TY - JOUR
T1 - Agrivoltaics provide mutual benefits across the food–energy–water nexus in drylands
AU - Barron-Gafford, Greg A.
AU - Pavao-Zuckerman, Mitchell A.
AU - Minor, Rebecca L.
AU - Sutter, Leland F.
AU - Barnett-Moreno, Isaiah
AU - Blackett, Daniel T.
AU - Thompson, Moses
AU - Dimond, Kirk
AU - Gerlak, Andrea K.
AU - Nabhan, Gary P.
AU - Macknick, Jordan E.
N1 - Funding Information: This research and data were supported by (1) the Water, Environmental, and Energy Solutions initiative at the University of Arizona; (2) the Accelerate For Success Grants Program at the University of Arizona; (3) NSF EAR No. 1659546, REU Site: Earth Systems Research for Environmental Solutions at Biosphere2; and (4) the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab through No. REJ-7-70227, Meeting SunShot Cost and Deployment Targets through Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment programme. The authors thank J. Adams and the Biosphere2 team for their assistance in maintenance of the Biosphere2 Agrivoltaics Learning Lab. Publisher Copyright: © 2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - The vulnerabilities of our food, energy and water systems to projected climatic change make building resilience in renewable energy and food production a fundamental challenge. We investigate a novel approach to solve this problem by creating a hybrid of colocated agriculture and solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure. We take an integrative approach—monitoring microclimatic conditions, PV panel temperature, soil moisture and irrigation water use, plant ecophysiological function and plant biomass production within this ‘agrivoltaics’ ecosystem and in traditional PV installations and agricultural settings to quantify trade-offs. We find that shading by the PV panels provides multiple additive and synergistic benefits, including reduced plant drought stress, greater food production and reduced PV panel heat stress. The results presented here provide a foundation and motivation for future explorations towards the resilience of food and energy systems under the future projected increased environmental stress involving heat and drought.
AB - The vulnerabilities of our food, energy and water systems to projected climatic change make building resilience in renewable energy and food production a fundamental challenge. We investigate a novel approach to solve this problem by creating a hybrid of colocated agriculture and solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure. We take an integrative approach—monitoring microclimatic conditions, PV panel temperature, soil moisture and irrigation water use, plant ecophysiological function and plant biomass production within this ‘agrivoltaics’ ecosystem and in traditional PV installations and agricultural settings to quantify trade-offs. We find that shading by the PV panels provides multiple additive and synergistic benefits, including reduced plant drought stress, greater food production and reduced PV panel heat stress. The results presented here provide a foundation and motivation for future explorations towards the resilience of food and energy systems under the future projected increased environmental stress involving heat and drought.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41893-019-0364-5
DO - 10.1038/s41893-019-0364-5
M3 - Article
SN - 2398-9629
VL - 2
SP - 848
EP - 855
JO - Nature Sustainability
JF - Nature Sustainability
IS - 9
ER -