Monitoring the Sustainable Intensification of Arable Agriculture: the Potential Role of Earth Observation

Abstract

Sustainable intensification (SI) has been proposed as a possible solution to the conflicting problems of meeting projected increase in food demand and preserving environmental quality. SI would provide necessary production increases while simultaneously reducing or eliminating environmental degradation, without taking land from competing demands. An important component of achieving these aims is the development of suitable methods for assessing the temporal variability of both the intensification and sustainability of agriculture. Current assessments rely on traditional data collection methods that produce data of limited spatial and temporal resolution. Earth Observation (EO) provides a readily accessible, long-term dataset with global coverage at various spatial and temporal resolutions. In this paper we demonstrate how EO could significantly contribute to SI assessments, providing opportunities to quantify agricultural intensity and environmental sustainability. We review an extensive body of research on EO-based methods to assess multiple indicators of both agricultural intensity and environmental sustainability. To date these techniques have not been combined to assess SI; here we identify the opportunities and initial steps required to achieve this. In this context, we propose a development of a set of essential sustainable intensification variables (ESIVs) that could be derived from EO data.

Measuring Sustainable Intensification Using Satellite Remote Sensing Data

“…SI is seen as a possible way to tackle the problem of having to increase food production, as a consequence of an increasing population, whilst protecting the environment [9,10]. As pointed out by [11], a precise definition of SI is not possible with SI being a concept with different interpretations and definitions that overlap between them [12].…”

“…Earth observation using remote sensing (i.e., satellite-based, airborne sensors and ground-based) data information has the capacity to provide useful temporal and spatial information for agriculture production analysis (e.g., crop growth), monitoring of environmental impact and externalities associated with crop production (e.g., nitrogen (N) use) [7,8]. Remote sensing can be used to help identify sustainable management practices and farmers in need of support to achieve sustainable production [7][8][9]. For instance, satellite-based data can provide useful information on the crop status as well as on crop production externalities throughout the growing season at different scales, which can be integrated into production models to forecast yields that optimise externalities and/or obtain indicators for sustainable production, which can help farm managers and policy makers to monitor and plan actions aimed at achieving sustainable production.…”

Sustainable Intensification of Maize in the Industrial Revolution: Potential of Nitrifying Bacteria and Archaea

“…Sustainable intensification can concurrently address environmental security and food security. This is because as agricultural production would be increased, environmental degradation would be reduced simultaneously without acquiring more land for farm use (Hunt et al, 2019). The components of SI (Figure 1) protect the process of an ecosystem and biological diversity while achieving an increase in food production.…”

“…The components of SI (Figure 1) protect the process of an ecosystem and biological diversity while achieving an increase in food production. However, to achieve this aim, the development of suitable techniques for estimating both the sustainability and intensification of agriculture is needed (Hunt et al, 2019). Therefore, studying the interaction of microorganisms and the ecosystem would help maximize their services to ensure a better ecosystem.…”

Risk of Low Productivity is Dependent on Farm Characteristics: How to Turn Poor Performance into an Advantage

“…Hence, comprehensive data on production capacity are needed with good spatial and temporal coverage. Open satellite data haves opened many new solutions for agriculture and many of them support the large-scale transformation of agriculture: e.g., in the estimation of yields [19][20][21] as well as the identification of crops [16], crop conditions [22,23], pre-crop values for crop sequence [24] and providing sets of sustainable intensification indicators [25].…”