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1. Trade and Climate Mitigation Interactions Create Agro‐Economic Opportunities With Social and Environmental Trade‐Offs in Latin America and the Caribbean

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF003063  

   Yarlagadda, Brinda; Wild, Thomas; Zhao, Xin; Clarke, Leon; Cui, Ryna; Khan, Zarrar; Birnbaum, Abigail; Lamontagne, Jonathan (April 2023, Earth's Future)

   Abstract The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region plays key roles in both meeting global agricultural demands and maintaining carbon sinks due to its abundant land and water resources. In this study we use the Global Change Analysis Model to evaluate the opportunities and challenges posed by two global‐scale drivers: agricultural market integration (i.e., reduction of trade barriers) and land‐based climate mitigation policy. We evaluate their potential individual and combined impacts on agricultural production and trade revenues across LAC's economies through mid‐century, as well as the resulting impacts on agricultural consumers and integrated land‐water‐climate systems across LAC's diverse sub‐regions. Increased global market integration results in increased agricultural production and trade revenues for many LAC economies, driven by their evolving comparative advantages. Climate mitigation measures on CO₂and non‐CO₂greenhouse gases increase revenues due to increased agricultural prices from land competition and emissions abatement. The combined outcomes from both drivers are complex and sometimes non‐linear, highlighting the importance of understanding the interactions between multiple drivers. Our results show that increased agricultural production and trade opportunities, from either of the two drivers, pose significant trade‐offs that require careful multi‐sectoral planning, such as emissions reduction challenges, potential loss of livestock production when pursuing land‐based climate mitigation strategies, increased consumer expenditures, and changes in land‐use or water withdrawals, resulting in deforestation or water scarcity pressures. There is considerable heterogeneity in economic and environmental outcomes across LAC sub‐regions and agricultural commodities, illustrating the value of considering outcomes at finer scales. 

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2. Focus on global–local–global analysis of sustainability

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acf8da  

   Hertel, Thomas W.; Irwin, Elena; Polasky, Stephen; Ramankutty, Navin (September 2023, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract This special issue is the outcome of a workshop held at Purdue University in April 2022. It comprises thematic syntheses of five overarching dimensions of the Global-to-Local-to-Global (GLG) challenge to ensuring the long-term sustainability of land and water resources. These thematic dimensions include: climate change, ecosystems and biodiversity, governance, water resources and cyberinfrastructure. In addition, there are eight applications of GLG analysis to specific land and water sustainability challenges, ranging from environmental stress in the Amazon River Basin to groundwater depletion in the United States. Based on these papers, we conclude that, without fine-scale, local analysis, interventions focusing on land and water sustainability will likely be misguided. But formulating such policies without the broader, national/global context is also problematic – both from the point of view of the global drivers of local sustainability stresses, as well as to capture unanticipated spillovers. In addition, because local and global systems are connected to – and mediated by – meso-scale processes, accounting for key meso-scale phenomena, such as labor market functioning, is critical for characterizing GLG interactions. We also conclude that there is great scope for increasing the complexity of GLG analysis in future work. However, this carries significant risks. Increased complexity can outstrip data and modeling capabilities, slow down research, make results more difficult to understand and interpret, and complicate effective communication with decision-makers and other users of the analyses. We believe that research guidance regarding appropriate complexity is a high priority in the emerging field of Global-Local-Global analysis of sustainability. 

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3. Analyzing and Assessing Dynamic Behavior of a Physical Supply and Demand System for Sustainable Water Management under a Semi-Arid Environment

   https://doi.org/10.3390/w14121939  

   Mashaly, Ahmed F.; Fernald, Alexander G. (June 2022, Water)

