Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Soil-informed multivariate decision support to assess urban ecosystem service potential
Published: 2026-04-18
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: 2026-03-28
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 systematic study of what locations are more resilient to a range of catastrophic threats. We reviewed the literature on resilience factors against the impacts of nuclear war, near-Earth objects, large-magnitude volcanic eruptions, large-scale cyberattacks, high altitude electromagnetic pulse, [...]
Microbial inoculation increases maize yield and root biomass across smallholder farming systems in Rwanda
Published: 2026-03-22
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences
Soil degradation, nutrient depletion, and increasing climate stress constrain food productivity across tropical smallholder farming systems. Microbial inoculants have emerged as a promising strategy to improve soil functions and crop yield, yet field-based data from African smallholder systems remain limited, particularly for multi-strain bacterial consortia. Using a multi-strain consortium in a [...]
Inequality’s contribution to global catastrophic risk
Published: 2026-03-13
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Inequality is rising and so is global catastrophic risk. These two problems are not independent from each other. Inequality has historically been a major driver of social instability, and is increasing the risk of global catastrophes today. We demonstrate this by drawing on the rich literature around societal collapse and global catastrophe from both past and modern societies, highlighting the [...]
HIGH-RESOLUTION DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL FOR THE ITALIAN TERRITORY
Published: 2026-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Engineering Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Mining Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
High-resolution digital terrain models are essential for environmental planning and territorial analyses, and provide foundations for geomorphological and hydrological applications, including flood and landslide modelling and geo-hydrological hazard and risk assessments. In Italy, airborne LiDAR surveys have improved the representation of terrain morphology in the last decade, but their coverage [...]
Amazon deforestation footprint across global food and financial systems
Published: 2026-03-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Remote Sensing
Agriculture-driven deforestation in the Amazon remains a major threat to ecosystem stability, biodiversity, and climate regulation. Yet the role of global commodity consumption and finance in driving deforestation in the Amazon remains poorly understood and inadequately addressed. We provide the first comprehensive assessment of the Amazon deforestation footprint embedded in global supply chains [...]
Water-efficient Indian rice cultivation boosts exports despite high carbon footprints
Published: 2026-03-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Sciences, Plant Sciences
Most agricultural sustainability efforts adopt a national-scale view, masking regional trade-offs between crop yields and environmental footprints. To measure trade-offs, satellite remote sensing based life cycle assessment of rice agroecosystems across India from 2004 to 2021 was conducted revealing pivotal shifts of four cultivation typologies, termed as unsustainable, conventional, productive, [...]
The Solar Paradox: Pure Social Diffusion and Competitive Resource Capture in Semi-Arid Irrigated Land Expansion
Published: 2026-03-02
Subjects: Agriculture, Engineering, Life Sciences
Solar-powered irrigation is expanding rapidly across semi-arid regions, but the mechanisms through which this technology diffuses in informal groundwa- ter economies—where the majority of wells operate without permits—remain poorly understood. We address this gap through a spatiotemporal analysis of 3,201 solar wells identified via satellite census in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, combined with 10,000 [...]
Dynamic critical groundwater depth as a predictor of irrigation-intensified salinization in lowland Hungary
Published: 2026-02-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Hydrology, Soil Science
Shallow groundwater in continental lowland environments sustains upward capillary fluxes that transport dissolved salts to the land surface. However, the depth below which this capillary-driven contribution becomes negligible, often parameterized as the extinction depth in groundwater model ET packages, has been treated as a static, soil-dependent parameter. We argue that salinization risk is [...]
Machine Learning and Explainable AI for Agricultural Drought Prediction: A Comparative Analysis of Gradient Boosting Methods Using Multi-Source Earth Observation Data
Published: 2026-02-21
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Life Sciences
Drought monitoring and prediction remain critical challenges in climate science and agricultural management, particularly under accelerating climate change. This study presents a comprehensive machine learning framework for drought susceptibility mapping in Iowa, USA, using multi-source Earth observation data and explainable artificial intelligence. We systematically evaluated eleven supervised [...]
Widespread reliance of rainfed crops on upwind irrigated agriculture in India
Published: 2026-02-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Hydrology, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Rainfed crops account for approximately 40% of India’s food production and support 60% of its livestock. Although linked to oceanic monsoon rainfall, their productivity also depends on terrestrial evaporation, particularly in the non-monsoon season. However, the degree to which rainfed crops also rely on moisture sourced from upwind irrigated areas, remains largely unknown. Using a combination of [...]
Global potential of integrated biorefineries for leaf protein and sugar: Producing sustainable food and preventing starvation in catastrophes
Published: 2026-01-08
Subjects: Agriculture, Chemical Engineering, Engineering, Food Science, Risk Analysis
To accommodate population growth and shifting diets, the global protein supply must increase. Simultaneously, rising climate variability increases agricultural yield shocks, disrupting conventional crops. Worse, global catastrophes such as nuclear war or pandemics could collapse the global food system. Here, we turn to the potential of grasslands and plentiful legume biomass (e.g., alfalfa, [...]
HyTC-TaNet: A Hybrid Deep Learning Model Capturing Multi-day Temporal Dependencies for Daily Mean Air Temperature Estimation with Spatial Applicability Analysis
Published: 2026-01-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics