FIGURE 1 - available via license: CC BY
Content may be subject to copyright.
| San Joaquin Valley Study Area. (A) The present day land uses, distinguishing remaining natural areas from annual and perennial crops, and including the Diablo and Temblor ranges to the west outside the valley floor. The 10 regions shown are analysis units for our study, which correspond to subbasins designated for coordinated groundwater management by the California Department of Water Resources (some regions group multiple subbasins into one unit for analysis purposes). (B) Aggregate potential habitat quality across the study area for five focal species (selected based on habitat needs deemed representative of the over 35 listed plant and animal species for the upland ecosystems in the San Joaquin Valley). Comparison of the natural area at right shows that most high quality areas serving several species have been converted to agriculture.
Source publication
Irrigated agriculture has grown rapidly over the last 50 years, helping food production keep pace with population growth, but also leading to significant habitat and biodiversity loss globally. Now, in some regions, land degradation and overtaxed water resources mean historical production levels may need to be reduced. We demonstrate how analytical...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... the past century, the Valley (hereafter SJV, Figure 1) has been transformed into one of the largest agricultural economies in the world. Since 1980, the SJV has supported agriculture on ∼2 million hectares of cropland ( Hanak et al., 2017), with irrigated area expanding by nearly one million hectares in the 60 years prior (Mercer and Morgan, 1991). ...
Context 2
... label a future with SGMA as "Business-as-Usual, " where the assumption is that SGMA will be implemented, but without specific concern for securing habitat 2 . The agricultural production and retirement statistics for the BAU scenario are generated at the coarse regional scale (i.e., the regions in Figure 1) by the SWAP model (see below), with retirement identified by comparing to a "No-SGMA" scenario also modeled in SWAP. This latter scenario is not our focus but rather is used instrumentally within the workflow to generate estimates of SGMA impacts. ...
Context 3
... 7 shows the cumulative soil carbon sequestration impact of restoration scenarios assuming an evenly phased transition from 2021 to 2040. These are based on propagating the dynamics shown in Figure SR1 to represent the phased implementation, and to account for the fact that across different LUC scenarios, restoration portfolios may involve different areas transitioning from specific crop classes to retired or restored. For example, one LUC scenario may involve more transition of perennials to restoration, while another may involve more transition of annuals, while another may prioritize more land that would have been retired anyway. ...
Similar publications
High rainfall variability in drylands complicates comparison in time of productivity and soil fertility, and their changes due to altered management. In order to determine the extent, kinetics, and mechanisms of soil and ecosystem recovery achievable in degraded loess plots in southern Israel, aboveground net primary production (ANPP) and soil qual...
Citations
... To control groundwater overdraft, California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requires local water users to bring groundwater use to sustainable levels by the early 2040s. This is expected to bring some of Central Valley's farmland out of production permanently or temporarily (Bryant et al. 2020;Hanak et al. 2023), which would cause additional habitat loss for birds that rely on croplands such as rice, corn, pasture, and alfalfa for energy and habitat (Hanak et al. 2019). Thus, questions concerning how land and water use change compound the impacts of climate change on avian biodiversity should be solved at a fine spatial scale and be adaptive to the full annual migratory cycle. ...
... Previous studies have linked agricultural economics with bird systematic conservation planning (Bryant et al. 2020) or avian biodiversity conservation optimization (Wesemeyer et al. 2023), providing meaningful implications for using economic optimization in minimizing tradeoffs. However, these studies didn't explicitly reveal how changes in each crop category positively or negatively affect each species' population. ...
Conservation planning that enhances the resiliency of biodiversity to climate change requires adaptive water and land use decision‐making in the most cost‐efficient way. This has many challenges since landscapes with high biodiversity can embrace intense human production activities, particularly agriculture. Conventionally, water and land used for conservation are often regarded as tradeoffs to agricultural productivity. However, this study found that agricultural water and land use synergize with shorebird conservation in the Central Valley, California. If informed decisions are made to guide strategic land use, landscapes can adapt to climate change and offer multiple benefits. This study used a coupled economic optimization model with a species distribution model to consider human factors in ecological impacts. The objective was to assess the impacts of agricultural water and land use decisions under different climate change scenarios on 10 shorebird species populations in California's Central Valley. Our results showed that strategic water and land management can offer favorable habitats to targeted shorebirds with a land composition including diversified crop categories complementary to wetlands. This study demonstrates that agricultural lands can be as important as wetlands to shorebirds to sustain their migratory stages throughout the year. Wetland restoration without species habitat preference information can lead to population shrinkage since wetland types vary in habitat importance to the shorebird species studied in this research. Business as usual, along with land use and climate change, will decrease shorebirds' breeding season and population to the same degree as they impact non‐breeding populations. The synergies between agricultural production and shorebird conservation were found in the scenarios that favor agricultural production water use but also favor habitat provisioning to shorebirds in the Central Valley, California, under climate change.
