Given their substantial societal benefits, such as supporting economic activities and providing better livelihoods in rural areas, ecosystem services should gain higher importance in water-food-energy nexus debates. Yet, not all values from ecosystems are quantifiable, data is often not adequate and methods of measuring these values are not sound. This situation challenges researchers and water managers to improve research tools and give adequate attention to ecosystem services by implementing interdisciplinary approaches and integrated management of ecosystems and their services.

Researchers and practitioners have developed many tools to study the water-energy-food nexus at a variety of scales and perspectives in order to aid decision-making. However, there is a recognised lack of tools that consider these interdependent and complex interactions in an integrated fashion. Whether to connect and federate wellestablished modelling systems and approaches, which may be challenging, or to design truly integrated tools for holistic consideration of the nexus issues, is also debated. This paper discusses four distinctly different approaches which appear to have wide-scale applicability, although demonstration of these approaches in multiple cases (besides the Polestar model which is already regional/ global) is yet to be applied. Sustainable implementation of any tools will require greater accessibility such that they may be more widely deployed by practitioners. Harmonisation of results and insights between different scales, so that decision-makers may consider global-local impacts, also remains a challenge.

This special issue aims to provide a knowledge base that is focused on geospatial mapping approaches for a better understanding of spatiotemporal dynamics of agricultural intensification from food/water security standpoints. This issue is of special importance to researchers engaged in applications of geospatial technologies in various agricultural science and engineering disciplines including agronomy, hydrology, geography, climatology, computer science, and engineering | Mahesh Rao, Chandrashekhar Biradar, Sudhanshu Panda. (1/1/2017). Agricultural Intensification: Combating Food/Water Security Challenges Using Remote Sensing and GIS

There is an increasing appreciation that food–energy–water (FEW) nexus problems are approaching criticality in both the developing and developed world. As researchers and managers attempt to address these complex resource management issues, the concept of the FEW nexus has generated a rapidly growing footprint in global sustainability discourse. However, this momentum in the FEW nexus space could be better guided if researchers could more clearly identify what is and is not a FEW problem. Without this conceptual clarity, it can be difficult to defend the position that FEW innovations will produce desired outcomes and avoid unintended consequences. Here we examine the growing FEW nexus scholarship to critically evaluate what features are necessary to define a FEW nexus. This analysis suggests that the FEW nexus differs from sector-focused natural resource or sustainability problems in both complexity and stakes. It also motivates two new foci for research: the identification of low-dimension indexes of FEW system status and approaches for identifying boundaries of specific FEW nexuses.

Delivering access to sufficient food, energy and water resources to ensure human wellbeing is a major concern for governments worldwide. However, it is crucial to account for the ‘nexus’ of interactions between these natural resources and the consequent implications for human wellbeing. The private sector has a critical role in driving positive change towards more sustainable nexus management and could reap considerable benefits from collaboration with researchers to devise solutions to some of the foremost sustainability challenges of today. Yet opportunities are missed because the private sector is rarely involved in the formulation of deliverable research priorities. We convened senior research scientists and influential business leaders to collaboratively identify the top forty questions that, if answered, would best help companies understand and manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. Codification of the top order nexus themes highlighted research priorities around development of pragmatic yet credible tools that allow businesses to incorporate nexus interactions into their decision-making; demonstration of the business case for more sustainable nexus management; identification of the most effective levers for behaviour change; and understanding incentives or circumstances that allow individuals and businesses to take a leadership stance. Greater investment in the complex but productive relations between the private sector and research community will create deeper and more meaningful collaboration and cooperation.

Energy is one of the cornerstones essential for human life, along with other services such as water and food. Understanding how the different services in the energy-water-food (EWF) nexus interact and are perceived by different actors is key to achieving sustainability. In this paper, we derive a model of the EWF nexus using fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM). Data were collected in a two-step approach from workshops with researchers and stakeholders involved in the three focal sectors. Four FCMs were developed; one for each of the EWF sectors, and one for the interactions that create the nexus between EWF. The FCM represents the combined views of the groups who participated in the workshops, the importance and limitations of which is discussed. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the aggregated FCM was applied to predict the impacts on the EWF nexus of four scenarios under which the United Kingdom would depart from the European Union (i.e. Brexit). The FCM indicated that energy-related concepts had the largest influence on the EWF nexus and that EWF demand will decrease most under a ‘hard-Brexit’ scenario. The demand for energy was shown to decline relatively less than other services and was strongly associated with gross domestic product (GDP), whereas UK population size had a stronger effect on water and food demand. Overall, we found a threefold change across all concepts in scenarios without freedom of movement, contribution to the EU budget, and increased policy devolution to the UK.