Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agriculture
Transitioning Machine Learning from Theory to Practice in Natural Resources Management
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Computer Sciences, Environmental Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Water Resource Management
Advances in sensing and computation have accelerated at unprecedented rates and scales, in turn creating new opportunities for natural resources managers to improve adaptive and predictive management practices by coupling large environmental datasets with machine learning (ML). Yet, to date, ML models often remain inaccessible to managers working outside of academic research. To identify [...]
Crop residues are a key feedstock to bioeconomy but available methods for their estimation are highly uncertain
Published: 2020-07-29
Subjects: Agriculture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resource Economics, Natural Resources and Conservation, Other Earth Sciences, Other Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
Crop residues are acknowledged as a key biomass resource to feed tomorrow’s sustainable bioeconomy. Yet, the quantification of these residues at large geographical scales is primarily reliant upon generic statistical estimations based on empirical functions linking the residues production to the primary crop yield. These useful yet unquestioned functions are developed either using direct evidence [...]
An open, scalable, and flexible framework for automated aerial measurement of field experiments
Published: 2020-05-24
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Engineering, Life Sciences, Plant Breeding and Genetics Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Unoccupied areal vehicles (UAVs or drones) are increasingly used in field research. Drones capable of routinely and consistently capturing high quality imagery of experimental fields have become relatively inexpensive. However, converting these images into scientifically useable data has become a bottleneck. A number of tools exist to support this workflow, but there is no framework for making [...]
Probabilistic soil moisture dynamics of water- and energy-limited ecosystems
Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Forest Sciences, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
This paper presents an extension of the stochastic ecohydrological model for soil moisture dynamics at a point of Rodriguez-Iturbe et al. (1999) and Laio et al. (2001). In the original model, evapotranspiration is a function of soil moisture and vegetation parameters, so that the model is suitable for water-limited environments. Our extension introduces a dependence on maximum evapotranspiration [...]
Lower air pollution during COVID-19 lock-down: improving models and methods estimating ozone impacts on crops (accepted 01.07.2020)
Published: 2020-05-07
Subjects: Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences
We suggest that the unprecedented and unintended decrease of emissions of air pollutants during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 could lead to declining seasonal ozone concentrations, and positive impacts on crop yields. An initial assessment of the potential effects of COVID-19 emission reductions was made using a set of six scenarios that variously assumed annual European and global emission [...]
Impact of climate change in West Africa on cereal production per capita in 2050
Published: 2020-04-14
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences
Food security is a crucial issue in the Sahel and could be endangered by climate change and demographic pressure during the 21st century. Indeed, people in rural areas mainly practice rainfed agriculture for subsistence during the monsoon rainfall season. Higher temperatures and changes in rainfall induced by global warming are threatening food production systems in this region while the [...]
Machine learning for digital soil mapping: applications, challenges and suggested solutions
Published: 2020-02-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences, Other Life Sciences
The uptake of machine learning (ML) algorithms in digital soil mapping (DSM) is transforming the way soil scientists produce their maps. Machine learning is currently applied to mapping soil properties or classes much in the same way as other unrelated fields of science. Mapping of soil, however, has unique aspects which require adaptations of the ML algorithms. These features are for example, [...]
The environmental impacts of palm oil in context
Published: 2020-01-10
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Food Science, Life Sciences, Other Food Science, Other Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires balancing demands on land between agriculture (SDG 2) and biodiversity (SDG 15). The production of vegetable oils in general, and palm oil in particular, is perhaps the most controversial illustration of these trade-offs. Global annual demand for vegetable oil for food, animal feed and fuel is currently at 210 million tons1 (Mt), with [...]
Climate change resilient agricultural practices: A learning experience from indigenous communities over India
Published: 2019-10-06
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
The impact of climate change on agricultural practices is rising question marks on future food security of billions of people in tropical and sub-tropical region. Recently introduced, Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) techniques encourages the practices of sustainable agriculture, increasing adaptive capacity and resilience to shocks at multiple levels. However, in reality, it is extremely [...]
High temporal resolution of leaf area data improves empirical estimation of grain yield
Published: 2019-05-30
Subjects: Agriculture, Life Sciences
Empirical yield estimation from satellite data has long lacked suitable combinations of spatial and temporal resolutions. Consequently, the selection of metrics, i.e., temporal descriptors that predict grain yield, has likely been driven by practicality and data availability rather than by systematic targetting of critically sensitive periods as suggested by knowledge of crop physiology. The [...]
Critical Review of Polyphosphate and Polyphosphate Accumulating Organisms for Agricultural Water Quality Management
Published: 2018-12-03
Subjects: Agriculture, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Soil Science, Water Resource Management
Despite ongoing management efforts, phosphorus (P) loading from agricultural landscapes continues to impair water quality. Wastewater treatment research has enhanced our knowledge of microbial mechanisms influencing P cycling, especially regarding microbes known as polyphosphate accumulating organisms (PAOs) that store P as polyphosphate (polyP) under oxic conditions and release P under anoxic [...]
Micromorphological report of Hof ter Coign
Published: 2018-06-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Geology, Life Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science
Micromorphological report of the Hof ter Coign site (Belgium)