... The Dieng Plateau in Indonesia is a crucial upstream watershed, facing severe environmental challenges due to steep slopes and intensive agricultural activity [1]. Initially, a conservation zone supporting water retention and soil fertility [2], as well as increasing demand for high-value crops such as potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) and onions (Allium cepa) [3], has transformed the landscape. This leads to deforestation, soil degradation [4], and sedimentation in local rivers and reservoirs [5]. ...
This research investigates planting strategies to optimize productivity and conserve soil, focusing on potatoes and onions grown on erosion-prone land. Cross planting versus perpendicular plantings is evaluated using the MOORA (Multi-Objective Optimization Based on Ratio Analysis) method based on erosion rates, crop productivity, and economic outcomes. Meanwhile, data from six experimental contour and perpendicular planting plots are analyzed. The measurements for sediment and runoff are carried out using a dual-bucket system. After erosion calculations, the highest erosion rate was found in the contour planting of shallots at 385,65 tons/ha/year. At the same time, Potatoes planted perpendicular to the contour lines resulted in the lowest erosion rate, at only 114.51 tons/ha/year. Economic analysis, considering crop productivity and financial outcomes, revealed the highest productivity for potatoes planted perpendicular to the contour at Rp. 26.891 kg/ha, and the highest Income for the contour planting of potatoes at Rp. 215.133.360/ha. Optimization using the MOORA method, which calculates minimal erosion (cost) and maximal Income (benefit), yielded the highest value for potatoes planted along the contour at 0.409963. This was followed by perpendicular planting (0.075816) and shallots along the contour (0.067163). The MOORA method can provide optimal planting pattern recommendations by analyzing multiple criteria, including soil erosion and productivity, thereby offering practical guidance to farmers and policymakers in making more economically viable and sustainable planting decisions.
... Agriculture covers more than a third of the Earth's land surface, and while its expansion and intensification have brought numerous benefits to humanity, these same factors have led to significant negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. As agricultural land use is projected to continue evolving and expanding due to human population growth and climate change, many currently cultivated areas are facing stress from issues like water scarcity, soil degradation, and the rise of extreme weather events (Bryant, et al., 2020). ...
Studies on agricultural land area changes are crucial for ensuring food security, promoting sustainable land use, protecting the environment, supporting economic growth, monitoring climate change impacts, and guiding policy development. They help identify challenges and plan long-term solutions to balance food production, environmental conservation, and economic development. The change in agricultural land use is influenced by several key factors: economic (market fluctuations, subsidies, farm modernization), demographic and social changes (emigration, aging farmers, farm consolidation), natural factors (climate change, soil degradation), and urbanization (urban expansion, infrastructure development). Environmental policy also has a significant impact, promoting the restoration of natural ecosystems and reducing the agricultural impact on the environment.After analyzing the changes in agricultural land areas in Klaipėda County between 2004 and 2024, it was determined that the area of agricultural land decreased by 9,775.89 ha or 3.46%. During this period, arable land decreased by 5,367.78 ha or 2.28%, orchard areas decreased by 4,240.15 ha or 83.89%, and the area of meadows and natural pastures also decreased by 167.96 ha or 0.41%.Between 2004 and 2024, agricultural land in most municipalities of Klaipėda County has decreased. Notably, Klaipėda and Palanga municipalities saw the most significant declines, with reductions of 22.45% and 13.41%, respectively.
... These climatic changes alter local climate patterns and may have far-reaching consequences for regional ecosystems, species distribution, and water resource management [12]. Furthermore, the construction of reservoirs is often accompanied by land use changes, such as the conversion of croplands, forests, and grasslands into watersheds, leading to alterations in biodiversity and potentially impacting groundwater levels, agricultural productivity, and ecological restoration [13][14][15]. Therefore, a quantitative analysis of land use changes, climate change trends, and their interrelationships before and after reservoir construction is essential. ...
