Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Over the coming decades, a changing climate, a projected global population of 10 billion, and rising demand for water and food will have significant impacts on regional and global Water Security (WS) and Food Security (FS). The challenge will be to meet these increasing demands with sustainable and affordable solutions. Although the relationship between WS and FS is complex, leaving it unaddressed undermines livelihoods leading to migrations, general instability, and conflict. This study will develop and implement a 4-component nexus framework to understand the complex interrelationships among the food and water sectors. The components below need to be linked to obtain workflows that can perform the valuable tasks of sustaining water resources and eradicating food insecurity: 1- Focusing on monitoring and predicting agricultural productivity, crop water demand, irrigation, and fertilizer scheduling 2- Focusing on monitoring and predicting drought and pluvial conditions in higher resolutions 3- Focusing on water resources (e.g., estuaries, groundwater, rivers), sustainability, quality, and quantity in rural areas 4- Focusing on the effects of seasonality on household food security, public health, and solutions to household food insecurity The study location is Prince Edward Island (PEI). With the increase in the frequency of droughts, the slowing in annual yield of major crops, increasing fertilizer use, non-sustainable use of groundwater, and high household food insecurity rate of 14%, this province is an ideal location for developing and testing robust water-food nexus workflows. This project will later cover all rural areas of Canada and the U.S. It will use remote sensing data, stochastic analyses, and machine learning coupled with socio-economic factors and other ancillary data to create and validate a complete picture of the water-food nexus. These activities will engage a diverse body of students, postdocs, contractors, and collaborate with faculty at UPEI and elsewhere, stakeholders, economists, the government of PEI, technical specialists, AAFC Living Laboratories, and donors on the many factors of the components to identify approach entry points for strengthening rural WS and FS. Furthermore, the project will release peer-reviewed articles in highly reputable journals and conferences, create summer jobs for students, and will produce film content, blogs, and workshops for outreach and communication.