ReFEWS: Upper Snake River Basin

Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS) seek to conceptualize Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) systems broadly, incorporating physical processes (such as built infrastructure and new technologies for more efficient resource utilization), natural processes (such as biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles), biological processes (such as agroecosystem structure and productivity), social/behavioral processes (such as decision making and governance), and cyber-components (such as sensing, networking, computation and visualization for decision-making and assessment). Investigations of these complex systems may produce discoveries that cannot emerge from research on food or energy or water systems alone.The overarching goal of INFEWS is to catalyze well-integrated research to transform scientific understanding of the FEW nexus (integrating all three components rather than addressing them separately), in order to improve system function and management, address system stress, increase resilience, and ensure sustainability.

Using the Upper Snake River Basin as a testbed, we will address three research questions to quantify where and how resilience can be purposefully established through coupled reuse and re-purposing in food, energy, and water systems (ReFEWS). Through integrated social, hydrological, and waste stream modeling of the food, energy and water (FEW) system, scenario building, and the development of indicator suites we will advance our understanding of robustness and resilience of FEWS under future climate, economic, and technology-adoption scenarios.