The Yellow River (YR), China’s second-largest river, is rich in water resources, particularly in its upper reaches, which are characterized by mountainous canyons and considerable hydropower potential. Since the 1950s, 24 reservoirs have been constructed along a 918 km stretch of the upper Yellow River (UYR), creating the highest concentration of cascade reservoirs. This development has had significant ecological impacts on the surrounding environment. This study examines the relationship between reservoir attributes and climate factors to evaluate the environmental effects of reservoirs in the UYR. (1) Following reservoir construction, the average annual temperature and precipitation increased by 3–10%, though seasonal and spatial distributions varied. Temperature increases were most pronounced in winter, while precipitation decreased in some regions during spring and summer, although the overall trend remained positive. (2) The ecosystem experienced significant post-construction changes, including reductions in arable land, grassland, and unused land, while water bodies, construction land, and forests expanded. Consequently, the ecosystem within the reservoir area now accounts for 5.2–12.5% of the total area of the region. (3) Temperature and precipitation were closely linked to reservoir attributes, with storage volume (CAP) and long-term average flow (DIS) significantly affecting precipitation, while surface area (AREA) and normal storage level (FSL) had a greater influence on temperature. In conclusion, the dual impacts of reservoir construction on local climate and land use highlight the complex environmental mechanisms involved, providing valuable insights for future reservoir development and ecological protection in the Yellow River Basin and similar regions.
... Agriculture is a dominant contributor to the global pollution, accounting for the release of 10.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gases (GHG) [1] and is responsible for approximately one quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions when land use change is included [2]. Currently, agriculture occupies over one-third of Earth's land surface, while 70% of total freshwater use is utilized in the scope of irrigated agriculture [3]. In parallel, the groundbreaking evolution and subsequent intensification of modern agriculture inevitably leads to the depletion of agricultural resources and generation of enormous quantities of waste. ...
Residual biomass from agriculture is a highly promising resource for sustainable energy production. Its abundant generation and accurate estimation are essential for the development and implementation of efficient utilization strategies. However, the calculations proposed in the existing literature are often contradictory or exhibit impractically wide range. This study compiles residual biomass indices for cereal, oil, industrial, and arboreal crops. By evaluating and processing these indices, a refined set of modified indices is presented to enhance existing methodologies for calculating agricultural residues. The methodology establishes lower, average and upper bound scenarios for the residual biomass of selected crops and is applied to Greece to estimate its energy production potential. The findings suggest that Greece generates approximately 5.5 million tons of agricultural residues annually, ranging from 4.5 million tons (lower-bound) to 6.6 million tons (upper-bound). This biomass has the potential to produce 70,730 TJ of energy, corresponding to 8.4% of the country’s energy demands, with energy potential ranging between 55,644 and 82,635 TJ. The most noteworthy crops include olive trees, cotton, maize, vineyards and wheat since they account for 82% of the total estimated energy. Spatial analysis conducted at NUTS-2 and NUTS-3 levels highlights the Regions of Central Macedonia and Thessaly as having substantial potential for residual biomass to support energy conversion strategies.
... It has been applied at the global-scale-involving tens of thousands of species and hundreds of thousands of planning units -and at finer scales to provide detailed management recommendations (Flower et al., 2020;Tack et al., 2019). In addition to protected area establishment, it has also been used to identify priority areas for restoring habitats (Bryant et al., 2020), restoring connectivity (Lin et al., 2020), and provisioning ecosystem services (Neugarten et al., 2024;Williams et al., 2020). For more information, we encourage readers to visit the package website for examples, tutorials, and workshop materials (https://prioritizr.net). ...
