Matthew Potts has been awarded a $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute for Food and Agriculture. The grant is part of the Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems program, which seeks to address how society will create a sustainable supply of food, energy, and water, and protect the ecosystems that provide essential services for humans.
The project will identify the best ways to reduce the environmental impacts of food, energy, and water systems in and around cities, towns, and suburbs. “On a hotter, more crowded and less natural planet, it is imperative we find innovative ways to combine human and natural capital to produce the ecosystem services that underpin human well-being,” said Potts.
Potts, along with UC Berkeley professors Kara Nelson and Arpad Horvath, will be a co-principal investigator on the project, Reducing the Environmental Impacts of FEW Systems in and Around Cities.
New data and insights generated by this research will inform the modeling of resilient and cost-effective solutions for resource recovery in urban, suburban, and periurban areas. Potts and the research team will consider current and projected future conditions, tradeoffs, and associated uncertainties and sensitivities in these systems.
Potts’s research is primarily focused on how to optimally achieve ecosystem service production and biodiversity conservation in multi-use landscapes.