A land–water–energy–greenhouse gas nexus framework informs climate change mitigation in agriculture: A case study in the North China Plain

Abstract

The land, water, energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions involved in agricultural production are intrinsically linked. However, quantitative characterization and scenario simulations of these elements’ inherent interrelationships remain scarce. We developed a land-water-energy-GHG (LWEG) nexus framework for the North China Plain (NCP). The framework identifies the mutual feedback in the life cycle of agricultural production among the four factors. We applied the framework to assess the agricultural GHG mitigation potential for winter wheat, summer maize, and rice in NCP municipalities. The results showed that cropping structure optimization reduced GHG emissions by 1.96 Mt CO₂e. Controlling indirect energy consumption in upstream processes of crop production and reducing on-site energy use reduced the volume and intensity per unit area of agricultural GHG emissions. Because of the synergies between land, water, and energy, nexus management, which combines multiple measures of groundwater management, fertilizer, and energy control, has substantial GHG mitigation potential. The nexus management scenario produced a total GHG of 159.51 Mt CO₂e, a decrease of 15.38 % from the baseline scenario. This study quantifies the LWEG nexus within agricultural production processes and identifies agricultural management practices that integrate water, energy conservation, and emissions mitigation contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals.

Keywords

Land-water-energy-GHG nexus / Agricultural GHG mitigation / Energy conservation / Scenario simulation

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xin Xuan: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Yuping Bai: Project administration, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Data curation. Gaurav Sikka: Visualization, Validation, Software, Data curation. Chuyao Weng: Writing – original draft, Validation, Methodology. Xiangzheng Deng: Writing – review & editing, Resources, Project administration, Investigation.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants No. 72474200, 72104223), the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72221002), and the Innovation Centre for Digital Business and Capital Development of Beijing Technology and Business University (Grant No. SZSK202211).

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100354.

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