Abstract
The concept of the water-food-energy nexus has been widely studied in the past decade. In this paper we expand on this concept to include environmental, economic, and social aspects as well as life cycle assessment based thinking. We proposed a set of Environmental Footprint Assessment, Life Cycle Assessment, and Socio-Economic Assessment indicators and calculated them using a developed System Dynamic Model for Water-Land-Food-Energy-Environment-Economic-Social Nexus (SD-WLF3ESN). The developed model was applied to predict the WLF3ESN of the corn crop in the Western Lake Erie Basin (WLEB)-USA for the period 2016-2030. The prediction was based on scenarios for population, land, yield, crop use, and crop production costs and returns at the county level of WLEB. A matrix for WLF3ESN of the corn crop in WLEB was developed. This matrix can help in developing policies and strategies for managing the nexus in the basin.
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Most of the data used during the study is illustrated in the submitted article.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the National Water Research Center-Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation of Egypt and the University of Toledo-USA, for giving them the chance to cooperate in achieving the current research.
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This study was partially funded by the University of Toledo’s Visiting Faculty Researcher Award (I-127141-01).
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Inas El-Gafy (Corresponding Author): Conceptualization; methodology; review previous research; create the system dynamic model; coding; data collection; validation the system dynamic model; analysis and evaluation of results; writing; review & editing. Defne Apul (Author 2): Conceptualization; LCA data collection, analysis the results; review & editing.
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El-Gafy, I., Apul, D. Expanding the Dynamic Modeling of Water-Food-Energy Nexus to Include Environmental, Economic, and Social Aspects Based on Life Cycle Assessment Thinking. Water Resour Manage 35, 4349–4362 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-02951-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-021-02951-y