TY - JOUR
T1 - Grain and Virtual Water Storage Capacity in the United States
AU - Ruess, Paul J.
AU - Konar, Megan
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation grant ACI-1639529 (“INFEWS/T1: Mesoscale Data Fusion to Map and Model the U.S. Food, Energy, and Water [FEW] System”), EAR-1534544 (“Hazards SEES: Understanding Cross-Scale Interactions of Trade and Food Policy to Improve Resilience to Drought Risk”), and CBET-1844773 (CAREER: A National Strategy for a Resilient Food Supply Chain”. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. All data sources are detailed in Table 1 and are publicly accessible. We gratefully acknowledge these sources, without which this work would not be possible. This paper benefited from the suggestions of Arjen Y. Hoekstra and two anonymous reviewers.
Publisher Copyright:
©2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Extensive research has evaluated virtual water trade, the water embodied in traded commodities. However, relatively little research has examined virtual water storage or the water embodied in stored commodities. Just as in physical hydrology, both flows and stocks of virtual water resources must be considered to obtain an accurate representation of the system. Here we address the following question: How much water can be virtually stored in grain storage in the United States? To address this question, we employ a data-intensive approach, in which a variety of government databases on agricultural production and grain storage capacities are combined with modeled estimates of grain crop water use. We determine the virtual water storage capacity (VWSC) in grain silos, map the spatial distribution of VWSC, calculate contributions from irrigation and rainwater sources, and assess changes in VWSC over time. We find that 728 km3 of water could be stored as grain in the United States, with roughly 86% coming from precipitation. National VWSC capacities were 777 km3 in 2002, 681 km3 in 2007, and 728 km3 in 2012. This represents a 6% decline in VWSC over the full 10-year period, mostly attributable to increased water productivity. VWSC represents 62% of U.S. dam storage and accounts for 75–97% of precipitation receipts to agricultural areas, depending on the year. This work enhances our understanding of the food-water nexus, will enable virtual water trade models to incorporate temporal dynamics, and can be used to better understand the buffering capacity of infrastructure to climate shocks.
AB - Extensive research has evaluated virtual water trade, the water embodied in traded commodities. However, relatively little research has examined virtual water storage or the water embodied in stored commodities. Just as in physical hydrology, both flows and stocks of virtual water resources must be considered to obtain an accurate representation of the system. Here we address the following question: How much water can be virtually stored in grain storage in the United States? To address this question, we employ a data-intensive approach, in which a variety of government databases on agricultural production and grain storage capacities are combined with modeled estimates of grain crop water use. We determine the virtual water storage capacity (VWSC) in grain silos, map the spatial distribution of VWSC, calculate contributions from irrigation and rainwater sources, and assess changes in VWSC over time. We find that 728 km3 of water could be stored as grain in the United States, with roughly 86% coming from precipitation. National VWSC capacities were 777 km3 in 2002, 681 km3 in 2007, and 728 km3 in 2012. This represents a 6% decline in VWSC over the full 10-year period, mostly attributable to increased water productivity. VWSC represents 62% of U.S. dam storage and accounts for 75–97% of precipitation receipts to agricultural areas, depending on the year. This work enhances our understanding of the food-water nexus, will enable virtual water trade models to incorporate temporal dynamics, and can be used to better understand the buffering capacity of infrastructure to climate shocks.
KW - agriculture
KW - grain production
KW - storage
KW - virtual water
KW - virtual water storage
KW - water-food nexus
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U2 - 10.1029/2018WR024292
DO - 10.1029/2018WR024292
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85065915886
VL - 55
SP - 3960
EP - 3975
JO - Water Resources Research
JF - Water Resources Research
SN - 0043-1397
IS - 5
ER -