Plans for expanding protected area systems (prioritizations) need to fulfill conservation objectives. They also need to account for other factors, such as economic feasibility and anthropogenic land‐use requirements. Although prioritizations are often generated with decision support tools, most tools have limitations that hinder their use for decision‐making. We outlined how the prioritizr R package (https://prioritizr.net) can be used for systematic conservation prioritization. This decision support tool provides a flexible interface to build conservation planning problems. It can leverage a variety of commercial (e.g., Gurobi) and open‐source (e.g., CBC and SYMPHONY) exact algorithm solvers to identify optimal solutions in a short period. It is also compatible with a variety of spatially explicit (e.g., ESRI Shapefile, GeoTIFF) and nonspatial tabular (e.g., Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet) data formats. Additionally, it provides functionality for evaluating prioritizations, such as assessing the relative importance of different places selected by a prioritization. To showcase the prioritizr R package, we applied it to a case study based in Washington state (United States) for which we developed a prioritization to improve protected area coverage of native avifauna. We accounted for land acquisition costs, existing protected areas, places that might not be suitable for protected area establishment, and spatial fragmentation. We also conducted a benchmark analysis to examine the performance of different solvers. The prioritization identified 12,400 km² of priority areas for increasing the percentage of species’ distributions covered by protected areas. Although open source and commercial solvers were able to quickly solve large‐scale conservation planning problems, commercial solvers were required for complex, large‐scale problems.. The prioritizr R package is available on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). In addition to reserve selection, it can inform habitat restoration, connectivity enhancement, and ecosystem service provisioning. It has been used in numerous conservation planning exercises to inform best practices and aid real‐world decision‐making.
... In particular, the southwestern Central Valley is a region with high change frequency in crop type with transitions occurring from rotations of field, truck, and grain crops. Additionally, in this region, high occurrences of fallowing are present across the time series, which may increase in the future (Bryant et al., 2020). High change frequency is also seen in the southern Sacramento Valley where crop rotations between field, truck, and grain crops also occur. ...
California produces many key agricultural products in the United States. Current geospatial agricultural datasets are limited in mapping accuracy, spatial context, or observation period. This study uses machine learning and high‐resolution imagery to produce a time series of crop maps to assess crop type trends and patterns across central California from 2005 to 2020. National Agriculture Imagery Program and Landsat imagery were used to classify nine crop types that are common in the study region: grain crops, field crops, rice, citrus and subtropical, deciduous fruit and nut, vineyard, berry and vegetable, pasture, and fallow/young perennial crop types. To create labeled data, we sampled 1253 fields and manually identified crop types for each examined year using high‐resolution imagery and Landsat normalized difference vegetation index time series. We applied a random forest machine learning algorithm in Google Earth Engine. Results show that the mean overall classification accuracy of the nine‐class map was 93.1%, with individual accuracies ranging from 99.3% (rice) to 89.5% (fallow/young perennial). Mann–Kendall trend tests showed significant (p < 0.05) declines in field crop and pasture area during the study period, while deciduous fruit and nut, citrus and subtropical, and fallow/young perennial crop types experienced significant increases. At an aggregate level, there was a general shift from annual crop types to perennial crop types. These data provide a 16‐year time span of spatially explicit crop type classifications, trends, and patterns in central California that can be used to aid managers and decision makers for resource planning or hazard mitigation.
... The present study adds to a limited body of research on optimization approaches to strategic restoration planning. The concept of applying systematic conservation planning principles to multi-species restoration planning was introduced over a decade ago (Crossman and Bryan, 2006;Lethbridge et al., 2010;Stralberg et al., 2009;Thomson et al., 2009;Westphal et al., 2007), and we are aware of few applications of the approach since that time (see Bryant et al., 2020;Polyakov et al., 2015). Given the ongoing biodiversity and climate crises, and the high cost of active restoration, it is imperative that we continue to explore methods ...
Ecological restoration is an essential strategy for mitigating the current biodiversity crisis, yet restoration actions
are costly. We used systematic conservation planning principles to design an approach that prioritizes restoration
sites for birds and tested it in a riparian forest restoration program in the Colorado River Delta. Restoration goals
were to maximize the abundance and diversity of 15 priority birds with a variety of habitat preferences. We built
abundance models for priority birds based on the current landscape, and predicted bird distributions and relative
abundances under a scenario of complete riparian forest restoration throughout our study area. Then, we used
Zonation conservation planning software to rank this restored landscape based on core areas for all priority birds.
