Jessica A Gephart

University of Virginia | UVa · Department of Environmental Sciences

Existing water governance systems are proving to be quite ineffective in managing water scarcity, creating severe risk for many aspects of our societies and economies. Water markets are a relatively new and increasingly popular tool in the fight against growing water scarcity. They make a voluntary exchange possible between interested buyers and se...

[1] Sediment organic carbon (C) burial and CO2 fluxes in inland waters are quantitatively important in regional and global carbon budgets. Estimates of C fluxes from inland waters are typically based on limited temporal resolution despite potential large variations with season and weather events. Further, most freshwater C budget studies have focus...

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich¹, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats², and contribute to the health³, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities...

Aquatic foods are among the most highly traded foods, with nearly 60 million tonnes exported in 2020, representing 11% of global agriculture trade by value 1. Despite the vast scale, basic characteristics of aquatic food trade, including the species, origin, and farmed versus wild sourcing, are largely unknown due to fundamental mismatches between...

Food production, particularly of fed animals, is a leading cause of environmental degradation globally.1,2 Understanding where and how much environmental pressure different fed animal products exert is critical to designing effective food policies that promote sustainability.3 Here, we assess and compare the environmental footprint of farming indus...

Synthesis research in ecology and environmental science improves understanding, advances theory, identifies research priorities, and supports management strategies by linking data, ideas, and tools. Accelerating environmental challenges increases the need to focus synthesis science on the most pressing questions. To leverage input from the broader...

Blue foods play a central role in food and nutrition security for billions of people and are a cornerstone of the livelihoods, economies, and cultures of many coastal and riparian communities. Blue foods are extraordinarily diverse, are often rich in essential micronutrients and fatty acids, and can be produced in ways that are more environmentally...

Food loss and waste (FLW) is a major challenge to food system sustainability, including aquatic foods. Few data exist on aquatic FLW outside of small-scale fisheries, with major gaps in aquaculture species that make up half of global production. We investigated aquatic FLW in the food supply of the United States (US), the largest importer of aquati...

Feeding humanity puts enormous environmental pressure on our planet. These pressures are unequally distributed, yet we have piecemeal knowledge of how they accumulate across marine, freshwater and terrestrial systems. Here we present global geospatial analyses detailing greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use, habitat disturbance and nutrient poll...

Injustices are prevalent in food systems, where the accumulation of vast wealth is possible for a few, yet one in ten people remain hungry. Here, for 194 countries we combine aquatic food production, distribution and consumption data with corresponding national policy documents and, drawing on theories of social justice, explore whether barriers to...

Seasonality is a natural feature of wild caught fisheries that introduces variation in food supply, and which often is amplified by fisheries management systems. Seasonal timing of landings patterns and linkages to consumption patterns can have a potentially strong impact on income for coastal communities as well as import patterns. This study char...

Background: The 2020 US Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that the US population consume more seafood. Most analyses of seafood consumption ignore heterogeneity in consumption patterns by species, nutritional content, production methods, and price, which have implications for applying recommendations. Objectives: We assessed seafood int...

Omega-3 EPA and DHA fatty acids are vital for human health, but current human nutritional requirements are greater than supply. This nutrient gap is poised to increase as demand increases and the abundance of aquatic foods and the amount of omega-3 they contain may dwindle due to climate change and overfishing. Identifying and mitigating loss and i...

Blue foods play a central role in food and nutrition security for billions of people and are a cornerstone of the livelihoods, economies, and cultures of many coastal and riparian communities. Blue foods are extraordinarily diverse, are often rich in essential micronutrients and fatty acids, and can often be produced in ways that are more environme...

The Kiribati 2019 Integrated Household Income and Expenditure Survey (Integrated HIES) embeds novel ecological and human health research into an ongoing social and economic survey infrastructure implemented by the Pacific Community in partnership with national governments. This study seeks to describe the health status of a large, nationally repres...

Aquaculture has been viewed as a potential pathway to healthy and sustainable diets by increasing global nutrient-rich food production while minimizing environmental impacts. Here, we explore environmental and nutritional synergies, trade-offs, and constraints that illuminate the role of aquaculture to deliver on this double bottom line.

The Pacific food system has become progressively more integrated into global food regimes. This integration has had impacts on availability and consumption of food, population health, and vulnerability to external drivers. We describe major elements of the contemporary food system to provide a foundation for analysis of food system transitions and...

An estimated 74.9% of China’s seafood imports are reexported

Social–ecological networks (SENs) represent the complex relationships between ecological and social systems and are a useful tool for analyzing and managing ecosystem services. However, mainstreaming the application of SENs in ecosystem service research has been hindered by a lack of clarity about how to match research questions to ecosystem servic...

