Jetse Stoorvogel

Open Universiteit Nederland | OU · Department of Environmental Sciences

Background As part of a larger food security project under Ethiopia’s Agricultural Growth Program (CASCAPE), 928 farms in the Ethiopian Highlands were surveyed between 2012 and 2017. The aim was to determine whether the Net Farm Income (NFI) is a relevant indicator that drives food security at the household and the farm level, and to determine its...

Food systems are under pressure to produce more food of higher quality while reducing the pressure on natural resources. Currently, land degradation is widespread, especially in areas with smallholder farming. Agricultural extension may help farmers to adopt sustainable practices. However, adoption rates of interventions are often low in smallholde...

Peatland wildfire frequency and severity are increasing globally owing to climate change. The direct risk of elevated greenhouse gas emissions from peat burning receives much attention, yet the risks to vegetation composition or peat decomposition from alkaline ash inputs are poorly understood. We explored whether ash produced during smoldering inc...

Aims This study looks whether the response of soil management (liming and nitrogen fertilization) on the incidence of Fusarium wilt (Foc Race 1) in Gros Michel banana (Musa AAA) varies with different soil properties. Methods The effect of inoculation with Foc Race 1 was studied in a factorial greenhouse trial with soil samples from eight represent...

Digital soil mapping (DSM) approaches provide soil information by utilising the relationship between soil properties and environmental variables. Calibration of DSM models requires measurements that may often have substantial measurement errors which propagate to the DSM outputs and need to be accounted for. This study applied a geostatistical‐base...

Food systems analysis is increasingly being applied to understand relations between production, distribution, and consumption of food products, the drivers that influence the system, and the outcomes that show how well the food system performs on health and nutrition, on environmental sustainability, and on income and inclusiveness. Little attentio...

Despite the increased usage of global soil property maps, a proper review of the maps rarely takes place. This study aims to explore the options for such a review with an application for the S-World global soil property database. Global soil organic carbon (SOC) and clay content maps from S-World were studied at two spatial resolutions in three ste...

Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc) is a soil-borne fungus causing Fusarium wilt (FW) in banana. It is practically impossible to eradicate Foc in soils. Our understanding of soil–Foc–banana interactions is hampered by inconsistent research results caused by agro-ecological variability and the complexity of the soil system. This study aimed to e...

Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc) causes Fusarium wilt in banana (Musa AAA ). Foc Race 1 devastated the subgroup Gros Michel during the first half of the twentieth century. The Gros Michel was largely replaced by the resistant subgroup Cavendish in the 1950s. However, in the 1980s, Foc Tropical Race 4 started to spread affecting Cavendish ban...

Aims This study looks whether the response of soil management (liming and nitrogen fertilization) on the incidence of Fusarium wilt (Foc Race 1) in Gros Michel banana (Musa AAA) is influenced by soil types. Methods The effect of inoculation with Foc Race 1 was studied in a factorial greenhouse trial with eight representative soil types of the Costa...

This Research Topic contains a selection of papers dealing with Fusarium wilt of banana (FWB), also known as Panama disease, that investigate (i) the epidemiology, distribution, infection biology, and diversity of the pathogen, (ii) management practices, and (iii) ways to identify and screen for resistance. The Research Topic arose from the increas...

No-tillage is often suggested as a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Modeling tillage effects on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions is challenging and subject to great uncertainties as the processes producing the emissions are complex and strongly nonlinear. Previous findings have shown deviations between the LPJmL5.0-tillage model (LPJmL: Lu...

Digital soil mapping (DSM) is an effective mapping technique that supports the increased need for quantitative soil data. In DSM, soil properties are correlated to environmental characteristics using statistical models like regression. However, many of these relationships are explicitly described in mechanistic simulation models. Therefore, the mec...

Desertification is defined as land degradation occurring in the global drylands. It is one of the global problems targeted under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15). The aim of this article is to review the history of desertification and to evaluate the scientific evidence for desertification spread and severity. First quantitative estimates...

A farm survey was conducted within a 100 km² sampling block to collect data on the spatial variation in unfertilized maize biovolume and grain yields in relation to soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen, phosphorus and extractable cations. Key soil factors associated with crop performance were identified using stepwise multiple linear regressio...