   The extensive interest in sustainable water management reflects the extent to which the global water landscape has changed in the past twenty years, which is a natural development of changes in water resources and an increase in the level of imbalance between water supply and demand. In this paper, a simulation model based on system dynamics (SD) methodology was developed to aid sustainable water management efforts in a semi-arid region. Six policy scenarios were used to study, analyze, and assess water management trends in the Southeast region of New Mexico, USA. The modeling process included two phases: calibration (2000–2015) and future prediction (2016–2050). Several statistical criteria were applied to assess the developed model performance. The findings revealed that the simulated outputs were in excellent agreement with the historical data, indicating accurate model simulation. The SD model’s determination coefficients ranged from 0.9288 to 0.9936 and the index of agreement values ranged from 0.9397 to 0.9958. Findings for the business-as-usual scenario indicated that total water withdrawals and total population will continue to rise, whereas groundwater storage, agricultural consumptive water use, and total consumptive water use will decrease over the simulated period. Sensitivity analysis using Monte Carlo simulation indicated that cultivated irrigated land change is the most influential parameter affecting groundwater storage, water supply storage change (total withdrawals), agricultural consumptive water use, and total consumptive water use. The changes occurring in the agricultural cultivated area had a great influence on controlling the groundwater system. Overall, the results showed that our SD model has been successful in capturing the system’s dynamic behavior, and confirmed its capability in modeling water management issues for policy and decision makers under semi-arid conditions. 

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4. Uncertainties in estimating global potential yields and their impacts for long-term modeling

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-021-01228-x  

   Ollenburger, Mary; Kyle, Page; Zhang, Xin (March 2022, Food Security)

   Abstract Estimating realistic potential yields by crop type and region is challenging; such yields depend on both biophysical characteristics (e.g., soil characteristics, climate, etc.), and the crop management practices available in any site or region (e.g., mechanization, irrigation, crop cultivars). A broad body of literature has assessed potential yields for selected crops and regions, using several strategies. In this study we first analyze future potential yields of major crop types globally by two different estimation methods, one of which is based on historical observed yields (“Empirical”), while the other is based on biophysical conditions (“Simulated”). Potential yields by major crop and region are quite different between the two methods; in particular, Simulated potential yields are typically 200% higher than Empirical potential yields in tropical regions for major crops. Applying both of these potential yields in yield gap closure scenarios in a global agro-economic model, GCAM, the two estimates of future potential yields lead to very different outcomes for the agricultural sector globally. In the Simulated potential yield closure scenario, Africa, Asia, and South America see comparatively favorable outcomes for agricultural sustainability over time: low land use change emissions, low crop prices, and high levels of self-sufficiency. In contrast, the Empirical potential yield scenario is characterized by a heavy reliance on production and exports in temperate regions that currently practice industrial agriculture. At the global level, this scenario has comparatively high crop commodity prices, and more land allocated to crop production (and associated land use change emissions) than either the baseline or Simulated potential yield scenarios. This study highlights the importance of the choice of methods of estimating potential yields for agro-economic modeling. 

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5. Land Use Changes in the Southeastern United States: Quantitative Changes, Drivers, and Expected Environmental Impacts

   https://doi.org/10.3390/land11122246  

   Nedd, Ryan; Anandhi, Aavudai (December 2022, Land)

   Land use change analysis provides valuable information for landscape monitoring, managing, and prioritizing large area conservation practices. There has been significant interest in the southeastern United States (SEUS) due to substantial land change from various economic activities since the 1940s. This study uses quantitative data from the Economic Research Service (ERS) for landscape change analysis, addressing land change among five major land types for twelve states in the SEUS from 1945 to 2012. The study also conducted a literature review using the PSALSAR framework to identify significant drivers related to land type changes from research articles within the region. The analysis showed how each land type changed over the period for each state in the time period and the percentage change for the primary drivers related to land use change. The literature review identified significant drivers of land use and land cover change (LULCC) within the SEUS. The associated drivers were categorized into natural and artificial drivers, then further subdivided into eight categories related to land type changes in the region. A schematic diagram was developed to show land type changes that impacted environmental changes from various studies in the SEUS. The results concluded that Forest land accounted for 12% change and agricultural land for 20%; population growth in the region is an average of 2.59% annually. It also concluded that the need for research to understand past land use trends, direction and magnitude of land cover changes is essential. Significant drivers such as urban expansion and agriculture are critical to the impending use of land in the region; their impacts are attributed to environmental changes in the region and must be monitored. 

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