Collaborative Research: GCR: Growing Restorative Agroenergy Landscapes

Many solar energy projects are installed in agricultural lands, creating land competition with crops, orchards, vineyards, and pastures. However, relatively little is known about how these solar installations affect surrounding communities, landscapes, and agriculture. Moreover, careful design and siting of these installations can yield a variety of benefits, including increasing farm income, enhancing water resources, improving plant and animal habitat, and enriching soil. To address these issues, this project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers with agricultural extension specialists, landscape designers, community members, and industry and nonprofit partners. The project will focus on two questions: 1) how is solar energy affecting the landscape and surrounding communities?; and 2) how can the U.S. build a stronger, more productive, and more resilient agroenergy landscape? The project explores practices that will improve outcomes of solar energy in agricultural landscapes. To do so, the project will collect novel data at existing solar facilities and launch a first-of-its-kind scientific research facility to collect data on how solar installations affect agricultural land and communities. Using these data, the research team will study how solar facilities change soil and habitat conditions, the water cycle, crop production, economic returns, and surrounding communities. Throughout the project, an advisory team of farmers, stakeholders, policymakers, and community members will help shape the research and focus the project’s efforts on the needs of farmers, utilities, and the public. This approach will bring together new forms of biogeophysical data collection, modeling, and life cycle assessment with community co-creation. The project’s findings will be used to create decision-support tools, design new solar installations, conduct workforce training, and develop educational workshops and programs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.