Stakeholder-Driven Modeling in Support of Groundwater Sustainability: the Floridan Aquifer Collaborative Engagement for Sustainability (FACETS) Project
Abstract
The Upper Floridan Aquifer (UFA) is among the largest, most productive aquifers in the world and is a vital regional resource shared between Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. The UFA supports agricultural activities worth >$7.5 billion and supplies drinking water to more than 10 million people but faces significant threats to water quality and quantity, which could potentially harm food security, fiber production, and vital ecosystem services. The Floridan Aquifer Collaborative Engagement for Sustainability (FACETS) project is bringing scientists and a diverse group of stakeholders together in a Participatory Modeling Process (PMP) to understand the economic-environmental tradeoffs associated with alternative climate, land use, Best Management Practice (BMP) adoption, and policy scenarios, with the ultimate goal of understanding changes needed to achieve agricultural water security and environmental protection. Scenario analyses results are being incorporated into public willingness-to-pay and producer willing-to-accept surveys to develop BMP adoption/land use change supply and demand curves, which will inform the development of policies and incentives to bring about changes in land use and water management. This presentation will highlight successes and challenges of the first year of this five-year project, including progress in understanding stakeholders' mental models of the socioecological system and attitudes about water quality and quantity; use of social learning research to shape the design of the PMP; field experiments to measure yields as well as water and nutrient balances of alternative cropping systems and BMPS; and the co-development of biophysical (SWAT-MODFLOW) and economic models to simulate agricultural/silvicultural production, water quality and quantity, and economic conditions for baseline and alternative future scenarios in the region.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H32D..08G
- Keywords:
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- 1807 Climate impacts;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1829 Groundwater hydrology;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES