What is it about?
The main objective of this study was to estimate the amount of green water resources available for agricultural and bioenergy production, and to assess how crop and bioenergy feedstock production may affect green water resources available for other uses (e.g., forest, grassland, ecological needs) in the U.S. After a review of major existing water availability indices, we employed a modified green water availability index to assess how crop water demand may affect green water resources available to other users at local and regional scales, as well as implications for future water resource planning.
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Why is it important?
Green water is vital for the terrestrial ecosystem, but water resource assessment often focuses on blue water. Because green water is critical to agriculture and terrestrial ecosystems, a spatially explicit quantification of green water availability in the U.S. is needed for agricultural and bioenergy planning.
Perspectives
The analysis illustrates that, if green water meets all crop water demands, the fraction of green water resources available to all other users varies significantly across regions, from the Northern Plains (0.71) to the Southeast (0.98). At the county level, this fraction varies from 0.23 to 1.0. Green water resources estimated using the three different ER methods present diverse spatiotemporal distribution patterns across regions, which could affect green water availability estimates. In addition, seasonal analysis indicated thatWAI_R is sensitive to the temporal boundary of the analysis.
Ph.D Hui Xu
Argonne National Laboratory
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A First Estimation of County-Based Green Water Availability and Its Implications for Agriculture and Bioenergy Production in the United States, Water, February 2018, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/w10020148.
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