Research Team with Purdue Co-PI Awarded NSF Grant
Groundwater for irrigation is critical to the viability and ultimate success of many US farming communities, as well as the national and international food networks they support. However, groundwater is being overused and overexploited in many areas, putting the resource and those who rely on it in danger. Center affiliate and assistant professor of Political Science and Civil Engineering David Yu is a Co-PI on a team from Virginia Tech University that was recently awarded $1.6 million from the National Science Foundation to study the resilience, adaptability, and vulnerabilities of important groundwater resources.
The overall aim of the research is to further advance theory on how groundwater self-governance arrangements engage with natural and social factors, and how these impact the resource’s overall effectiveness and adaptability in the face of socio-ecological change. The team will establish approaches in both the natural and social sciences to make determinations about the convergence of social and environmental influences on groundwater and the communities that depend on it. Moving forward, the findings from the team’s work will help agricultural communities largely dependent on groundwater resources for irrigation develop paths for effective and sustainable resource management in the future.