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The state of Iowa is known for its high-yield agriculture, supporting rising demands for food and fuel production. But this productivity is also a significant contributor of nitrogen loading to the Mississippi River basin causing the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. The delivery of nutrients, especially nitrogen, from the upper Mississippi River basin, is a function, not only of agricultural activity, but also of hydrology. Thus, it is important to consider extreme weather conditions, such as drought and flooding, and understand the effects of weather variability on Iowa’s food-energy-water (IFEW) system and nitrogen loading to the Mississippi River from Iowa. In this work, the simulation decomposition approach is implemented using the extended IFEW model with a crop-weather model to better understand the cause-and-effect relationships of weather parameters on the nitrogen export from the state of Iowa. July temperature and precipitation are used as varying input weather parameters with normal and log normal distributions, respectively, and subdivided to generate regular and dry weather conditions. It is observed that most variation in the soil nitrogen surplus lies in the regular condition, while the dry condition produces the highest soil nitrogen surplus for the state of Iowa.
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Modeling the Contribution of Agriculture Towards Soil Nitrogen Surplus in Iowa.
The Midwest state of Iowa in the US is one of the major producers of corn, soybean, ethanol, and animal products, and has long been known as a significant contributor of nitrogen loads to the Mississippi river basin, supplying the nutrient-rich water to the Gulf of Mexico. Nitrogen is the principal contributor to the formation of the hypoxic zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico with a significant detrimental environmental impact. Agriculture, animal agriculture, and ethanol production are deeply connected to Iowa’s economy. Thus, with increasing ethanol production, high yield agriculture practices, growing animal agriculture, and the related economy, there is a need to understand the interrelationship of Iowa’s food-energy-water system to alleviate its impact on the environment and economy through improved policy and decision making. In this work, the Iowa food-energy-water (IFEW) system model is proposed that describes its interrelationship. Further, a macro-scale nitrogen export model of the agriculture and animal agriculture systems is developed. Global sensitivity analysis of the nitrogen export model reveals that the commercial nitrogen-based fertilizer application rate for corn production and corn yield are the two most influential factors affecting the surplus nitrogen in the soil.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1739551
- PAR ID:
- 10297668
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Computational Science – ICCS 2021. ICCS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science
- Volume:
- 12745
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77970-2_20
