Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Soil acidity governs cropland phosphorus availability under future climate
Published: 2026-07-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Biogeochemistry, Soil Science
Understanding the response of agricultural phosphorus (P) cycling to climate change is fundamental for ensuring global food security and protecting planetary boundaries1–2. Recently, Wang et al.3 reported a drastic reduction in soil P bioavailability (32–34%) under long-term elevated carbon dioxide (eCO2) and warming in rice paddies, attributing it to enhanced geochemical sequestration via [...]
The role of neglected and underutilised crops in food and nutrition security under climate change: Insights from South Africa
Published: 2026-07-16
Subjects: Agriculture
Neglected and underutilised crop species (NUS) are increasingly discussed as options to enhance the resilience, diversity and nutritional quality of food systems under climate change. However, their productivity and nutritional contribution remain insufficiently quantified at larger scales, making it unclear to what extent they can contribute to food and nutrition outcomes. In South Africa, we [...]
The fossil-water debt of agricultural exports: satellite gravimetry and a climate–yield re-coupling index, demonstrated for Tunisian dates
Published: 2026-07-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science
Fossil groundwater — recharging on geological, not human, timescales — irrigates a growing share of the world's agricultural exports. Drawing it down is capital consumption, not income, yet the depletion embedded in the traded crop is priced nowhere, because the extraction driving it is largely unrecorded. We present a satellite-supported, commodity-level accounting framework that quantifies this [...]
From linguistic evaluation to mechanistic verification: testing LLM-generated farm recommendations
Published: 2026-07-03
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Large language models (LLM) are increasingly used to generate farm-management advice, but their biophysical consequences remain largely unverified. We introduce a process-based verification framework that combines management portfolios generated by ChatGPT and Claude with the process-based model LandscapeDNDC across 11 contrasting agroecosystems. The LLMs produced agronomically plausible [...]
Geospatial Assessment of Current and Future Land Suitability for Peruvian Amylaceous Maize (Zea mays L.) Using Random Forest Modeling
Published: 2026-06-23
Subjects: Agriculture
Climate change poses an increasing threat to crop suitability and food security, particularly for varieties of great cultural and economic importance, such as Peruvian starchy maize (Zea mays L.), whose optimal growing areas remain poorly characterized at the national level. This study presents the first comprehensive geospatial assessment of current and future land suitability for starchy corn [...]
Impacts of Potential Solar Radiation Modification: Systematic Review Reveals Challenges and Opportunities
Published: 2026-06-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences
Solar radiation modification (SRM) is a proposed temporary intervention to limit global warming while mitigation efforts continue. Understanding its potential consequences for human and natural systems is essential for informed deliberations. We conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature on SRM impacts published through May 2024, identifying 289 studies, including 261 primary [...]
Prioritizing Agricultural Flood Mitigation: A GeoAI-Driven Assessment of Susceptibility, Crop Exposure, and Socioeconomic Vulnerability
Published: 2026-05-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computational Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences
Flooding is a recurrent hazard across the U.S. Midwest, yet frameworks integrating flood hazard, agricultural exposure, and socioeconomic vulnerability at the county scale remain limited. This study presents a GeoAI-driven agricultural flood risk assessment for all 99 counties in Iowa, combining machine learning-derived flood susceptibility with crop-specific economic exposure and socioeconomic [...]
Agricultural drought monitoring with Sentinel-1 Cross-Ratio in heterogeneous tropical agriculture: a Mozambique case study
Published: 2026-05-23
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Monitoring
Agricultural drought monitoring is essential for food security in tropical regions where rain-fed agriculture predominates. Operational early warning systems rely primarily on optical vegetation indices, but cloud cover limits their usability during critical growing periods. SAR satellites can observe through clouds, yet their adoption in agricultural drought monitoring remains limited. This [...]
Identification of Stress-Resilient Maize Progenies under Drought and Low Nitrogen in West Africa Using Genotype × Environment Analysis and Multi-Trait Selection Indices
Published: 2026-05-16
Subjects: Agriculture
Maize productivity in West Africa is severely constrained by recurrent drought and low soil nitrogen availability, which results in strong environmental heterogeneity and complex genotype × environment interactions (G×E). Identifying breeding materials that combine productivity, stress resilience, and stability therefore requires analytical approaches that integrate multi-trait and [...]
Soil Remineralization in Agroecological Systems: A Critical Review
Published: 2026-04-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Soil degradation threatens global food security, human nutrition, biodiversity, water resources, and climate stability by depleting soil organic matter, exhausting nutrient reserves, and disrupting carbon and nitrogen cycles. Conventional input‑intensive agriculture has delivered yield gains but has also contributed to widespread micronutrient deficiencies, nutrient loading of waterways, soil [...]
A Meteorological Indicator for Particulate Matter Emissions: Adapting the Hot-Dry-Windy Index to Predict Feedlot Evening Dust Peaks
Published: 2026-04-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Particulate matter emissions from cattle feedlot operations pose significant challenges to both livestock productivity and air quality in surrounding communities. The evening dust peak (EDP) has been documented for decades, but comprehensive long-term studies examining its meteorological drivers are very limited. While laboratory and field-scale investigations have demonstrated that feedlot [...]
Soil-informed multivariate decision support to assess urban ecosystem service potential
Published: 2026-04-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Applied Mathematics, Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Dynamical Systems, Multivariate Analysis, Natural Resources and Conservation, Remote Sensing, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Sustainability, Theory and Algorithms
Metropolitan expansion across Africa requires robust soil information to support ecosystem services and urban resilience. However, digital soil mapping often prioritises predictive accuracy over identifying where information is reliable for decision making. This study evaluated numerical and South African Soil Taxonomy within a decision framework to assess where ecosystem service inferences can [...]
Unravelling long-term temporal dynamics of the invasive fruit fly Bactrocera dorsalis along an altitudinal gradient in Morogoro, Eastern Tanzania
Published: 2026-04-11
Subjects: Agriculture
Bactrocera dorsalis (Hendel) is the most economically important invasive fruit fly in sub-Saharan Africa, yet long-term empirical evidence linking its seasonal dynamics to environmental drivers across altitudinal gradients remains limited. We analysed 279 site-month observations of male trap catches (flies per trap per day, FTD) collected between October 2004 and February 2012 at six sites [...]
Survey Protocol Cards for Crop Maps
Published: 2026-04-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Computer Engineering
Crop type maps underpin food security decisions yet their accuracy depends on label quality, which in turn depends on survey design choices made under tight budgets. Survey planners must allocate limited resources across GPS devices, stratification strategies, sample size, worker training, and verification protocols, but lack quantitative guidance on which investments yield quality crop maps. We [...]
No place to hide? Regional resilience and vulnerability to global catastrophic risk
Published: 2026-03-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Food Science, Forest Sciences, Geography, Public Health
What places on Earth are most resilient to global catastrophic risk (GCR)? We provide the first study of what locations are more resilient against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, geomagnetic storms and pandemics. This shows there is no place on Earth which is resilient against all [...]