surficial lithology, salinity sources, and anthropogenic influences of water quality. 

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5. Understanding the Food‐Energy‐Water Nexus in Mixed Irrigation Regimes Using a Regional Hydroeconomic Optimization Modeling Framework

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033691  

   Kumar, Hemant; Zhu, Tingju; Sankarasubramanian, A. (June 2023, Water Resources Research)

   Abstract Understanding the nexus between food, energy, and water systems (FEW) is critical for basins with intensive agricultural water use as they face significant challenges under changing climate and regional development. We investigate the food, energy, and water nexus through a regional hydroeconomic optimization (RHEO) modeling framework. The crop production in RHEO is estimated through a hierarchical regression model developed using a biophysical model, AquaCropOS, forced with daily climatic inputs. Incorporating the hierarchical model within the RHEO also reduces the computation time by enabling parallel programming within the AquaCropOS and facilitates mixed irrigation—rainfed, fully irrigated and deficit irrigation—strategies. To demonstrate the RHEO framework, we considered a groundwater‐dominated basin, South Flint River Basin, Georgia, for developing mixed irrigation strategies over 31 years. Our analyses show that optimal deficit irrigation is economically better than full irrigation, which increases the groundwater pumping cost. Thus, considering deficit irrigation in a groundwater‐dominated basin reduces the water, carbon, and energy footprints, thereby reducing FEW vulnerability. The RHEO also could be employed for analyzing FEW nexus under potential climate change and future regional development scenarios. 

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