Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Agriculture

rassta: Raster-Based Spatial Stratification Algorithms

Bryan Andre Fuentes, Minerva Justine Dorantes, John Robert Tipton

Published: 2021-11-17
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences

Spatial stratification of landscapes allows for the development of efficient sampling surveys, the inclusion of domain knowledge in data-driven modeling frameworks, and the production of information relating the spatial variability of response phenomena to that of landscape processes. This work presents the rassta package as a collection of algorithms dedicated to the spatial stratification of [...]

Large-scale deployment of grass in crop rotations as a multifunctional climate mitigation strategy

Oskar Englund, Blas Mola-Yudego, Pål Börjesson, et al.

Published: 2021-10-26
Subjects: Agriculture, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Other Environmental Sciences, Soil Science

The agriculture sector can contribute to climate change mitigation by reducing its own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sequestering carbon in vegetation and soils, and providing biomass to substitute for fossil fuels and other GHG intensive products. The sector also needs to address water, soil, and biodiversity impacts caused by historic and current practices. Emerging EU policies create [...]

The spatial dynamics of wheat yield and protein content at the field scale

Paul Christopher Stoy, Anam Khan, Aaron Wipf, et al.

Published: 2021-09-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Wheat is a staple crop that is critical for feeding a hungry and growing planet, but its nutritive value has declined as global temperatures have warmed. The price offered to producers depends not only on yield but also grain protein content (GPC), which are often negatively related at the field scale but can positively covary depending in part on management strategies, emphasizing the need to [...]

Ten Simple Rules for Researchers Who Want to Develop Web Apps

Sheila M. Saia, Natalie G. Nelson, Sierra N. Young, et al.

Published: 2021-07-18
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Applied Statistics, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Environmental Monitoring, Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces, Natural Resources and Conservation, Software Engineering, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management

Growing interest in data-driven, decision-support tools across the life sciences and physical sciences has motivated development of web applications, also known as web apps. Web apps can help disseminate research findings and present research outputs in ways that are more accessible and meaningful to the general public--from individuals, to governments, to companies. Specifically, web apps enable [...]

Determining the absolute sustainability of products with case studies on laundry and food production

James Sherwood

Published: 2021-06-22
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences

In this work, a new metric called ‘Service-weighted Product Level Absolute Sustainability’ is proposed as a numerical indicator to determine if a product is sustainable. The service offered by a product was found to be crucial to normalize its environmental impact and permit comparisons between products. Service-weighted Product Level Absolute Sustainability is demonstrated here with examples of [...]

The gap between atmospheric nitrogen deposition experiments and reality

Daniel Patrick Bebber

Published: 2021-05-05
Subjects: Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Forest Biology, Other Environmental Sciences, Planetary Biogeochemistry, Soil Science, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Anthropogenic activities have dramatically altered the global nitrogen (N) cycle. Atmospheric N deposition, primarily from combustion of biomass and fossil fuels, has caused acidification of precipitation and freshwater and triggered intense research into ecosystem responses to this pollutant. Experimental simulations of N deposition have been the main scientific tool to understand ecosystem [...]

Towards an operational irrigation management system for Sweden with a water-food-energy nexus perspective

Pietro Elia Campana, Pablo Lastanao, Sebastian Zainali, et al.

Published: 2021-04-14
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Engineering

The 2018 drought in Sweden has triggered questions about climate adaptation and mitigation measures, especially in the agricultural sector, which suffered the most. This study applies a water-food-energy nexus modelling framework to evaluate drought impacts on irrigation and agriculture in Sweden using 2018 and 2019 as case studies. A previous water-food-energy nexus model was updated to [...]

The threat of wildfire to cannabis agriculture in California

Christopher Dillis, Van Butsic, Diana Moanga, et al.

Published: 2021-03-22
Subjects: Agriculture

At the intersection of climate change and rural development, wildfire has emerged as a threat to agriculture in the western United States. This nexus is particularly problematic for the rapidly developing cannabis industry in California, which includes farms located outside of traditional agricultural zones and within landscapes potentially more prone to wildfire. Using fire hazard severity [...]

High resolution, annual maps of field boundaries for smallholder-dominated croplands at national scales

Lyndon D Estes, Su Ye, Lei Song, et al.

Published: 2021-03-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science, Sustainability

Mapping the characteristics of Africa's smallholder-dominated croplands, including the sizes and numbers of fields, can provide critical insights into food security and a range of other socioeconomic and environmental concerns. However, accurately mapping these systems is difficult because there is 1) a spatial and temporal mismatch between satellite sensors and smallholder fields, and 2) a lack [...]

Climate change risks to push one-third of global food production outside Safe Climatic Space

Matti Kummu, Matias Heino, Maija Taka, et al.

Published: 2021-03-09
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Climate change will alter key climatic conditions which human societies directly rely on and which, for example, food production is adjusted to. Here, using Holdridge Life Zones, we define Safe Climatic Space (SCS), a concept that incorporates the decisive climatic characteristics of precipitation, temperature and aridity. This allows us first to define the climatic niche of current food [...]

NIRvP: a robust structural proxy for sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence and photosynthesis across scales

Benjamin Dechant, Youngryel Ryu, Grayson Badgley, et al.

Published: 2020-12-31
Subjects: Agriculture, Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Plant Sciences

Sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a promising new tool for remotely estimating photosynthesis. However, the degree to which incoming sunlight and the structure of the canopy rather than leaf physiology contribute to SIF variations is still not well characterized. Here we demonstrate that the canopy structure-related near-infrared reflectance of vegetation multiplied by incoming [...]

Transitioning Machine Learning from Theory to Practice in Natural Resources Management

Sheila M. Saia, Natalie G. Nelson, Anders S. Huseth, et al.

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

Shivesh Kishore Karan, Lorie Hamelin

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

Christophe Schnaufer, Julian Pistorius, David Shaner LeBauer

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

Estefanía Muñoz, Andrés Ochoa, Germán Poveda, et al.

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 [...]

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