A spatially detailed blue water footprint of the United States economy

Rushforth, Richard; Ruddell, Benjamin L.

doi:10.5194/hess-22-3007-2018

Cited by 39 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Forested headwater catchments play a critical role in provisioning freshwater to humanity [1][2][3], but anthropogenic climate change can alter the amount of precipitation (P) partitioned into streamflow (Q), evapotranspiration (E), and storage [4]. Changes in Q from headwater catchments is of particular concern given the importance of mountain regions in generating fresh water [5,6], which is used by society for drinking and water-intensive production [7][8][9]. One such headwaters area in the eastern US is the central Appalachian Mountains region (Figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty-First Century Streamflow and Climate Change in Forest Catchments of the Central Appalachian Mountains Region, US

Gaertner

Fernández

Zégre

2020

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Forested catchments are critical sources of freshwater used by society, but anthropogenic climate change can alter the amount of precipitation partitioned into streamflow and evapotranspiration, threatening their role as reliable fresh water sources. One such region in the eastern US is the heavily forested central Appalachian Mountains region that provides fresh water to local and downstream metropolitan areas. Despite the hydrological importance of this region, the sensitivity of forested catchments to climate change and the implications for long-term water balance partitioning are largely unknown. We used long-term historic and future (2005-2099) ensemble climate and water balance data and a simple energy-water balance model to quantify streamflow sensitivity and project future streamflow changes for 29 forested catchments under two future Relative Concentration Pathways. We found that streamflow is expected to increase under the low-emission pathway and decrease under the high-emission pathway. Furthermore, despite the greater sensitivity of streamflow to precipitation, larger increases in atmospheric demand offset increases in precipitation-induced streamflow, resulting in moderate changes in long-term water availability in the future. Catchment-scale results are summarized across basins and the region to provide water managers and decision makers with information about climate change at scales relevant to decision making.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Twenty-First Century Streamflow and Climate Change in Forest Catchments of the Central Appalachian Mountains Region, US

Gaertner

Fernández

Zégre

2020

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Local resilience requires the community to have adequate technical and political capacity to map, monitor, and manage the local FEW nexus (Yung et al, 2019). However, current research has failed to provide sufficient local, or "last mile, " data to help communities identify their complex local FEW nexuses (Rushforth and Ruddell, 2018). Moreover, insufficient data has compounded political capacity issues which exist in small and medium sized towns.…”

Section: Building Local Resilience: Citizen-led Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the US, for example, the availability of FEW nexus data is geographically, and temporally, limited (at best) to large cities and national-scale analyses (Romero-Lankao and Norton, 2018;Marston et al, 2018). The local level, such as the median small city or rural community, which provides critical food and water resources to larger municipalities, is left relatively uninformed and vulnerable (Rushforth and Ruddell, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen-Led Community Innovation for Food Energy Water Nexus Resilience

Hibbett

Rushforth

Roberts³

et al. 2020

Front. Environ. Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food-energy-water (FEW) resources are necessary for the function of multiple socionatural systems. Understanding the synergies and trade-offs in the FEW nexus, and how these interconnections impact earth's systems, is critical to ensure adequate access to these resources in the future; an essential component for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (Scanlon et al., 2017). Although, over the last decade, the identification of FEW nexus complexities has increased at a global (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2018; D'Odorico et al., 2018), national (Lant et al., 2019), and city scale (Rushforth and Ruddell, 2018), these findings are yet to be adequately translated into "on the ground" action due a lack of technical and political capacity (Weitz et al., 2017). Specifically, local FEW systems have been overlooked in these analyses (Scanlon et al., 2017; Lant et al., 2019), thus leaving small and medium towns vulnerable due to a lack of data and inadequate FEW system management. Building on 3 years of field-tested FEW nexus research in the Ruddell Lab, we argue that participatory citizen science projects, such as our FEWSION for Community Resilience initiative, can bridge the data-policy gaps that exist within local FEW system management by: (1) providing last mile data on the FEW system, and (2) translating local data into evidence-based solutions at a grassroots level. Thus, we present a broadly applicable framework and call to action for local scale participatory citizen science to solve complex FEW nexus issues at a local, regional, and national scale.

show abstract

“…agricultural subsidies, crop insurance, etc) and infrastructure (e.g. irrigation systems, food distribution infrastructure, etc) (Deryugina and Konar 2017, Marston et al 2018, Rushforth and Ruddell 2018. Supply chains in the US are also responsible for a large national carbon (Weber and Matthews 2008, Cuéllar and Webber 2010, Liang et al 2016, water (Dang et al 2015, Vora et al 2017, Wang et al 2017, and chemical pollution foot-print (Nesheim et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food flows between counties in the United States

Lin

Ruess

Marston

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Food consumption and production are separated in space through flows of food along complex supply chains. These food supply chains are critical to our food security, making it important to evaluate them. However, detailed spatial information on food flows within countries is rare. The goal of this paper is to estimate food flows between all county pairs within the United States. To do this, we develop the Food Flow Model, a data-driven methodology to estimate spatially explicit food flows. The Food Flow Model integrates machine learning, network properties, production and consumption statistics, mass balance constraints, and linear programming. Specifically, we downscale empirical information on food flows between 132 Freight Analysis Framework locations (17 292 potential links) to the 3142 counties and county-equivalents of the United States (9869 022 potential links). Subnational food flow estimates can be used in future work to improve our understanding of vulnerabilities within a national food supply chain, determine critical infrastructures, and enable spatially detailed footprint assessments.

show abstract

A spatially detailed blue water footprint of the United States economy

Cited by 39 publications

References 54 publications

Twenty-First Century Streamflow and Climate Change in Forest Catchments of the Central Appalachian Mountains Region, US

Twenty-First Century Streamflow and Climate Change in Forest Catchments of the Central Appalachian Mountains Region, US

Citizen-Led Community Innovation for Food Energy Water Nexus Resilience

Food flows between counties in the United States

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About