Global agricultural economic water scarcity

Rosa, Lorenzo; Chiarelli, Davide Danilo; Rulli, Maria Cristina; Dell’Angelo, Jampel; D’Odorico, Paolo

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz6031

Cited by 427 publications

(281 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Gas/steam activation ( Figure 2B) is a widely used biochar engineering technique for inducing the formation of porosity, increasing specific surface area, enhancing surface reactivity, and removing trapped residues generated due to incomplete combustion during pyrolysis [63,67]. When water vapor is applied for steam activation, the surface of biochar may be activated by the H 2 and CO 2 generated via surface oxidation reactions illustrated by Equations (1), (2), and (3):…”

Section: Physical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, as a result of the continually soaring global human population and intensifying urbanization, the shortage of water supply to agriculture is inevitably exacerbating the sustainability of food supply, especially in arid and semi-arid areas [1]. A recent study shows that 76% of global croplands are scarce in green water (i.e., root-zone soil moisture available for uptake by plants) for at least one month a year and about 42% are troubled for five months a year [2]. Water scarcity can be quantity-based, quality-based, or based on the combined effect of the two [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Engineered Biochar Production and Its Potential Benefits in a Closed-Loop Water-Reuse Agriculture System

Chan

Sharbatmaleki

et al. 2020

Water

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Biochar’s potential to remove various contaminants from aqueous solutions has been widely discussed. The rapid development of engineered biochar produced using different feedstock materials via various methods for wastewater treatment in recent years urges an up-to-date review on this topic. This article centers on summarizing state-of-the-art methods for engineered biochar production and discussing the multidimensional benefits of applying biochar for water reuse and soil amendment in a closed-loop agriculture system. Based on numerous recent articles (<5 years) published in journals indexed in the Web of Science, engineered biochar’s production methods, modification techniques, physicochemical properties, and performance in removing inorganic, organic, and emerging contaminants from wastewater are reviewed in this study. It is concluded that biochar-based technologies have great potential to be used for treating both point-source and diffuse-source wastewater in agricultural systems, thus decreasing water demand while improving crop yields. As biochar can be produced using crop residues and other biomass wastes, its on-farm production and subsequent applications in a closed-loop agriculture system will not only eliminate expensive transportation costs, but also create a circular flow of materials and energy that promotes additional environmental and economic benefits.

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Section: Physical Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Engineered Biochar Production and Its Potential Benefits in a Closed-Loop Water-Reuse Agriculture System

Chan

Sharbatmaleki

et al. 2020

Water

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“…We also concentrate on regions of the world in which irrigation can be adopted without engendering an unsustainable water use. When we expand the analysis to other regions we do not consider environmental externalities, assuming that the adoption of partial irrigation prevents the overuse of groundwater or environmental flows ( 14 , 35 ). In other words, irrigation water withdrawals would neither cause the loss of environmental flows nor the depletion of groundwater stocks.…”

Section: A Global Valuation Of Water In Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

The global value of water in agriculture

D’Odorico

Chiarelli

Rosa

et al. 2020

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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149

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Major environmental functions and human needs critically depend on water. In regions of the world affected by water scarcity economic activities can be constrained by water availability, leading to competition both among sectors and between human uses and environmental needs. While the commodification of water remains a contentious political issue, the valuation of this natural resource is sometime viewed as a strategy to avoid water waste. Likewise, water markets have been invoked as a mechanism to allocate water to economically most efficient uses. The value of water, however, remains difficult to estimate because water markets and market prices exist only in few regions of the world. Despite numerous attempts at estimating the value of water in the absence of markets (i.e., the “shadow price”), a global spatially explicit assessment of the value of water in agriculture is still missing. Here we propose a data-parsimonious biophysical framework to determine the value generated by water in irrigated agriculture and highlight its global spatiotemporal patterns. We find that in much of the world the actual crop distribution does not maximize agricultural water value.

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“… Blue crop water requirements are not necessarily the same as the irrigation water that crops are able to receive. In some places with access to irrigation, supporting infrastructure may be insufficient to provide the water needed to avoid crop water stress 29 . To the extent possible, studies using this dataset (or any other global gridded dataset of estimating crop water requirements) should incorporate available information on actual irrigation water withdrawals and consumption to avoid overestimation.…”

Section: Usage Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The green and blue crop water requirement WATNEEDS model and its global gridded outputs

et al. 2020

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accurately assessing green and blue water requirements from croplands is fundamental to promote sustainable water management. In the last decade, global hydrological models have provided important insights into global patterns of water requirements for crop production. as important as these models are, they do not provide monthly crop-specific and year-specific data of green and blue water requirements. Gridded crop-specific products are therefore needed to better understand the spatial and temporal evolution of water demand. Here, we present a global gridded database of monthly crop-specific green (rain-fed) and blue (irrigated) water requirements for 23 main crops and 3 crop groups obtained using our WATNEEDS model. For the time periods in which our dataset matched, these estimates are validated against existing global products and satellite based datasets of evapotranspiration. the data are publicly available and can be used by practitioners in the waterenergy-food nexus to assess the water sustainability of our food and energy systems at multiple spatial (local to global) and temporal (seasonal to multi-year) scales.

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Global agricultural economic water scarcity

Cited by 427 publications

References 59 publications

Engineered Biochar Production and Its Potential Benefits in a Closed-Loop Water-Reuse Agriculture System

Engineered Biochar Production and Its Potential Benefits in a Closed-Loop Water-Reuse Agriculture System

The global value of water in agriculture

The green and blue crop water requirement WATNEEDS model and its global gridded outputs

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