GIS – Page 37 – Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

October 31, 2018October 31, 2018

Counting your chickens

A new version is out of the FAO global livestock density datasets, which we have blogged about before. This is the third iteration (GLW3), and it has a reference year of 2010. There’s a paper to give you all the details. ((Gilbert. M. et al. Global distribution data for cattle, buffaloes, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and ducks in 2010. Sci. Data. 5:180227 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.227 (2018).))

But there’s more to come:

Future versions of GLW will differentiate stocks according to production systems for ruminant (meat vs. dairy) and monogastric species (intensive vs. extensive, meat vs. egg production). Higher resolution models ((The current global dataset has a resolution of 0.083333 decimal degrees, or 10 km at the equator.)) for individual countries where the census data can support such predictions will also be produced.

The datasets are also available for download from Harvard Dataverse.

October 25, 2018

Mapping crops, field by field

That’s what agriculture looks like around here, according to the Belarus-based ag-tech startup, OneSoil. According to the press release:

Today, OneSoil, a precision farming startup, announced the launch of a new map, the OneSoil Map, which it has developed to allow everyone in the agriculture industry to explore and compare fields and crops in Europe and the United States – 44 countries in total. The key feature of the map is that it allows users to see how these fields have changed over the past three years (2016 – 2018). To accomplish this, OneSoil combined public data from the European Copernicus Programme and Mapbox GL JS, the latter of which helped in visualizing large volumes of ag data. The metrics included on the map are hectarage, the crop, and country crop rating.

Still processing the enormity of it all.

October 22, 2018October 1, 2018

Brainfood: Wild palm, Yield trends, Indigenous veggies double, Old goat grass, Saline soy, Carob history, Pesticidal plants, Rapeseed diversity, Livestock positives, Domestication syndrome, Kiwifruit evolution, Forest diversity

Genetic structure of the Canarian palm tree (Phoenix canariensis) at the island scale: does the “island within islands” concept apply to species with high colonization abilities? High dispersal ability doesn’t always lead to high connectivity among populations.
Uncertainties of potentials and recent changes in global yields of major crops resulting from census- and satellite-based yield datasets at multiple resolutions. Average overall annual yield increases of about 1.5% for maize, rice, wheat and soybean for 1981 to 2008 are uncertain and probably not sufficient.
Indigenous underutilized vegetables for food and nutritional security in an island ecosystem. People in the the Andaman and Nicobar Islands eat a lot of different vegetables. Interestingly, most are perennial and a quarter are wild.
Knowledge Loss and Change Between 2002 and 2017—a Revisit of Plant Use of the Maasai of Sekenani Valley, Maasai Mara, Kenya. But for how long will the above be true?
Use of grass seed resources c.31 ka by modern humans at the Haua Fteah cave, northeast Libya. Including wild wheat relative(s).
Soybean PI 675847 A as a new source of salt tolerance. But it can’t be the only one, surely?
The carob tree at the crossroad of domestication center and refugia hypotheses. Out of the west, surprisingly.
Pesticidal Plant Extracts Improve Yield and Reduce Insect Pests on Legume Crops Without Harming Beneficial Arthropods. Worth a try.
Genome-wide selection footprints and deleterious variations in young Asian allotetraploid rapeseed. Asian rapeseed derived from European, diverged, introgressed, split into 2 groups.
Essential amino acids: master regulators of nutrition and environmental footprint? If you take essential amino acids into account, livestock production doesn’t seem such a bad idea after all.
Parallel selection on a dormancy gene during domestication of crops from multiple families. Cloned soybean dormancy gene also showed evidence of selection during domestication in rice and tomato.
Two Likely Auto-Tetraploidization Events Shaped Kiwifruit Genome and Contributed to Establishment of the Actinidiaceae Family. And you can thank them for the high vitamin C content.
Hydraulic diversity of forests regulates ecosystem resilience during drought. More diverse forests better at coping with dry spells.

September 19, 2018September 20, 2018

Nibbles: Transformation, Restoration, Renumeration, Validation, Mensuration, Celebration, Visualization, Diversification, Fructification, Information, Fermentation, Sustentation, Association, Migration, Transformation, Microconservation

Lawrence Haddad on how to start transforming the food system.
Here’s an idea: CIMMYT genebank recognized for restoring agricultural diversity in Guatemala.
And another. Cash transfers are better than more conventional interventions for malnutrition, but they have to be real money.
But, of course, they don’t always work. That’s one of many development myths listed in this fun Twitter thread.
We also need metrics, sure, but the right ones, and we may already have them.
The first ecologist remembered. That would be Humboldt.
Terrible visualizations of the changing geography of American agriculture.
But where are heirloom grown? Rice, say?
And where are all the pomegranate farmers?
I’m sure there are plenty of grape maps of France somewhere. But what’s with all these varieties? And are there more than in pomegranate?
IUCN launches a new Red List website.
Laos launches a sort of Red List website on traditional foods. Here it is. No word on linkages with Ark of Taste.
Belgian lambic beer threatened by climate change. Now it’s personal.
In Italy, the landscape needs people to keep it safe.
Even olive landscapes, which maybe need to be more promiscuous.
Early agricultural migrations fuelled by cheese.
Early eggplant migrations fuelled by elephants.
Microbes to the rescue.

September 17, 2018

Brainfood: Social media, Wheat double, Apple diversity, Land use change theory, Land use change praxis, Intensification, Ag metrics

How Do Young Adults Engage With Science and Research on Social Media? Some Preliminary Findings and an Agenda for Future Research. Facebook, not Twitter. So I’m doing it all wrong? Any young adults reading this and want to tell me how I’m doing?
Genetic dissection of grain zinc concentration in spring wheat for mainstreaming biofortification in CIMMYT wheat breeding. Two interesting regions on different chromosomes.
Harnessing genetic potential of wheat germplasm banks through impact-oriented-prebreeding for future food and nutritional security. Not just Zn.
Genetic analysis of a major international collection of cultivated apple varieties reveals previously unknown historic heteroploid and inbred relationships. The deep history of the justly famous UK collection.
Middle-range theories of land system change. Towards a Grand Unified Theory. But do we need one?
Classifying drivers of global forest loss. Commodities, basically. But what’s the good of that without a theory?
The environmental costs and benefits of high-yield farming. Theory shtheory: measure externalities.
Beyond Calories: A Holistic Assessment of the Global Food System. Micronutrients get lost disproportionately badly along the supply chain. How’s that for a theory?