Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Historical distribution of managed honeybee colonies (Apis mellifera) in 18th-century Spain: A standardized dataset (v1: Cáceres)
Published: 2026-10-27
Subjects: Agriculture, Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Nature and Society Relations
This data descriptor presents a standardized, geographically harmonized dataset of managed honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies in the current province of Cáceres (Spain) during the mid-18th century (1750–1754). Data was extracted from the Ensenada Cadastre primary manuscript sources. The dataset encompasses 207 Local Administrative Units (LAU) and records a minimum threshold of 165,387 managed [...]
A global life-cycle inventory database of deforestation area and emissions for agricultural products
Published: 2026-10-26
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Food Science, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Sustainability
Food-system actors are increasingly required to quantify and report the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture-driven deforestation in their supply chains, yet comprehensive, up-to-date and openly accessible data to support such Scope 3 reporting remain scarce. Here we present a harmonized life-cycle inventory (LCI) database of deforestation area and carbon footprints covering 183 agricultural [...]
Land Use Change, Spillovers, and Transitions: Global Trends, Prospects, and Emerging Drivers
Published: 2026-10-10
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
In this review, we first compile data on global trends and rates of major land use changes over the recent decades, and summarize the main insights revealed by these data. We then review recent research and quantitative estimates on key land use spillover processes, i.e., leakage, indirect land use change, rebound effect and land sparing, and agglomeration economies. We then turn to the [...]
Climate resilience from long-term low till adoption in US farms
Published: 2026-10-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Low-intensity tillage (low till) has expanded rapidly in the United States since 2000. Evidence on its yield impacts has come mainly from field experiments and has been limited to short time horizons. Using satellite-based observations from more than 40 million field-year pairs across the U.S. Corn Belt from 1999-2023, we demonstrate that yield gains continue to accrue with longer duration of [...]
Multi-site evaluation of an improved SIF-based model for estimating canopy GPP
Published: 2026-10-01
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Physiology, Plant Sciences
Sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) offers a promising path to quantify gross primary productivity (GPP) across spatiotemporal scales. Recent studies have demonstrated the applicability of the SIF-based mechanistic light response (qMLR-SIF) model for estimating canopy GPP. However, the inadequate simulation of the key parameter qL (the fraction of open photosystem II reaction centers) [...]
Cloud Cover and Structural Observation Gaps in African Agricultural Earth Observation: Evidence from Six Agroecological Zones
Published: 2026-09-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Remote Sensing
Optical Earth observation underpins a growing number of agricultural-monitoring and agri-fintech services across Africa, all of which need a usable view of a field often enough to track its condition. Cloud gaps in that record are usually treated as random missing data; we test whether they are instead structurally biased. Using three growing seasons (2022–2024) of Sentinel-2 scene-classification [...]
Testing the Fluorescence Advantage: Solar-Induced Fluorescence as an Early Indicator of Agricultural Drought Stress in Marathwada, Maharashtra
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
India uses rainfall deficits and vegetation indices such as NDVI to declare drought, and PMFBY crop-insurance payouts depend on these declarations. Solar-Induced Fluorescence (SIF) is linked to photosynthesis, so many expect it to show drought stress earlier than NDVI. I tested this in the eight districts of Marathwada, Maharashtra, over nine Kharif seasons (2015–2023). I compared [...]
Stolen Strata: Quantifying the Anthropogenic Erasure of Kashmir's Karewa Terraces and Its Threat to the Saffron Economy
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Nature and Society Relations, Other Geography, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science
Karewa tablelands are the flat-topped, scarp-bounded remnants of the old lake and river deposits of the Kashmir Valley. Reporting from Kashmir has said for years that they are being dug away for brick clay and fill, but I did not find a satellite measurement of how much, where and when. This study asks three questions: how much karewa tableland that was vegetated in 2013–2015 is no longer [...]
The Cotton Line: Testing the Institutional Persistence of an Erased Colonial Land-Tenure Boundary Across Vidarbha's Agrarian and Vegetation Geography
Published: 2026-09-04
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, International and Area Studies, Statistics and Probability
Can a provincial boundary abolished in 1956 still be detected in today's farmland? In the nineteenth century Berar, in western Vidarbha, was settled under the Ryotwari land-revenue system. The Central Provinces districts to the east were settled under Malguzari. On district lineage the old line matches the present boundary between Amravati and Nagpur Divisions, which I rebuild as a 384.7 km line [...]
Integrated soil profile mapping reveals regional patterns of soil condition across Southern African agricultural lands
Published: 2026-08-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Applied Statistics, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Soil Science, Spatial Science, Statistical Models
Soil information at regional scales remains limited in Africa despite its importance for sustainable agricultural management, food security and land degradation assessment. Existing digital soil mapping approaches commonly model soil properties as independent depth layers and apply depth harmonisation after prediction, limiting their capacity to characterise changes in soil condition. Here, we [...]
ECMWF SEAS5 Seasonal Precipitation Outlook and Hydrological-Hydrogeological Assessment for the Middle East: August 2026-January 2027
Published: 2026-08-16
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Food Science, Higher Education, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Risk Analysis
This preprint presents a regional hydrological and hydrogeological interpretation of the ECMWF SEAS5 System 51 ensemble-mean precipitation forecast initialized on 1 August 2026 for the Middle East and adjacent portions of the analysis domain. The supplied NetCDF field is time-mean total precipitation rate (tprate; m s^-1), converted to monthly precipitation depth (mm/month) using the actual [...]
A novel integrated assessment framework to inform Australia's net zero transition
Published: 2026-08-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Studies, Physical and Environmental Geography, Spatial Science
Australia has set an ambitious goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Attaining this target will require important transformations across multiple sectors of the economy. Integrated assessment models can provide valuable insights into the interactions across sectors of the economy, including land, agriculture and energy, to guide these complex transformations. However, many [...]
Village-Scale Mapping of Agricultural Systems and Intensification Levels in Benin Using Geospatial Data and Machine Learning
Published: 2026-08-01
Subjects: Agriculture
Agricultural systems are rapidly transforming, making regular mapping critical for policy guidance. Field-based surveys remain costly and spatially limited, while satellite data represent a promising avenue for characterising agricultural systems. This study explores the use of freely available satellite and geospatial data to produce an exhaustive village-scale mapping of agricultural systems [...]
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 [...]