Steven Peterson

To withstand the growing demand of commodity volume and its strain on the transportation infrastructure, it is necessary to identify the flow of commodities by route and mode. However, a national multimodal freight routing model does not exist for the U.S. The development of such model requires multiple building blocks, such as virtual representations of roadway, railway, and waterway networks, transload facilities (TFs), and access/egress links. Most of these blocks have a robust database in the U.S., except for the TFs. This paper presents the fusion of dispersed and heterogeneous representations of multimodal TFs into a single, comprehensive, geospatial freight TF dataset. The TF dataset is derived from several sources, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Master Docks Plus, the National Transportation Atlas Database, the Intermodal Association of North America, industry publications, and other public information. First, individual datasets were queried and reconciled. A geocoding/reverse geocoding process was applied to get the best street address and latitude/longitude location for each terminal. Then, duplicate terminals were identified by a fuzzy match algorithm based on terminal name and location, and removed. Validation was performed by visual inspection of random facilities. The main contributions of this work are: a publicly available version of the TF dataset, including facility location and multimodal transfer capability of 9,003 facilities, and an enterprise-version with the same facilities but including commodity handling capabilities. The main purpose of developing the TF dataset is to inform multimodal routing algorithms. The proposed TF dataset allows for credibly modeling the multimodal transfer of commodities within shipment routes.

Interest in local and regional food systems (LRFSs) as economic development and food resilience strat­egies has grown over several decades. Disruptions caused by climate change, the COVID-19 pan­demic, and international conflicts have illuminated our vulnerabilities and increased motivation to build resilience by “scaling up” local and regional foods. Yet, scaling up LRFSs remains challenging and aspirational in many communities, suggesting a need to further explore their development as con­textualized and hybrid systems. Drawing from a survey of landowners and interviews with produc­ers, resource managers, and others, this study focused on the Palouse bioregion of the U.S. Northwest. This was done to illustrate the com­plexity and potential of scaling up LRFSs in the context of land and water constraints, diverse stakeholders, and multiple, potentially conflicting land-use goals. The results identify points of ten­sion between small-scale produce and large-scale dryland commodity systems, but also identify points of complementarity. Conflict, dialectic, and hybridization can help each scale become more environmentally and economically sustainable. While land access is a barrier, our landowner sur­vey identified over 1,000 acres (405 hectares) potentially available for growing produce for LRFSs. Landowners expressed a diverse set of values and orientations to agriculture, which shapes land access and provides opportunities for differ­ent approaches. Water supply constrains irrigated agricultural development rather than prevents it in this region; however, water-efficient irrigation prac­tices and pond development hold promise for agri­cultural, hydrologic, and habitat improvement. Short food and values-based supply chains for arti­san grains can leverage and support both types of production in the Palouse bioregion, highlighting an area for continued compatible development.

Interest in local and regional food systems (LRFSs) as economic development and food resilience strat­egies has grown over several decades. Disruptions caused by climate change, the COVID-19 pan­demic, and international conflicts have illuminated our vulnerabilities and increased motivation to build resilience by “scaling up” local and regional foods. Yet, scaling up LRFSs remains challenging and aspirational in many communities, suggesting a need to further explore their development as con­textualized and hybrid systems. Drawing from a survey of landowners and interviews with produc­ers, resource managers, and others, this study focused on the Palouse bioregion of the U.S. Northwest. This was done to illustrate the com­plexity and potential of scaling up LRFSs in the context of land and water constraints, diverse stakeholders, and multiple, potentially conflicting land-use goals. The results identify points of ten­sion between small-scale produce and large-scale dryland commodity systems, but also identify points of complementarity. Conflict, dialectic, and hybridization can help each scale become more environmentally and economically sustainable. While land access is a barrier, our landowner sur­vey identified over 1,000 acres (405 hectares) potentially available for growing produce for LRFSs. Landowners expressed a diverse set of values and orientations to agriculture, which shapes land access and provides opportunities for differ­ent approaches. Water supply constrains irrigated agricultural development rather than prevents it in this region; however, water-efficient irrigation prac­tices and pond development hold promise for agri­cultural, hydrologic, and habitat improvement. Short food and values-based supply chains for arti­san grains can leverage and support both types of production in the Palouse bioregion, highlighting an area for continued compatible development.

Despite growing interest in fresh local produce across the United States, scaling up local agricultural development might impose new environmental pressures on increasingly scarce water and land resources in specific localities. Drawing upon the case of the Palouse of the US Inland Northwest, this study evaluates land and water footprints of local foods along with food waste reduction in a water-scarce region. We used both non-robust and robust diet-optimization techniques to estimate the minimum amounts of irrigation water necessary to grow foods locally and to satisfy the local population's caloric or nutrition needs. Our modeling results indicate that, on an annual basis, an increase of less than 5% of the current freshwater withdrawal on the Palouse could satisfy 10% of the local population's aspirational demand for locally grown food products, while more than 35% of local foods (by mass) may be wasted. Furthermore, reducing food waste by 50% could simultaneously reduce water use by up to 24%, cropland use by 13%, and pastureland use by 20%. Our findings not only provide intriguing information for access to local food but could also be used to stimulate new efforts to increase consumers' and retailers' awareness of environmental benefits associated with food waste reduction.