No-tillage is often suggested as a strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Modeling tillage effects on nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions is challenging and subject to large uncertainties, as the processes producing the emissions are complex and strongly non-linear. Previous findings have shown deviations between the LPJmL5.0-tillage model and resu...

Traceability of agricultural produce is getting increasingly important for numerous reasons including marketing, certification, and food safety. Globally, banana (Musa spp.) with its high nutritional value and easy accessibility, is a popular fruit among consumers. Bananas are produced throughout the (sub-)tropics under a wide range of environmenta...

The effects of tillage on soil properties, crop productivity, and global greenhouse gas emissions have been discussed in the last decades. Global ecosystem models have limited capacity to simulate the various effects of tillage. With respect to the decomposition of soil organic matter, they either assume a constant increase due to tillage or they i...

Soil data requirements and soil data acquisition tools and techniques have changed over recent decades. In general, soil scientists can: i) collect new data in the field and ignore the data that are available, ii) rely entirely on legacy soil data or iii) combine available legacy data with new data collection. This study aims to analyse and discuss...

There is an increasing demand for soil data at different scales. Due to changing data requirements, environmental studies need to make key decisions in terms of i) which datasets to use, and ii) how to derive the necessary data from these datasets. This is particularly true for properties that are not included in standard soil profile descriptions...

Policy makers and farmers use tools, such as a nutrient balance, to gain insight into the environmental impact of agricultural practices. A discrepancy, however, exists between the needs of policy makers and farmers, about the use and the spatial scale of such tools. Farm balances calculate nutrient balances across all agricultural fields within a...

Improving fertilizer recommendations for farmers is essential to increase food security in smallholder landscapes. Currently, blanket recommendations are provided across agro-ecological zones, although fertilizer response and nutrient use efficiency by maize crop are spatially variable. We aimed to identify factors that could help to refine fertili...

The aim of the study was to understand the relationship between soil properties and Fusarium wilt (FW) by Foc Race 1 in banana cv. 'Gros Michel'. The experimentation was based on soils from the Turrialba region in Costa Rica. A first analysis took place under greenhouse conditions with Foc Race 1 inoculated plants and grown in two representative so...

Strategies on agricultural management can help to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the potential of agricultural management to reduce GHG emissions at the global scale is unclear. Global ecosystem models often lack sufficient detail in their representation of management, such as tillage. This paper explores whether and how til...

Increasingly, soil surveys make use of a combination of legacy data, ancillary data and new field data. While combining the different sources of information, positional errors can play a large role. For example, the spatial discrepancy between remote sensing images and field data can depend on many factors, including the positioning accuracy of gro...

The effects of tillage on soil properties (e.g. soil carbon and nitrogen), crop productivity, and global greenhouse gas emissions have been discussed in the last decades. Global ecosystem models are limited in simulating tillage. Hence, they do not allow for analyzing the effects of tillage and cannot evaluate, for example, reduced-tillage or no-ti...

Bananas are cultivated throughout the (sub)tropics with a global production area of 12 million ha in a wide variety of production systems. There is significant variation between and within each of the main production regions in the world. Soil management also varies considerably in these systems. On the one hand, there are subsistence systems where...

Urbanization is an important trend in global land cover change and seriously impacts the soil resources. However, there is no clear definition for urban areas. As a result estimates of urbanization and its effects on soil resources vary widely. Urbanization can be modelled in different ways with a specific focus on environmental conditions, tempora...

In this study, the database of properties of urban soils was created to assess the influence of zonal features of natural factors of soils, situated in urban areas. The database contains more than 135 cities located in different natural zones all over the world from the Arctic tundra to equatorial tropics. A comparison based on two features: soil o...

Visual soil evaluation (VSE) is a simple and fast method to assess soil quality in situ, and is becoming increasingly popular. Besides soil structure assessment, also other soil properties can be assessed such as grass cover, roots and earthworms. Yet, the full set of visual observations has not been properly evaluated for reproducibility and corre...

The impact of human land use on global biogeochemistry and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is typically modeled with terrestrial ecosystem models that are increasingly capable of accounting for different land use types. However, various management aspects that allow for substantial modifications of the impacts of land use on biogeochemical cycles an...

