Abstract:
Food production, water supply, water quality, energy supply and biomass production, and economic growth and financial stability in the Corn Belt depend on each other while competing for resources (water, energy, and land). The traditional approach usually uses separate disciplinary models and ignores or does not fully consider the impact of the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) nexus relations that exist at certain spatial scales, and thus cannot capture the interconnected influence of mixed measures taken across the interdependent systems. To help decision-makers in Corn Belt watersheds address interconnected challenges and find opportunities for watershed management, we develop an Integrated Technology-Environment-Economics Model (ITEEM). ITEEM can be used to quantify the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of various management practices, technologies, and policy interventions on FEW systems in the Corn Belt.
In this seminar, I will first present how the ITEEM is formulated as a spatially semi-distributed dynamic simulation model by integrating different models. Different data techniques are applied to develop suitable surrogates for different computer-based models, including a response matrix method, artificial neural networks, and lookup tables. Then I will demonstrate how to apply ITEEM for a testbed watershed located in Central Illinois to identify effective solutions to watershed nutrient management by navigating across the technical, environmental, and economic dimensions. The tradeoffs and synergies of best agricultural management practices and environmental and biological engineering technologies on the FEW systems will also be discussed.
Bio:
Shaobin Li is a postdoc working with Drs. Ximing Cai, Roland Cusick at CEE, Ben Gramig at ACE, and Gregory McIsaac at NRES, UIUC via an NSF funded Integrated Food, Energy and Water System (INFEWS) project. He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2019 and Bachelor of Engineering at Zhengzhou University, China, in 2014. His research focuses on environmental, watershed, and food system modeling and analysis for sustainability. He applies interdisciplinary approaches in environmental engineering, water resources engineering, sustainability science (e.g., life cycle assessment, human health), data science, and optimization methods to provide effective solutions to pressing environmental and sustainability challenges.
