UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —  The Chesapeake Bay faces increasing human and environmental challenges, according to Michael Jacobson, professor of forest resources in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, including rapid population growth, environmental impacts from energy development and water quality deterioration.

Focusing on these challenges within the water-energy-food nexus framework, Jacobson co-led the second Collaborative Learning School, a year-round virtual networking community of faculty, students and early career professionals that culminates in a two-week summer field workshop with U.S. and African scientists and practitioners. The school, which was held in Uganda last year, is funded by a five-year, $2 million U.S. National Science Foundation grant and is an initiative of the SustainFood Network.

This year’s Collaborative Learning School brought together 22 early career researchers from institutions in 14 countries on five continents — including Penn State, the University of Michigan, Texas A&M University and African and European Union institutions — who were divided into four research categories within the water-energy-food nexus: soil health, waste management, renewable fuels, and livestock and water quality. The groups met remotely from January to May to discuss their research goals before coming together in June to complete research and training at sites within the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

“The key of the Collaborative Learning School is to help train the next generation of scholars to think about the problems surrounding the water-energy-food nexus from an international perspective,” said Jacobson, who also is a fellow in Ag Sciences Global. “With a wide variety of research specializations from all over the world, this year’s participants were uniquely qualified to design practical solutions for the problems afflicting the bay that can then be supported by governmental policy initiatives.”

During the first week of the Collaborative Learning School, participants engaged with soil, water, plant and air quality experts at the Dickinson College Farm in Carlisle and conducted research in their respective study areas. They also spent time canoeing in Yellow Breeches Creek, which eventually empties into the Chesapeake Bay.

“The Dickinson College Farm was breathtaking — a self-sustaining, student-operated farm that prioritizes sustainable agriculture, integrated resource management and circular approaches to water, energy and food,” said school participant Ece Demir, a graduate student in environmental engineering at Middle East Technical University in Turkey. “We were introduced to innovative waste and manure management and intensive composting operations, as well as a biogas system that transforms cattle manure and food waste into renewable electricity, which generates income and minimizes the pollution entering local streams and the Chesapeake Bay.”

During the second week of the program, participants spent a morning at the capitol with policymakers from Pennsylvania’s departments of agriculture, environmental protection, and conservation and natural resources, where the research groups presented policy recommendations related to natural resource and environmental conservation challenges faced by the Chesapeake Bay that they identified during their week at the farm.

The group then traveled to the bay itself, where they toured the University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Madhouse Oysters, an oyster aquaculture farm on Hooper Island, Maryland; and the Worton Wastewater Treatment Plant.

“With these tours, we aimed to link the upstream farm issues that we were exposed to during the first week, like nutrient runoff, to the bay’s downstream water quality,” said Jacob Johnson, a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State who participated in last year’s school and returned this year as a co-facilitator. “Hearing presentations on current water quality and food safety issues during our visit to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore really put the first week into perspective.”

The school ended with a workshop held at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland, where participants met with early career researchers affiliated with other, similar networks to discuss next steps and research collaborations.

“No single researcher can be an expert in every field, and it is only through effective cooperation among researchers from various disciplines that we can address these multifaceted problems,” said school participant Zeeshan Virk, a doctoral student in environmental engineering at the University of Oulu, Finland. “Coming from an engineering background, I work in a research group primarily focused on quantification and technology. During the school, I gained insight into other critical aspects of the water-energy-food nexus, such as governance, social networks, and participatory and systems dynamics modeling.”

SustainFood Network co-facilitator Christopher Scott, Goddard Chair and professor of ecosystem science and management, emphasized that water-energy-food nexus scholars can make the biggest difference when they have the chance to work with stakeholders outside the university community, such as policymakers and landowners, on solutions.

“The Chesapeake Bay region hangs in the balance with a brewing perfect storm of rapid population, high risk for climate impacts, and inland flooding on tributaries and major rivers like the Susquehanna and Potomac,” said Scott, who also is director of Americas Water-Energy-Food Nexus Alliance, associate director of Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment, and trustee of the Chesapeake Research Consortium. “The causes and resilience solutions must be integrated in nature and global in scope. The water-energy-food nexus provides an integrated research and action framework to make a difference, and the Collaborative Learning School researchers had the opportunity to come together to do just that.”

Two Collaborative Learning Schools will be hosted in Morocco and Nigeria next year. For more information, visit the SustainFood Network website or contact Jacobson at mgj2@psu.edu.