Six water emergencies have occurred since 1981 for the New York City (NYC) region despite the following: 1) its perhumid climate, 2) substantial conservation of water since 1979, and 3) meteorological data showing little severe or extreme drought since 1970. This study reconstructs 472 years of moisture availability for the NYC watershed to place these emergencies in long-term hydroclimatic context. Using nested reconstruction techniques, 32 tree-ring chronologies comprised of 12 species account for up to 66.2% of the average MayAugust Palmer drought severity index. Verification statistics indicate good statistical skill from 1531 to 2003. The use of multiple tree species, including rarely used species that can sometimes occur on mesic sites like Liriodendron tulipifera, Betula lenta, and Carya spp., seems to aid reconstruction skill. Importantly, the reconstruction captures pluvial events in the instrumental record nearly as well as drought events and is significantly correlated to precipitation over much of the northeastern United States. While the mid-1960s drought is a severe drought in the context of the new reconstruction, the region experienced repeated droughts of similar intensity, but greater duration during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The full record reveals a trend toward more pluvial conditions since ca. 1800 that is accentuated by an unprecedented 43-yr pluvial event that continues through 2011. In the context of the current pluvial, decreasing water usage, but increasing extra-urban pressures, it appears that the water supply system for the greater NYC region could be severely stressed if the current water boom shifts toward hydroclimatic regimes like the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Sustainability research is expected to incorporate concepts, methods, and data from a diverse array of academic disciplines. We investigate the extent to which sustainability research lives up to this ideal of an interdisciplinary field. Using bibliometric data, we orient our study around the ''tripartite model'' of sustainability, which suggests that sustainability research should draw from the three ''pillars'' of the environmental, economic, and social sciences. We ask three questions: (i) is sustainability research truly more interdisciplinary than research generally, (ii) to what extent does research grounded in one pillar draw on research from the other two, and (iii) if certain disciplines or pillars are more interdisciplinary than others, then what explains this variation? Our results indicate that sustainability science, while more interdisciplinary than other scientific fields, falls short of the expectations inherent in the tripartite model. The pillar with the fewest articles published on sustainability-economics-is also the most integrative, while the pillar with the most articles-environmental sciences-draws the least from outside disciplines. But interdisciplinarity comes at a cost: sustainability research in economics and the social sciences is centered around a relatively small number of interdisciplinary journals, which may be becoming less valued over time. These findings suggest that, if sustainability research is to live up to its interdisciplinary ideals, researchers must be provided with greater incentives to draw from fields other than their own.

Journal articleIFPRI3; ISI; CRP2; Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Assets and Market Access; A Ensuring Sustainable food production; D Transforming AgricultureEPTD; PIMPRCGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM

No abstract

In its continuing move toward resource independence, Mongolia has recently entered a new agricultural era. Large crop fields and center-pivot irrigation have been established in the last 10 years across Mongolia's "Breadbasket": the Bulgan, Selenge and Tov aimags of northcentral Mongolia. Since meteorological records are typically short and spatially diffuse, little is known about the frequency and scale of past droughts in this region. We use six chronologies from the eastern portion of the breadbasket region to reconstruct streamflow of the Yeruu River. These chronologies accounted for 60.8% of May-September streamflow from 1959 to 1987 and 74.1% from 1988 to 2001. All split, calibration-verification statistics were positive, indicating significant model reconstruction. Reconstructed Yeruu River streamflow indicates the 20th century to be wetter than the two prior centuries. When comparing the new reconstruction to an earlier reconstruction of Selenge River streamflow, representing the western portion of the breadbasket region, both records document more pluvial events of greater intensity during 20th century versus prior centuries and indicate that the recent decade of drought that lead to greater aridity across the landscape is not unusual in the context of the last 300 years. Most interestingly, variability analyses indicate that the larger river basin in the western breadbasket (the Selenge basin) experiences greater swings in hydroclimate at multi-decadal to centennial time scales while the smaller basin in the eastern portion of the breadbasket (the Yeruu basin) is more stable. From this comparison, there would be less risk in agricultural productivity in the eastern breadbasket region, although the western breadbasket region can potentially be enormously productive for decades at a time before becoming quite dry for an equally long period of time. These results indicate that farmers and water managers need to prepare for both pluvial conditions like those in the late-1700s, and drier conditions like those during the early and mid-1800s. Recent studies have indicated that cultures with plentiful resources are more vulnerable when these resources become diminished. Thus, the instrumental records of the 20th century should not be used as a model of moisture availability. Most importantly, the geographic mismatch between precipitation, infrastructure, and water demand could turn out to be particularly acute for countries like Mongolia, especially as these patterns can switch in space through time.

Minimizing the adverse consequences of sea-level change presents a key societal challenge. New modelling is necessary to examine the implications of global policy decisions that determine future greenhouse gas emissions and local policies around coastal risk that influence where and how we live.

No abstract

18 19Rates of adoption of pro-environmental practices in agriculture in many parts of the world are 20 low. In some cases, this is attributable to the private costs borne by farmers to adopt these 21 practices, often well in advance of any benefits -public or private -that they may bring.