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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Multi-Criteria Evaluation Model For Classifying Marginal Cropland In Nebraska Using Historical Crop Yield And Biophysical Characteristics, Andrew Laws
School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Marginal cropland is suboptimal due to historically low and variable productivity and limiting biophysical characteristics. To support future agricultural management and policy decisions in Nebraska, U.S.A, it is important to understand where cropland is marginal for its two most economically important crops: corn (Zea mays) and soybean (Glycine max). As corn and soybean are frequently planted in a crop rotation, it is important to consider if there is a relationship with cropland marginality. Based on the current literature, there exists a need for a flexible yet robust methodology for identifying marginal land at different scales, which …
Reclaiming The Future Through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy And Sustainability In The Caribbean, Dana M. Conzo
Reclaiming The Future Through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy And Sustainability In The Caribbean, Dana M. Conzo
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation, “Reclaiming the future through Small-Scale Agriculture: Autonomy and Sustainability in the Caribbean,” is a political-economic analysis of land politics, foodscapes and foodsheds, and small-scale agricultural activities in plantation economies on the Caribbean island of St Kitts. Using ethnographic and geographic methods, such as participant observation, interviews, social network analysis, and foodshed mapping, I investigate the cultural and economic niche of local farmers, documented and analyzed the island’s foodshed, and provide a historical and economic background of St Kitts to link historical processes to contemporary spatial organization and agricultural practices. I consider the complexities of food inequalities and food …
Changes To California Alfalfa Production And Perceptions During The 2011-2017 Drought, Alida A. Cantor, Bethani Turley, Charles Cody Ross, Mathern Glass
Changes To California Alfalfa Production And Perceptions During The 2011-2017 Drought, Alida A. Cantor, Bethani Turley, Charles Cody Ross, Mathern Glass
Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations
California experienced a severe multiyear drought stretching from 2011 through 2017, significantly reducing surface water supply for ecosystems, agriculture, and humans and prompting coordinated conservation efforts. Given that agriculture is the largest consumptive use of water in the state, one anticipated response to a severe drought would be to decrease production of low-value, high-water-use crops such as alfalfa. In this article we use a multimethod approach to examine both spatial distribution and public perceptions of alfalfa production in California over the course of the 2011 through 2017 drought. We find that although California alfalfa production did decline at the state …
Probabilistic Tracking Of Annual Cropland Changes Over Large, Complex Agricultural Landscapes Using Google Earth Engine, Sitian Xiong, Priscilla Baltezar, Morgan A. Crowley, Michael Cecil, Stefano C. Crema, Eli Baldwin, Jeffrey A. Cardille, Lyndon Estes
Probabilistic Tracking Of Annual Cropland Changes Over Large, Complex Agricultural Landscapes Using Google Earth Engine, Sitian Xiong, Priscilla Baltezar, Morgan A. Crowley, Michael Cecil, Stefano C. Crema, Eli Baldwin, Jeffrey A. Cardille, Lyndon Estes
Geography
Cropland expansion is expected to increase across sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries in the next thirty years to meet growing food needs across the continent. These land transformations will have cascading social and ecological impacts that can be monitored using novel Earth observation techniques that produce datasets complementary to national cropland surveys. In this study, we present a flexible Bayesian data synthesis workflow on Google Earth Engine (GEE) that can be used to fuse optical and synthetic aperture radar data and demonstrate its ability to track agricultural change at national scales. We adapted the previously developed Bayesian Updating of Land Cover …