Despite contributing to healthy diets for billions of people, aquatic foods are often undervalued as a nutritional solution because their diversity is often reduced to the protein and energy value of a single food type (‘seafood’ or ‘fish’)1–4. Here we create a cohesive model that unites terrestrial foods with nearly 3,000 taxa of aquatic foods to...

Food systems that support healthy diets in sustainable, resilient, just, and equitable ways can engender progress in eradicating poverty and malnutrition; protecting human rights; and restoring natural resources. Food system activities have contributed to great gains for humanity but have also led to significant challenges, including hunger, poor d...

p>The original version of this Article contained errors in the author affiliations. The affiliation of Malin Jonell and Beatrice Crona with Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden was inadvertently omitted. The affiliation of Malin Jonell with Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal Swedish Academy of Scienc...

Numerous studies have focused on the need to expand production of ‘blue foods’, defined as aquatic foods captured or cultivated in marine and freshwater systems, to meet rising population- and income-driven demand. Here we analyze the roles of economic, demographic, and geographic factors and preferences in shaping blue food demand, using secondary...

Recognized as an emerging global crisis in the mid-1990s, the “nutrition transition” is marked by a shift to Western diets, dominated by highly processed, sugar-sweetened, and high caloric foods. Occurring in parallel to these health transitions are dramatic shifts in the natural systems that underlie food availability and access. Traditionally, en...

Aquatic foods from marine and freshwater systems are critical to the nutrition, health, livelihoods, economies and cultures of billions of people worldwide, but climate-related hazards may compromise their ability to provide these benefits. Here, we estimate national-level aquatic food system climate risk using an integrative food systems approach...

Micronutrient deficiencies constitute a pressing public health concern, especially in developing countries. As a dense source of bioavailable nutrients, aquatic foods can help alleviate such deficiencies. Developing aquaculture that provides critical micronutrients without sacrificing the underlying environmental resources that support these food p...

While a large number of studies have investigated seafood consumption in various markets, surprisingly little is known about the types of seafood sold in retail outlets or their product forms. in the USA. This is particularly true for fresh seafood, which is generally regarded as the most valuable product form of seafood. In this article, a unique...

Seafood is a highly traded commodity and 71% of the United States (U.S.) supply is imported. This study addresses questions about imported seafood safety and compares risks of outbreaks and recalls across countries of origin, species, and stages of the supply chain. We found that where seafood comes from does not play a major role in risk. Risk is...

Aquaculture policy often promotes production of low‐trophic level species for sustainable industry growth. Yet, the application of the trophic level concept to aquaculture is complex, and its value for assessing sustainability is further complicated by continual reformulation of feeds. The majority of fed farmed fish and invertebrate species are pr...

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns are creating health and economic crises that threaten food and nutrition security. The seafood sector provides important sources of nutrition and employment, especially in low-income countries, and is highly globalized, allowing shocks to propagate. We studied COVID-19-related disruptions, impacts, and...

The United States seafood industry is undergoing rapid change, as a result of the current trade war with China, ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, and new governance mandates. The Executive Order on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth , signed in May 2020, proposes wild-capture fisheries deregulation and prioritization of...

Environmental variability and shock events can be propagated or attenuated along food supply chains by various economic, political and infrastructural factors. Understanding these processes is central to reducing risks associated with periodic food shortages, price spikes and reductions in food quality. Here we perform a scoping review of the liter...

Significance The consumption of an important food source, seafood, has increased over the past half century. It is now the most globally traded food commodity and its supply chains are often complex and opaque. Contemporaneous with the growth of overall production, evidence of seafood product mislabeling has become ubiquitous. We show that enabling...

The US seafood sector is susceptible to shocks, both because of the seasonal nature of many of its domestic fisheries and its global position as a top importer and exporter of seafood. However, many data sets that could inform science and policy during an emerging event do not exist or are only released months or years later. Here, we synthesize mu...

Aquatic foods are a critical source of human nutrition in many developing countries. As a result, declines in wild-caught fish landings threaten nutritionally vulnerable populations. Aquaculture presents an opportunity to meet local demand, but it also places pressure on natural resource inputs and causes a range of environmental impacts. Here, we...

Global demand for freshwater and marine foods (i.e., seafood) is rising and an increasing proportion is farmed. Aquaculture encompasses a range of species and cultivation methods, resulting in diverse social, economic, nutritional, and environmental outcomes. As a result, how aquaculture develops will influence human wellbeing and environmental hea...

The United States seafood industry is undergoing rapid change, as a result of the current trade war with China, ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, and new governance mandates. The new Executive Order (EO) on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth, signed in May 2020, proposes wild-capture fisheries deregulation and prioritiza...

Feeding a growing, increasingly affluent population while limiting environmental pressures of food production is a central challenge for society. Understanding the location and magnitude of food production is key to addressing this challenge because pressures vary substantially across food production types. Applying data and models from life cycle...

