Of the many roles insects serve for ecosystem function, pollination is possibly the most important service directly linked to human well-being. However, land use changes have contributed to the decline of pollinators and their habitats. In agricultural landscapes that also support renewable energy developments such as utility-scale solar energy [USSE] facilities, opportunities may exist to conserve insect pollinators and locally restore their ecosystem services through the implementation of vegetation management approaches that aim to provide and maintain pollinator habitat at USSE facilities. As a first step toward understanding the potential agricultural benefits of solar-pollinator habitat, we identified areas of overlap between USSE facilities and surrounding pollinator-dependent crop types in the United States (U.S.). Using spatial data on solar energy developments and crop types across the U.S., and assuming a pollinator foraging distance of 1.5 km, we identified over 3,500 km of agricultural land near existing and planned USSE facilities that may benefit from increased pollination services through the creation of pollinator habitat at the USSE facilities. The following five pollinator-dependent crop types accounted for over 90% of the agriculture near USSE facilities, and these could benefit most from the creation of pollinator habitat at existing and planned USSE facilities: soybeans, alfalfa, cotton, almonds, and citrus. We discuss how our results may be used to understand potential agro-economic implications of solar-pollinator habitat. Our results show that ecosystem service restoration through the creation of pollinator habitat could improve the sustainability of large-scale renewable energy developments in agricultural landscapes.
Advances
in water treatment technologies paired with potential
restrictions on oil and gas (O&G) produced water disposal could
incentivize the beneficial reuse of treated produced water in the
O&G industry. However, the remote nature of O&G operations
limits the applicability of many of these solutions, which may be
spatially inefficient, require operator supervision, or are ill-suited
for the complex nature of produced water. Furthermore, the responsible,
sustainable reuse of produced water as an alternative water source
requires standardized analytical techniques for characterizing and
determining the toxicity of treated produced water and improving our
understanding of the fate and transport of various constituents. In
the past decade, we made little progress in economically treating
produced water for beneficial reuse outside of oilfield operations;
the sole major breakthrough has been in the development of salt-tolerant
fracturing chemicals that allow for reuse of produced water for fracking
operations. Guided research should assist in the development of fit-for-purpose
solutions to maximize the reuse of treated produced water. This is
exemplified by the case studies presented here that detail currently
operating treatment facilities for reclamation and reuse of produced
water.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.