Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: analysis and prevention of malnutrition in low-income regions
Published: 2025-10-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Health
Purpose: An abrupt sunlight reduction scenario (ASRS) can be triggered by a nuclear war, a large volcanic eruption, or an asteroid strike, resulting in global agricultural collapse. A wide portfolio of resilient food interventions has been developed to address these issues, but even if they succeed in providing sufficient food energy for the global population, economic inequality could still [...]
Accessible Climate and Impact Model Output for Studying the Human and Environmental Impacts of Nuclear Conflict
Published: 2025-10-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
Nuclear winter refers to the suite of physical and biological consequences that may follow nuclear conflict, particularly the cooling and darkening of Earth’s surface due to black carbon soot in the upper atmosphere. While the associated changes in temperature, precipitation, and food system productivity have been the subject of climate modeling for decades, the outputs of models used to project [...]
Climate Change Projections for the Central Peruvian Coast (2006–2100) Using CMIP5 Models: Agricultural Impacts and Implications for the Growth of Chenopodium quinoa Willd in Arid Zones
Published: 2025-10-02
Subjects: Agriculture
We evaluated climatic data for the central coastal region of Peru (Lima) as simulated by the climate models used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). The models were: MIROC-ESM, CSIRO Mk 3.6, CNRM-CM5, GFDL-CM3, IPSL-CM5A-MR, and MPI-ESM-LR, with respective spatial resolutions of 2.81° × 1.77°, 1.875° × 1.86°, 1.4° × 1.40°, 2.5° × 2.0°, 2.5° × 1.27°, and 1.875° × 1.875°. [...]
Economic and Environmental Comparison of Open Field and Screenhouse Vegetable Farming in Nigeria
Published: 2025-09-12
Subjects: Agriculture
This study compares screenhouse, rainfed, and irrigated vegetable farming systems in Northwest Nigeria, focusing on their economic and environmental performance. Screenhouse farming demonstrates superior yield, cost-efficiency, and sustainability, producing up to 90% more saleable output than rainfed systems and using over 95% less water per kilogram of produce. Although initial investment is [...]
Strategic crop relocation could substantially mitigate nuclear winter yield losses
Published: 2025-09-11
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science
Nuclear war could inject millions of tonnes of soot into the stratosphere, cooling the Earth and devastating crop yields. We assess crop relocation—switching which crops are grown where—as an adaptation strategy. Using the Mink crop model, we simulate six major crops under three nuclear winter scenarios (16, 47, and 150 Tg of soot). Without adaptation, global caloric production falls 23%, 53%, [...]
Amplified agricultural impacts from more frequent and intense sequential heat events
Published: 2025-09-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate
As the climate warms, interacting weather extremes such as sequential heat events pose complex risks to societies. Regarding global agriculture, laboratory experiments suggest that early crop exposure to heat may either confer tolerance or enhance vulnerability to subsequent heat during the critical crop flowering stage. We show that warm early-seasons improve crop yield potential, particularly [...]
The Largest Crop Production Shocks: Magnitude, Causes and Frequency
Published: 2025-09-04
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Risk Analysis
Food is the foundation of our society. We often take it for granted, but stocks are rarely available for longer than a year, and food production can be disrupted by catastrophic events, both locally and globally. To highlight such major risks to the food system, we analyzed FAO crop production data from 1961 to 2023 to find the largest crop production shock for every country and identify its [...]
An assessment of the agronomic benefits of silicate rock powders in Brazil in the context of a novel classification
Published: 2025-09-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science, Plant Sciences
The sustainable intensification of tropical agriculture requires innovative approaches to restore soil health, reduce dependency on imported fertilizers, and increase crop productivity. Brazil has emerged as a global leader in the use of silicate agrominerals (ASi), silicate rich rock powders that supply plant nutrients and improve soil properties. These materials could advance low-cost soil [...]
Methodological Concerns Regarding RSPO Certification and Plantation Efficiency in Malaysia. A commentary on "Sustainable Palm Oil Certification Inadvertently Affects Production Efficiency in Malaysia" by Zachlod et al. (2025).
Published: 2025-08-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Sustainability
This commentary is in response to the recent article by Zachlod et al. (2025), Sustainable palm oil certification inadvertently affects production efficiency in Malaysia published in Communications Earth & Environment, 6(1), 200. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02150-2. It concludes that Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification leads to reduced plantation efficiency in [...]
Tradeoffs between crop yield, agricultural residue burning, and groundwater depletion in India's wheat belt
Published: 2025-08-15
Subjects: Agriculture
Wheat is a staple crop in India, but yields have stagnated and are projected to further decline due to climate change. One way to increase yields is to ensure timely sowing, which allows the crop to mature prior to damaging heat stress at the end of the growing season. Using novel satellite data products that we developed along with a unique village-level dataset that we collated across India's [...]
Only half of the calories produced on croplands are available for human consumption
Published: 2025-07-24
Subjects: Agriculture, Sustainability
Managing limited agricultural land to feed a growing population with changing diets requires understanding and managing tradeoffs associated with how crops are utilized. Here, we quantify the impact of how 50 crops are used for food, livestock feed, biofuels, and other non-food uses on available calories from 2010 to 2020. We find that, although total calorie production increased by 23.9% from [...]
Satellite Remote Sensing-Based Crop Cover Classification over Europe: Accuracy of Different Methodological Approaches
Published: 2025-07-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences
Crop maps play an important role in a variety of applications, from calculating crop areas and forecasting food production quantities to the analysis of agri-environmental interactions, highlighting the necessity of timely and accurate information on agricultural land use. The availability of remote sensing data has permitted numerous crop classification studies, which have investigated a variety [...]
Food security beyond borders: how crop imports affect drought risk of conflict-affected countries
Published: 2025-06-25
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Climate, Environmental Studies, Hydrology, Meteorology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Sustainability
Drought events can disrupt food security and increase the risk of violent conflicts. In an interconnected global food system, countries rely on both local food production and imports to meet domestic demand. When assessing the impact of drought risk on national food security, however, imported crops are often overlooked. This study incorporates international crop trade information to understand [...]
Comprehensive quantification of production costs for large-scale kelp aquaculture and cost reduction opportunities
Published: 2025-06-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A highly realistic techno-economic analysis (TEA) was developed to assess the cost of production (COP, US $ per fresh tonne kelp) for large-scale kelp aquaculture. The TEA resolves feedbacks across structural design and response, operational requirements and decisions, site properties, and biological response. We apply the TEA to a Saccharina latissima farming operation at a 100m deep, 405 [...]
Comparative Economic and Environmental Analysis of Open Field (Rainfed and Irrigated) and Environmental Agriculture (Screenhouse) Leafy and Pulpy Vegetables Production Systems in North West Nigeria.
Published: 2025-06-06
Subjects: Agriculture
Screenhouse farming demonstrates remarkable water-use efficiency, requiring only 7.00 liters per kg for cabbage, 3.58 liters/kg for lettuce, and 2.38 liters/kg for spinach, a significant contrast to rainfed cabbage at 10,625 liters/kg and rainfed pumpkin at 17,628 liters/kg. This means screenhouse farming uses just 0.066% of the water consumed by rainfed cabbage and 0.014% of the water used by [...]