Modeling Watershed-Level Responses of Traditional and Bioenergy Producing Landscapes.

Practices that increase the duration of crop soil coverage such as cover cropping, double cropping, or perrenialization have exhibited many environmental benefits on soil erosion, soil fertility, greenhouse gas emissions, and nutrient losses. Adoption of such management could allow or improve the sustainable production of cellulosic biofuels in the US Midwest. However, such practices may also have deleterious impacts on water cycling through increased crop water consumption. To quantify and assess these impacts, we utilized utilized detailed spatio-temporal soil water measurements from an experiment in the US Midwest to assess model skill for simulating soil water dynamics under a range of biofuel producing cropping systems. A Richards-based approach was incorporated into APEX to improve soil-water balance and streamflow simulations. The APEX model was then applied for a range of traditional and biofuel producing landscapes to assess watershed-level impacts.