Different agricultural management strategies are being promoted to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions resulting from agricultural practices. Currently, the evaluation of management on GHG emissions is limited, because global ecosystem models, which are typically used to study global biogeochemical fluxes, often do not have management incorporat...

Detailed, spatially exhaustive soil data on Soil Organic Matter (SOM) content are required to analyse the state of the Natura 2000 areas in the Cantabria region (Spain). These data can be obtained using digital soil mapping (DSM) techniques. However, DSM on SOM content at the regional scale has proven to be difficult. The SOM content is influenced...

The soil data required for regional land use analyses (RLUA) changed over the last decades. Regional land use analyses became more interdisciplinary, more quantitative, and increasingly use simulation models. This change caused a gap between the soil data that are available and that are required. Current regional land use analyses often do not know...

Soil management offers various options to alleviate the effects of Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc) in bananas. Nevertheless, it receives little attention as a strategy in Fusarium wilt management. Literature provides ample evidence linking soil conditions such as soil texture and fertility to the spread and severity...

Urbanization is a long-term global trend, responsible for substantial environmental changes. At the same time, urban ecosystems are vulnerable and their adaptation to the ever-changing environment is necessary to sustain essential functionality and important ecosystem services. Sustainable urban development demands the integration of innovative gre...

In this study, the database of properties of urban soils was created to assess the influence of zonal features of natural factors of soils, situated in urban areas. The database contains more than 135 cities located in different natural zones all over the world from the Arctic tundra to equatorial tropics. A comparison based on two features: soil o...

Urbanization is an important trend in global land cover change and seriously impacts the soil resources. However, there is no clear definition for urban areas. As a result estimates of urbanization and its effects on soil resources vary widely. Urbanization can be modelled in different ways with a specific focus on environmental conditions, tempora...

On-going urbanization stresses the necessity for structural and aesthetically organized urban landscapes to improve citizens’ life quality. Recreational zones create a ‘green frame’ of a city and provide vital functions and services for city dwellers. This research focuses on the comparative analysis of spatial distribution of the key soil properti...

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in African agriculture require a better understanding why high levels of poverty and resource degradation persist in African agriculture despite decades of policy interventions and development projects. In this article, we hypothesize that policies need to account for the key features of the semi-subsiste...

Urbanization is responsible for large environmental changes worldwide. Although traditionally urbanization was related to negative environmental impacts, recent research also highlights positive impacts like the potential of urban areas to store soil organic carbon. The net effect of urbanization on soil organic carbon is poorly understood. Negativ...

Urbanization is a key trend of current land-use change, responsible for large environmental changes worldwide. Sustainable functioning of urban ecosystems is a priority goal of today and nearest future. Urban soil is a key component of urban ecosystems. Urban soils are formed and exist under predominant direct and indirect effect of anthropogenic f...

The food security-climate change nexus rapidly gains momentum. Soil degradation plays an important role in this context while dealing with e.g., the productive capacity of our soil resources or carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. However little has been done to assess the pristine soil conditions despite the fact that these provide...

Soil respiration (Rs) is an important terrestrial CO2 efflux and receives significant attention at different scale levels. However, the sampling density is limited and global Rs databases are biased towards natural ecosystems. Urbanization is among the most important current land-use trends and its role will likely grow in the future. Urban soils s...

Capability, a term that has been well defined in welfare economics, can be applied to soil by defining the intrinsic capacity of a soil to contribute to ecosystem services, including biomass production. Seven soil functions are used to define capabilities, and combining different functions in storylines provides integrated expressions for capabilit...

The research community increasingly analyses global environmental problems like climate change and desertification with models. These global environmental modelling studies require global, high resolution, spatially exhaustive, and quantitative data describing the soil profile. This study aimed to develop a pedological approach that takes stock of...

The PROSAM project aimed to take the participatory techniques described in the field of prototyping and combine them with quantitative mechanistic simulation models and household models to the level of the ecoregion. To do so, a GIS database has been established, three project sites were selected, and farming systems were characterized in these sit...

Over recent decades, environmental models have gradually replaced traditional, qualitative land evaluation in regional land use analysis (RLUA). This changed the data requirements as the environmental models require quantitative, high resolution and spatially exhaustive data. As resources to collect new data are limited, RLUA often relies on alread...

