Abstract
Interconnected food, energy, and water (FEW) nexus systems face many challenges to support human well-being (HWB) and maintain resilience, especially in arid and semiarid regions like New Mexico (NM), United States (US). Insufficient FEW resources, unstable economic growth due to fluctuations in prices of crude oil and natural gas, inequitable education and employment, and climate change are some of these challenges. Enhancing the resilience of such coupled socio-environmental systems depends on the efficient use of resources, improved understanding of the interlinkages across FEW system components, and adopting adaptable alternative management strategies. The goal of this study was to develop a framework that can be used to enhance the resilience of these systems. An integrated food, energy, water, well-being, and resilience (FEW-WISE) framework was developed and introduced in this study. This framework consists mainly of five steps to qualitatively and quantitatively assess FEW system relationships, identify important external drivers, integrate FEW systems using system dynamics models, develop FEW and HWB performance indices, and develop a resilience monitoring criterion using a threshold-based approach that integrates these indices. The FEW-WISE framework can be used to evaluate and predict the dynamic behavior of FEW systems in response to environmental and socioeconomic changes using resilience indicators. In conclusion, the derived resilience index can be used to inform the decision-making processes to guide the development of alternative scenario-based management strategies to enhance the resilience of ecological and socioeconomic well-being of vulnerable regions like NM.
Highlights
The availability and consumption of food, energy, and water (FEW) resources heavily rely on one another, and there are numerous ways in which these three systems overlap and interconnect
The FEW-WISE framework follows five steps: 1) qualitatively identify the relationships between FEW nexus components and quantitatively assess resource exchanges, 2) identify the drivers of the systems, 3) integrate FEW systems using system dynamics (SD) models to evaluate their response to the identified drivers, 4) develop FEW and human well-being (HWB) performance indices, and 5) develop a resilience monitoring criterion using a threshold-based approach that integrates these indices (Figure 2)
From 2002 to 2012, the number of farms in the United States with net losses increased by 0.2%, while that for NM increased by about 81.4% (New Mexico First and New Mexico State University, 2016)
Summary
The availability and consumption of food, energy, and water (FEW) resources heavily rely on one another, and there are numerous ways in which these three systems overlap and interconnect. The growing practice of multistage hydraulic fracturing has increased the amount of water used per well in recent years, which, in NM, can range from 1.9 to 30 million liters per well While this amount of water used for energy extraction (crude oil and natural gas) represents a small fraction of the total water use, it can trigger local stress on freshwater supply in high-production areas. The agriculture and food processing industries directly created 32,578 jobs and 18,308 jobs in related support activities for a total of 50,886 jobs statewide (Diemer et al, 2012) These socioeconomic indicators have varied over the years based on several factors that include price fluctuations (crude oil and natural gas) and natural hazards such as drought. Based on IdxReslience, the counties with low resilience will be identified and prioritized for conducting a scenario-based analysis to develop alternate management strategies to enhance their resilience (Figure 2), allowing development of potentially effective resource management options along with their trade-offs and synergies (e.g., improving energy plans, changing the livestock and crop production portfolio, and identifying alternative water sources)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
