Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Agriculture

Global industrial disruption following nuclear war

Simon Blouin, Florian Ulrich Jehn, David Denkenberger

Published: 2024-12-05
Subjects: Agriculture, International and Area Studies, Other Geography, Risk Analysis

Nuclear war poses catastrophic risks not only through its immediate effects and potential nuclear winter, but also through the disruption of industrial production on which modern civilization depends. In this study we estimate the reduction in global industrial output following a US-Russia nuclear war, as well as a more limited India-Pakistan exchange, by combining geospatial analysis with [...]

The State of Global Catastrophic Risk Research: A Bibliometric Review

Florian Ulrich Jehn, John-Oliver Engler, Constantin W. Arnscheidt, et al.

Published: 2024-11-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Geography, Other Life Sciences

The global catastrophic risk (GCR) and existential risk (ER) literature focuses on analysing and preventing potential major global catastrophes including a human extinction event. Over the past two decades, the field of GCR/ER research has grown considerably. However, there has been little meta-research on the field itself. How large has this body of literature become? What topics does it cover? [...]

Exposure to compound climate hazards transmitted via global agricultural trade networks

Patrick W Keys, Elizabeth A Barnes, Noah S Diffenbaugh, et al.

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

Subhajit Bandopadhyay, Sourav Dey, Latika Grover, et al.

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

Felix Lobert, Marcel Schwieder, Jonas Alsleben, et al.

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

Samrat Shrestha, Jerry Mount, Gabriel Vald, et al.

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

Juan Bartolomé García Martínez, Jeffray Behr, Joshua M. Pearce, et al.

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

Donghoon Lee, Weston Anderson, Xuan Chen, et al.

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

Michael Hinge, Vasco Amaral Grilo, Florian Ulrich Jehn, et al.

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

Maoz Dor, Tom Regier, Zachary Arthur, et al.

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

Endalkachew Abebe Kebede, Kevin Ong’are Oluoch, Stefan Siebert, et al.

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

Florian Ulrich Jehn, Łukasz G. Gajewski, Johanna Hedlund, et al.

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

Ihab Jomaa

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

Gambhir Lamsal, Landon Marston

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

Simon Nganga Mwaura

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 [...]

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