Returning crop residues to the soil is a well-known practice to keep a sustainable soil quality in agriculture. In an orchard, pruning material could be returned for soil and water conservation or could be removed for energy production. Pruning wood decomposition rates and their impact on soil quality and greenhouse-gas emissions depend on climate,...

Globally, crop diseases result in significant losses in crop yields. To properly target interventions to control crop diseases, it is important to map diseases at a high resolution. However, many surveys of crop diseases pose challenges to mapping because available observations are only proxies of the actual disease, observations often are not norm...

The need for more comparisons among models is widely recognized. This study aimed to compare three different modelling approaches for their capability to simulate and predict trends and patterns of winter wheat yield in Western Germany. The three modelling approaches included an empirical model, a process-based model (LINTUL2), and a metamodel deri...

A study was performed to determine the relationships between soil chemical and microbiological conditions and how they impact soil production. The study was carried out on six Costa Rican commercial banana farms with high, medium and low productivity. In each of the farms sector with relatively good and poor crop development were identified. In the...

Land-use change is the main anthropogenic factor influencing soil carbon stocks and fluxes. Urbanization is among the most important and rapid changes in land use. However, the influence of urbanization on soil carbon dynamics is still poorly understood. Given the differences between urban, agricultural, and natural soils, major differences in soil...

Carbon turnover is one of the major biogeochemical cycles on our planet. The carbon cycle determines the performance of many principal environmental functions and ecosystem services, including soil fertility, biodiversity, and climate change. The largest pool of actively cycling carbon in terrestrial ecosystems is found in the soil that contains ab...

The global community increasingly recognizes the role of land. Good examples are the UN sustainable development goals, the seven soil functions identified by the European Union, and the declaration of 2015 as the international year of the soil. Globally, land use has resulted in considerable changes in soil conditions. Surprisingly, global changes...

The global community increasingly recognizes the role of land. Good examples are the UN sustainable development goals, the seven soil functions identified by the European Union, and the declaration of 2015 as the international year of the soil. Globally, land use has resulted in considerable changes in soil conditions. Surprisingly, global changes...

The research community increasingly uses models to analyze global environmental problems. On soil degradation, these studies require high resolution, spatially exhaustive, quantitative data on soil properties. This study aimed to develop a methodology that takes stock of available legacy data to create a suitable global soil database to support int...

This chapter begins with an overview of different soil- and crop-oriented methods to describe the spatial variability within fields. Then, the main question that remains is how to translate this information into practical management. Management decisions will be discussed on the basis of four operational low- and high-tech PA systems. General concl...

Agricultural researchers are carrying out a broad range of evaluations ranging from traditional land evaluation to impact assessments (of e.g., climate change and soil management) and soil degradation estimates. Numerous tools are available for these evaluations, with a range of field methods and analytical tools. Field methods range from long term...

Climate is one of the main drivers behind agriculture. As a result, changes in climate will most likely affect agriculture. If these changes are unknown to farmers they may be unable to guard themselves against these changes. The problem that farmers face is that future changes in climate are unknown. Modelled emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) do...

The UN-Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an attractive framework to demonstrate the essential contributions that soil science can make to transdisciplinary research. Contributions of soil sience were systematically defined by considering relevant SDGs and the associated ecosystem services (ES) for six transdisciplinary case studies in th...

In the past, soil surveying techniques were mainly developed for qualitative regional land use analysis (RLUA) like land evaluation and land use planning. Conventional soil survey techniques usually describe soil types according to a soil classification scheme (e.g. Soil Taxonomy and World Reference Base). These soil surveys met the requirements of...

This chapter assesses the characteristics of current and future agricultural systems, land use, agricultural output, output price, cost of production, and farm and household size in response to climate change. This analysis also compared both current and projected future climate (2030), with and without adaptation, and for different socioeconomic s...

Urbanization is among the most impetuous current land-use change trends, resulting in a permanently increasing role of urban ecosystems in regional and global environments. Urban soil organic carbon (SOC) is probably the least understood stocks because of the lack of appropriate methodology to analyze and map it. Cities represent a small-scale patc...

This article presents conceptual and empirical foundations for new parsimonious simulation models that are being used to assess future food and environmental security of farm populations. The conceptual framework integrates key features of the biophysical and economic processes on which the farming systems are based. The approach represents a metho...