Volume 3 Issue 4, April 2020
Volume 3 Issue 4, April 2020
Optimal cropland use
Rising food demand and the rising land use and environmental ills of agriculture are clashing. Folberth and colleagues find that locating crops and applying fertilizers optimally could reduce required cropland globally by about half.
See Folberth et al.
Image: Frans lemmens / Alamy Stock Photo. Cover Design: Valentina Monaco.
Editorial
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Editorial | 16 April 2020
Green and grow
A growing, increasingly affluent and urban human population is driving demand for more food grown in more-sustainable ways. This issue features a suite of articles highlighting how intensification of production on existing farmland and with fewer inputs is an aspirational and data-hungry challenge.
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Comment & Opinion
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Comment | 16 April 2020
Digital agriculture to design sustainable agricultural systems
The global food system must become more sustainable. Digital agriculture — digital and geospatial technologies to monitor, assess and manage soil, climatic and genetic resources — illustrates how to meet this challenge so as to balance the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainable food production.
- Bruno Basso
- & John Antle
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Comment | 16 April 2020
Energy use and the sustainability of intensifying food production
Energy fuels, and is central to, all physical and biological systems, including the human population and economy. Yet science has missed the significance of civilization’s growing energy consumption. The energetics of the global food system illustrate the counterintuitive aspects of present energy consumption circumstances.
- John R. Schramski
- , C. Brock Woodson
- & James H. Brown
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News & Views
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News & Views | 16 March 2020
Beyond green growth
Can economic growth be made greener, or must we look beyond growth to achieve sustainability? An important new study shows that the pursuit of ‘green growth’ would increase inequality and unemployment unless accompanied by radical social policies.
- Daniel W. O’Neill
Reviews
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Perspective | 16 April 2020
A global perspective on sustainable intensification research
This Perspective argues for a global research prioritization framework to advance sustainable intensification, an increase in agricultural yields on existing land and respecting ecosystem integrity, noting research gaps and suggesting priorities.
- Kenneth G. Cassman
- & Patricio Grassini
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Perspective | 27 January 2020
Buildings as a global carbon sink
Increasing urbanization will lead to a significant expansion of buildings and related infrastructure, major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. This Perspective discusses the possibility of constructing mid-rise urban buildings with engineered timber for long-term carbon storage and carbon emissions reduction.
- Galina Churkina
- , Alan Organschi
- […]
- & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
Research
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Brief Communication | 24 February 2020
Governance challenges for tropical nations losing fish species due to climate change
Climate change is driving fishery stocks out of their historic ranges. This study finds that the risk of such fishery exits is greatest in the tropics and that policy frameworks are poorly equipped to grapple with this challenge.
- Kimberly L. Oremus
- , Jennifer Bone
- […]
- & James Salzman
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Article | 16 April 2020
The global cropland-sparing potential of high-yield farming
Agriculture has a massive and growing footprint. This study finds that optimizing fertilizer and major crops globally could reduce by 50% needed global cropland, allowing restored vegetation on spared land to sequester carbon.
- Christian Folberth
- , Nikolay Khabarov
- […]
- & Michael Obersteiner
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Article | 27 January 2020
Upturn in secondary forest clearing buffers primary forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon
Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon affects both older (primary) and younger (secondary) forests. This study finds that most forest loss over the period 2008–2014 was from secondary forests and that the almost 190% rise in deforestation buffered losses from primary forests.
- Yunxia Wang
- , Guy Ziv
- […]
- & David Galbraith
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Article | 10 February 2020
Effective ion sieving with Ti3C2Tx MXene membranes for production of drinking water from seawater
Two-dimensional lamellar membranes for water purification are promising but suffer from swelling that reduces their ion sieving performance in water. This study reports easy-to-fabricate, non-swelling MXene membranes prepared by the intercalation of Al3+ ions that could be scalable.
- Li Ding
- , Libo Li
- […]
- & Haihui Wang
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Article | 17 February 2020
Using yeast to sustainably remediate and extract heavy metals from waste waters
Physicochemical treatments of heavy-metal pollution in waste water have several environmental and structural disadvantages. This Article shows that sulfide-producing yeasts are able to remove mercury, lead and copper from real-world water samples and offer a platform for metal re-extraction.
- George L. Sun
- , Erin. E. Reynolds
- & Angela M. Belcher
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Article | 24 February 2020
The super-rich and cropland expansion via direct investments in agriculture
Inequality—wealth concentration among few people—stimulates direct foreign investment in agriculture, leading to flex-crop expansion and associated deforestation in Latin America and Southeast Asia, as found in this econometric study.
- M. Graziano Ceddia
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Article | 02 March 2020
Water scarcity and fish imperilment driven by beef production
Water use in river basins is an age-old resource-management question, but it is rare to quantify consumption by specific sectors. The Colorado River is being overused for beef and dairy production, endangering the entire river ecosystem.
- Brian D. Richter
- , Dominique Bartak
- […]
- & Tara J. Troy
Article | 09 March 2020
Feasible alternatives to green growth
A dynamic macrosimulation study of three scenarios finds that policies for social prosperity and low-carbon emissions are economically and politically feasible.
- Simone D’Alessandro
- , André Cieplinski
- […]
- & Kristofer Dittmer
Analysis | 16 April 2020
Conservation agriculture for sustainable intensification in South Asia
Conservation agriculture prioritizes soil health and diverse cropping systems. This meta-analysis finds multiple benefits, including for water conservation and profitability, from conservation-agriculture practices in South Asia.
- Mangi Lal Jat
- , Debashis Chakraborty
- […]
- & Bruno Gerard
Focus:
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