The locations with the highest ranks represented the highest priorities for restoration and were located
throughout the river reach. We optimized how much of the available landscape to restore by simulating restoration
of the top 10–90% of ranked sites in 10% intervals. We found that total diversity was maximized when
40% of the landscape was restored, and mean relative abundance was maximized when 80% of the landscape
was restored. The results suggest that complete restoration is not optimal for this community of priority birds and
restoration of approximately 60% of the landscape would provide a balance between maximum relative abundance
and diversity. Subsequent planning efforts will combine our results with an assessment of restoration costs
to provide further decision support for the restoration-siting process. Our approach can be applied to any
landscape-scale restoration program to improve the return on investment of limited economic resources for
restoration.
... Our findings suggest that effective groundwater management should prioritize addressing localized factors with the greatest impact on the risk of well failure. These factors can be effectively mitigated through various land and water management strategies, including strategic cropland repurposing (Bourque et al 2019, Bryant et al 2020, Fernandez-Bou et al 2023 and Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) (Marwaha et al 2021, Ulibarri et al 2021, Wendt et al 2021, Levintal et al 2023. For example, the California Department of Conservation is implementing the Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program (MLRP) which objective is to retire high irrigation demand cropland to reduce groundwater use, and allocate it to other less water intensive uses, while providing other benefits for communities and ecosystems . ...
Over the past decade, California has experienced two multiyear droughts, resulting in water insecurity for communities and significant economic losses for the agricultural sector. Despite the recognition of water as a human right in the state since 2012, droughts consistently lead to the failure of thousands of domestic wells due to intensified groundwater pumping for irrigation purposes. In the Central Valley alone, groundwater sustains the livelihoods of thousands of individuals (and millions across the state) serving as their sole water source, rendering them vulnerable due to inadequate groundwater management. In this study, we present a spatial statistical model to identify critical localized factors within the food-water-human system that contribute to the vulnerability of domestic wells during droughts. Our results indicate that the depth of domestic wells, density of domestic and agricultural wells, socioeconomic conditions, and the extent of perennial crops play significant roles in predicting well failures during droughts. We show the implications of addressing these factors within the context of ongoing groundwater sustainability initiatives, and we propose strategies to safeguard the water source for thousands of individuals necessary to protect domestic wells
... There is growing acceptance that due to intensifying water scarcity under climate change, irrigated farming cannot continue in its present extent, and the mix of crops being grown in much of the western United States must change. Nascent conversations in farming communities are exploring what a transformation of the agricultural landscape might look like [28][29][30] . Yet, a comprehensive and spatially detailed understanding of crop-specific water demands, their contribution to river and groundwater depletion, and opportunities for reducing water consumption by changing crop mixes remain unexplored to date. ...
... Our survey of six farming areas in the western United States reveals that 3-44% of farmland in production in 2000 was not producing in 2019 (Table 1). We assert that planned, intentional fallowing of the least productive farmland and land that is well suited for low-water-demand alternative uses should be the first to be retired in the future, but this will require active prioritization through land planning and farmland protection in local communities 30,45,46 . Such prioritization should also carefully consider the possible impacts on food prices of any reductions in crop production. ...
Irrigated agriculture dominates freshwater consumption globally, but crop production and farm revenues suffer when water supplies are insufficient to meet irrigation needs. In the United States, the mismatch between irrigation demand and freshwater availability has been exacerbated in recent decades due to recurrent droughts, climate change and overextraction that dries rivers and depletes aquifers. Yet, there has been no spatially detailed assessment of the potential for shifting to new crop mixes to reduce crop water demands and alleviate water shortage risks. In this study, we combined modelled crop water requirements and detailed agricultural statistics within a national hydrological model to quantify sub-basin-level river depletion, finding high-to-severe levels of irrigation scarcity in 30% of sub-basins in the western United States, with cattle-feed crops—alfalfa and other hay—being the largest water consumers in 57% of the region’s sub-basins. We also assessed recent trends in irrigation water consumption, crop production and revenue generation in six high-profile farming areas and found that in recent decades, water consumption has decreased in four of our study areas—a result of a reduction in the irrigated area and shifts in the production of the most water-consumptive crops—even while farm revenues increased. To examine the opportunities for crop shifting and fallowing to realize further reductions in water consumption, we performed optimizations on realistic scenarios for modifying crop mixes while sustaining or improving net farm profits, finding that additional water savings of 28–57% are possible across our study areas. These findings demonstrate strong opportunities for economic, food security and environmental co-benefits in irrigated agriculture and provide both hope and direction to regions struggling with water scarcity around the world.
