Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States of America.
John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, United States of America; Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM, United States of America.
Sci Total Environ. 2020 Mar 20;709:136153. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136153. Epub 2019 Dec 17.
To find a sustainable way of supplying food, energy, and water (FEW) while simultaneously protecting the ecosystem services, it is imperative to build greater understanding on interconnections, feedback, and dependencies in FEW systems. The FEW nexus has developed as a field of study to provide frameworks for such pursuits. Building upon previous work in this paper, we analyze FEW resources through the development of a virtual water trade network using the US network of food and energy flows and their associated virtual water contents. Our main objective is to provide a quantitative estimation of the virtual water embodied in the internal US food and energy transfers and analyze the associated interdependencies of these connections. Three methodological advancements demonstrate the novelty of this work. First, unlike existing FEW virtual water modeling studies, our work separates corn into both food and energy resources accounting for the significant use of corn for ethanol in the United States. Second, we apply recently published water consumption values for energy commodities confirming the variation between previous water footprint studies and these more accurate accounting procedures. Third, we examine network properties of the trade flows furthering FEW nexus literature and showcasing avenues for future research. Our results indicate that accounting for the transfer of corn from the food commodity network to the energy commodity network leads to a virtual water footprint decline of 11% for the cereal grain virtual water network. Additionally, the food trade network shows highly dense and connected properties compared to the energy trade network. Finally, our results indicate that transfers of water footprints between water scarce and water abundant states differ substantially between food and energy virtual water networks. A quantifiable understanding of the water footprint network embodied in the food and energy trade can help in developing policies for promoting conservation and efficiency in the context of the FEW nexus.
为了找到一种可持续的方式来供应食物、能源和水（FEW），同时保护生态系统服务，必须增强对 FEW 系统中的相互联系、反馈和依存关系的理解。FEW 关系已经发展成为一个研究领域，为这种追求提供框架。在本文之前的工作基础上，我们通过使用美国的食物和能源流动及其相关的虚拟水含量来开发虚拟水贸易网络，分析了 FEW 资源。我们的主要目的是提供一个对美国内部食物和能源转移中所包含的虚拟水的定量估计，并分析这些联系的相关相互依存关系。有三个方法学上的进步展示了这项工作的新颖性。首先，与现有的 FEW 虚拟水建模研究不同，我们的工作将玉米分为食物和能源资源，考虑到美国大量使用玉米生产乙醇。其次，我们应用了最近公布的能源商品用水值，证实了之前的水足迹研究与这些更准确的核算程序之间的差异。第三，我们进一步研究了贸易流的网络特性，推进了 FEW 关系文献，并展示了未来研究的途径。我们的结果表明，将玉米从食物商品网络转移到能源商品网络，会导致谷物虚拟水网络的虚拟水足迹减少 11%。此外，与能源贸易网络相比，食物贸易网络具有高度密集和连接的特性。最后，我们的结果表明，在食物和能源虚拟水网络中，水资源稀缺和丰富的州之间的水足迹转移有很大的不同。对食物和能源贸易中所包含的水足迹网络的可量化理解有助于在 FEW 关系的背景下制定促进保护和效率的政策。
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