Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Exposure to compound climate hazards transmitted via global agricultural trade networks
Published: 2024-11-15
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Environmental Studies, Risk Analysis
Compound climate hazards, such as co-occurring temperature and precipitation extremes, substantially impact people and ecosystems. Internal climate variability combines with the forced global warming response to determine both the magnitude and spatial distribution of these events, and their consequences can propagate from one country to another via many pathways. We examine how exposure to [...]
Sensing The Dynamics of Small Landholding in India through Earth Observation: A Comprehensive Review
Published: 2024-11-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Fragmentation or the breakdown of landholdings to smaller parcels has an adverse impact on crop yields and productivity because of its uneconomic operational sizes. This comprehensive review reflects the insights into the complex dynamics of small landholding (SLs) in India by leveraging earth observation (EO) based sensing technology through synthesizing existing literature, methodologies and [...]
Unveiling Year-Round Cropland Cover by Soil-Specific Spectral Unmixing of Landsat and Sentinel-2 Time Series
Published: 2024-09-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring
Croplands are essential for food security but also impact the environment, biodiversity, and climate. Understanding, monitoring, modeling, and managing these impacts require accurate, comprehensive information on cropland vegetation cover. This study aimed to continuously monitor the state and vegetative processes of cropland, focusing on the assessment of bare soil and its cover with [...]
A Community-Centric Intelligent Cyberinfrastructure for Addressing Nitrogen Pollution using Web Systems and Conversational AI
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Marine Biology, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health
The Blue-Green Action Platform (BlueGAP) information system (IS) is an intelligent cyberinfrastructure framework designed to support large-scale water quality assessments in the context of demographic statistics and community stories about water issues. The system prioritizes collaboration with interested parties in three pilot watersheds with test cases implemented in US locations including [...]
Resilient foods for preventing global famine: a review of food supply interventions for global catastrophic food shocks including nuclear winter and infrastructure collapse
Published: 2024-09-12
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Food Science, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Risk Analysis
Global catastrophic threats to the food system upon which human society depends are numerous. A nuclear war or volcanic eruption could collapse agricultural yields by inhibiting crop growth. Nuclear electromagnetic pulses or extreme pandemics could disrupt industry and mass-scale food supply by unprecedented levels. Global food storage is limited. What can be done? This article presents the state [...]
HarvestStat Africa – Harmonized Subnational Crop Statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa
Published: 2024-09-10
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Sciences
Sub-Saharan Africa faces severe agricultural data scarcity amidst high food insecurity and a large agricultural yield gap, making crop production data crucial for understanding and enhancing food systems. To address this gap, HarvestStat Africa presents the largest compilation of open-access subnational crop statistics and time-series across Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on agricultural statistics [...]
Seaweed Cultivation: A Cost-Effective Strategy for Food Production in a Global Catastrophe
Published: 2024-08-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Analysis, Life Sciences, Spatial Science
An event such as a large volcanic eruption, nuclear winter or asteroid/comet impact has the potential to seriously reduce incoming sunlight, impacting both the global climate and conventional crop yields. This could have catastrophic impacts on human nutrition, unless the food system can adapt. One possible answer is seaweed, where growth is projected to be less impacted (or even enhanced) by the [...]
Micro-Scale Mapping of Soil Organic Carbon: The Potential of Soft X-Ray Spectromicroscopy
Published: 2024-07-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Soil Science
Soil organic carbon (SOC) plays a crucial role in soil fertility, productivity, and global carbon cycling. However, the mechanisms governing SOC persistence and turnover are not fully understood, hindering effective carbon management strategies. Especially limiting are challenges to visualize and characterize spatial distribution patterns of SOC within the intact soil. This study presents a novel [...]
A global open-source dataset of monthly irrigated and rainfed cropped areas (MIRCA-OS) for the 21st century
Published: 2024-07-01
Subjects: Agriculture
Crop production is among the most extensive human activities on the planet – with critical importance for global food security, land use, environmental burden, and climate. Yet despite the key role that croplands play in global land use and Earth systems, there remains little understanding of how spatial patterns of global crop cultivation have recently evolved and which crops have [...]
Food trade disruption after global catastrophes
Published: 2024-06-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography
The global food trade system is resilient to minor disruptions but vulnerable to major ones. Major shocks can arise from global catastrophic risks, such as abrupt sunlight reduction scenarios (e.g., nuclear war) or global catastrophic infrastructure loss (e.g., due to severe geomagnetic storms or a global pandemic). We use a network model to examine how these two scenarios could impact global [...]
The Looming Crisis: Global Groundwater Depletion and its Unseen Impacts, Climate Change
Published: 2024-06-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences
Groundwater depletion is a growing threat to global sustainability, impacting ecosystems, agriculture, and human populations. This viewpoint explores the causes and consequences of unsustainable groundwater extraction, highlighting its far-reaching effects on local and global climates. The paper examines specific examples from various regions worldwide, showcasing the widespread nature of this [...]
HarvestGRID: High-resolution harvested crop areas of the United States from 1981 to 2019
Published: 2024-05-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
The United States is a major producer and exporter of agricultural goods, fulfilling global demands for food, fiber, and fuel while generating substantial economic benefits. Agriculture in the U.S. not only dominates land use but also ranks as the largest water-consuming sector. High-resolution cropland mapping and insights into cultivation trends are essential to enhance sustainable management [...]
Adoption of on-farm water management strategies and its impact on household welfare: Evidence from the Upper Ewaso Ng’iro North Catchment Area, Kenya
Published: 2024-05-03
Subjects: Agriculture
On-farm water management strategies can be classified into technological and non-technological options. While, numerous studies have assessed the drivers of the adoption of conservation strategies, few have assessed the welfare impacts of adoption. Analysis was conducted on cross-sectional farm household data collected from 652 households randomly selected from eight sub-catchments of the Upper [...]
Collaborative systems thinking analysis for enhancing climate smart agricultural (CSA) technology adoption in Africa
Published: 2024-02-08
Subjects: Agriculture
Agricultural technology adoption is a critical driver of sustainable development, particularly in developing regions where agriculture plays a pivotal role in food security and livelihoods. This study combines network analysis, including causal loop diagrams (CLD), with centrality metrics, to uncover key leverage points within the system where targeted interventions can yield significant impacts [...]
Quantification of Water Distribution in California: A Case Study for Other Regions in the World
Published: 2024-02-02
Subjects: Agriculture
Data for water distribution by the urban sector, environment, and agriculture across the world is not readily available, publicly accessible, or quantitatively evaluated. It is critical for any society to define and transparently account for regional water distribution in a state or country to facilitate accurate information sharing with the public. Water use in California has been criticized for [...]