Characterizing and modeling subnational virtual water networks of US agricultural and industrial commodity flows

García, S. Gutiérrez; Mejía, Alfonso

doi:10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.06.013

Cited by 21 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…As economic activity intensifies in these western regions, all else being equal (e.g., technical coefficients, water intensities), water stress will likely exacerbate unless adjustments are made to the virtual water flow patterns. This is supported by findings based on complex network analysis which shows that U.S. virtual water flows have a regional structure (Garcia & Mejia, 2019); that is, the density of flows within U.S. regions (e.g., the Southwest or Northeast) is greater than between regions.…”

Section: 1029/2019wr026190mentioning

confidence: 58%

Full Domestic Supply Chains of Blue Virtual Water Flows Estimated for Major U.S. Cities

García

Rushforth

Ruddell

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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Through the trade of products and services, cities indirectly depend on distant water sources to function, prosper, and grow. To fully account for indirect (virtual) water dependencies, virtual water flows need to be known along complex supply chains. To this purpose, we build a new environmental multiregional input-output model for U.S. regions. The model is used to quantify the domestic, blue virtual water flows and analyze the water footprints of 69 major U.S. cities. Our results show a large inequality in the urban water consumed for economic production: just 7 out of the 69 cities included in this study account for 35% of the U.S. national water footprint of production. This is due to the production of water-intensive agricultural products in the metropolitan areas of western cities. The inequality reduces for the urban water footprint of consumption because, through the supply chains of industrialized food sectors, western virtual water is partially transferred to eastern cities as final demand. The water embodied in industrial products and services tends to be higher in western cities than in eastern cities; that is, the water embodied in food services could be several times higher in Los Angeles than in New York City. Trade hub cities attract large inflows of products which are mostly transformed for consumption elsewhere. Thus, the omission of product interdependencies within trade hub cities can increase by several times their water footprints of consumption. Overall, the proposed model is able to enhance subnational estimates of U.S. virtual water flows.

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Section: 1029/2019wr026190mentioning

confidence: 58%

Full Domestic Supply Chains of Blue Virtual Water Flows Estimated for Major U.S. Cities

García

Rushforth

Ruddell

et al. 2020

Water Resources Research

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“…This suggests the possibility of using inter-regional interactions to strengthen network robustness. The importance of inter-regional interactions in the structure of subnational economic flows has been highlighted before using single-layer networks for the United States (Garcia and Mejia 2019 ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, in times of widespread economic disruption, conditions relating to employment or jobs by sector may be of principle concern. Other units of measure such as environmental extensions in water or carbon have provided useful understandings of sustainability implications for supply-chain networks (Garcia and Mejia 2019 ; Garcia et al 2020b ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fragility of a multilayer network of intranational supply chains

et al. 2020

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Supply chains enable the flow of goods and services within economic systems. When mapped for the entire economy and geographic locations of a country, supply chains form a spatial web of interactions among suppliers and buyers. One way to characterize supply chains is through multiregional input-output linkages. Using a multiregional input-output dataset, we build the multilayer network of supply chains in the United States. Together with a network cascade model, the multilayer network is used to explore the propagation of economic shocks along intranational supply chains. We find that the effect of economic shocks, measured using the avalanche size or total number of collapsed nodes, varies widely depending on the geographic location and economic sector of origin of a shock. The response of the supply chains to shocks reveals a threshold-like behavior. Below a certain failure or fragility level, the avalanche size increases relatively quickly for any node in the network. Based on this result, we find that the most fragile regions tend to be located in the central United States, which are regions that tend to specialize in food production and manufacturing. The most fragile layers are chemical and pharmaceutical products, services and food-related products, which are all sectors that have been disrupted by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States. The fragility risk, measured by the intersection of the fragility level of a node and its exposure to shocks, varies across regions and sectors. This suggests that interventions aiming to make the supply-chain network more robust to shocks are likely needed at multiple levels of network aggregation.

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“…In the context of virtual water, a community represents a dominant spatial pattern of water consumption telecouplings in the network. We use modularity to analyze the network's community structure (D'Odorico et al., 2012; Garcia & Mejia, 2019; M. Newman, 2018). For the node importance analysis, we use a centrality metric to identify and rank the most influential regions of water consumption telecouplings in the network (Blöchl et al., 2011; M. Newman, 2018).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The common network science approach used thus far to analyze virtual water flows is to assume a monolayer network representation (Dalin et al., 2012; D'Odorico et al., 2012; Garcia & Mejia, 2019; Suweis et al., 2011), with nodes representing different geographic regions (e.g., countries, states, or cities) and weighted links representing the virtual water flows between pair of nodes. In the monolayer approach, virtual water flows associated with different traded products (e.g., cereal grains, fruits, milled grains, animal feed, etc.)…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilayer Network Clarifies Prevailing Water Consumption Telecouplings in the United States

García

Gomez

Rushforth

et al. 2021

Water Resources Research

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By facilitating the distribution of potable water and subsequent collection of wastewater for treatment (Giustolisi et al., 2019;Krueger et al., 2017;Möderl et al., 2011), engineered water-related networks (e.g., water distribution and collection systems) are central to city functioning.Engineered water-related networks involve real or physical transfers of water and therefore tend to cover local (municipal or city) to regional spatial scales. However, human-water interactions span beyond those

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Characterizing and modeling subnational virtual water networks of US agricultural and industrial commodity flows

Cited by 21 publications

References 70 publications

Full Domestic Supply Chains of Blue Virtual Water Flows Estimated for Major U.S. Cities

Full Domestic Supply Chains of Blue Virtual Water Flows Estimated for Major U.S. Cities

Fragility of a multilayer network of intranational supply chains

Multilayer Network Clarifies Prevailing Water Consumption Telecouplings in the United States

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