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns are creating health and economic crises that threaten food and nutrition security. The seafood sector provides important sources of employment and nutrition, especially in low-income countries, and is highly globalized, allowing shocks to propagate internationally. We use a resilience ‘action cycle’ fr...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, common government actions have been geared towards increasing social distancing, which has had consequent effects on businesses and livelihoods. In the US, the seafood sector has been hit hard by responses to COVID-19. Under normal conditions, most seafood expenditure is in restaurants, which influences seafood...

Higher temperatures expected by midcentury increase the risk of shocks to crop production, while the interconnected nature of the current global food system functions to spread the impact of localized production shocks throughout the world. In this study, we analyze the global potential impact of a present-day event of equivalent magnitude to the U...

Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) is widely recognized as an important lever for lowering the environmental impacts of food systems. The United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda includes a goal to reduce FLW by 50% by 2030. Given differences in resource inputs along the food supply chain (FSC), the environmental benefits of FLW reduction will...

Dams provide energy and irrigation water, but also alter natural water flows that support fisheries. This tradeoff presents a risk for human nutrition in regions dependent on aquatic foods, including the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), where over 100 dams are planned or in construction. Previous models estimate significant reductions in fishery productio...

The Madagascar Health and Environmental Research-Antongil (MAHERY-Antongil) study cohort was set up in September 2015 to assess the nutritional value of seafood for the coastal Malagasy population living along Antongil Bay in northeastern Madagascar. Over 28 months of surveillance, we aimed to understand the relationships among different marine res...

Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) is critical for achieving healthy diets from sustainable food systems. Within the United States, 30% to 50% of food produced is lost or wasted. These losses occur throughout multiple stages of the food supply chain from production to consumption. Reducing FLW prevents the waste of land, water, energy, and other re...

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals requires examining the impacts of health interventions across multiple sectors and identifying regions where health–development–environment conflicts are most likely. Doing this is important for ending the epidemic of malaria by 2030 alongside achieving other SDGs.

Abstract Organic carbon accumulation in the sediments of inland aquatic and coastal ecosystems is an important process in the global carbon budget that is subject to intense human modification. To date, research has focused on quantifying accumulation rates in individual or groups of aquatic ecosystems to quantify the aquatic carbon sinks. However,...

Water availability is a major factor constraining humanity's ability to meet the future food and energy needs of a growing and increasingly affluent human population. Water plays an important role in the production of energy, including renewable energy sources and the extraction of unconventional fossil fuels that are expected to become important p...

Aquaculture now supplies half of the fish consumed directly by humans. We evaluate whether aquaculture, given current patterns of production and distribution, supports the needs of poor and food-insecure populations throughout the world. We begin by identifying 41 seafood-reliant nutritionally vulnerable nations (NVNs), and ask whether aquaculture...

Freshwater use for food production is projected to increase substantially in the coming decades with population growth, changing demographics, and shifting diets. Ensuring joint food-water security has prompted efforts to quantify freshwater use for different food products and production methods. However, few analyses quantify freshwater use for se...

The water footprint for fossil fuels typically accounts for water utilized in mining and fuel processing, whereas the water footprint of biofuels assesses the agricultural water used by crops through their lifetime. Fossil fuels have an additional water footprint that is not easily accounted for: ancient water that was used by plants millions of ye...

Ensuring food security requires food production and distribution systems function throughout disruptions. Understanding the factors that contribute to the global food system’s ability to respond and adapt to such disruptions (i.e. resilience) is critical for understanding the long-term sustainability of human populations. Variable impacts of produc...

Sudden disruptions, or shocks, to food production can adversely impact access to and trade of food commodities. Seafood is the most traded food commodity and is globally important to human nutrition. The seafood production and trade system is exposed to a variety of disruptions including fishery collapses, natural disasters, oil spills, policy chan...

Growing trade among nations is globalizing economies and driving environmental change. As a consequence, trade affects ecosystems, but trade is not currently a major topic in ecosystem research based on a survey of ecological journals. This survey reveals trade is rarely a title word or topic except for studies considering the movement of species o...

While a growing proportion of global food consumption is obtained through international trade, there is an ongoing debate on whether this increased reliance on trade benefits or hinders food security, and specifically, the ability of global food systems to absorb shocks due to local or regional losses of production. This paper introduces a model th...

Meeting the food needs of the growing and increasingly affluent human population with the planet’s limited resources is a major challenge of our time. Seen as the preferred approach to global food security issues, ‘sustainable intensification’ is the enhancement of crop yields while minimizing environmental impacts and preserving the ability of fut...

The question of how to minimize monetary cost while meeting basic nutrient requirements (a subsistence diet) was posed by George Stigler in 1945. The problem, known as Stigler's diet problem, was famously solved using the simplex algorithm. Today, we are not only concerned with the monetary cost of food, but also the environmental cost. Efforts to...