Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Agricultural and Resource Economics
Local knowledge enhances the sustainability of interconnected fisheries
Published: 2024-10-08
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Global demand for natural resources challenges the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. Fisheries Co-Management (FCM), where management is shared between the government and locals, is crucial for maintaining viable fish populations while mitigating market pressures and illegal fishing. Using a data-informed model applied to a fish metapopulation network, we contrasted the effects of various [...]
Is turning food waste into insect feed an uphill climb? A review of persistent challenges
Published: 2024-04-22
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Entomology, Food Science, Technology and Innovation
One major hurdle for our current food system is the enormous amount of food that goes to waste. Insect farming has been proposed as a potential solution, offering one way to turn waste into agricultural resources such as livestock and aquaculture feed. In this article, we review the types of materials currently used to raise insects at commercial scales, and we examine whether those materials [...]
COVID-19 could accelerate the decline in recreational hunting: a natural experiment from Northern Italy
Published: 2024-04-16
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Environmental Studies, Sociology
Although many studies highlighted the potential of COVID-19 to reshape existing models of wildlife management, empirical research on this topic has been scarce, particularly in Europe. We investigated the potential of COVID-19 pandemic to accelerate the ongoing decline in an aging population of recreational hunters in Italy. Namely, we modeled spatiotemporal trends between 2011 and 2021 in the [...]
Have the environmental benefits of insect farming been overstated? A critical review
Published: 2024-04-04
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agriculture, Food Science
Humanity's food system has an immense environmental impact, and insects have been frequently proposed as a more environmentally sustainable option. The industrialised farming of insects for livestock feed and human food has attracted the attention of industry, policymakers, and the scientific community. However, many of the benefits commonly mentioned by companies and proponents of insect farming [...]
Fuentes para el Estudio de la historia de extracción, consumo y comercio de tres especies de aves venezolanas amenazadas
Published: 2023-11-22
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation
El comercio y uso de vida silvestre es un problema complejo que se ve afectado por la dinámica temporal y geográfica de las redes de comercio y tráfico que estimulan la extracción y consumo de recursos. Para estudiar la historia de valoración, consumo y tráfico de la cotorra cabeciamarilla (Amazona barbadensis), el cardenalito (Sporagra cucullata) y el paují copete de piedra (Pauxi pauxi) [...]
Extreme events and coupled socio-ecological systems
Published: 2023-11-20
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Behavioral Economics, Demography, Population, and Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Human Ecology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Rare, but potentially impactful, extreme events in socio-ecological systems (SES) can trigger significant consequences. The scarcity of theoretical frameworks for such events in SES is due to data limitations and difficulty in building coupled SES models. We explore the effect of extreme events on coupled socio-ecological systems using two stylized case studies: harvesting of old-growth forests [...]
Industrial fishing compliance with a new marine corridor near the Galapagos Islands
Published: 2023-10-30
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Examining fishing pressure in under-resourced marine regions still presents a challenge to understanding patterns of fishing pressure. These issues are compounded in areas with complex marine zoning regulations or those that have changed over time. Satellite-based positioning tracking of fishing vessels has helped identify ocean-wide fishing effort distribution and potential encroachments into [...]
Apes and Agriculture
Published: 2023-05-22
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Environmental Studies, Zoology
Non-human great apes – chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans – are threatened by agricultural expansion particularly from rice, cacao, cassava, maize, and oil palm cultivation. Agriculture replaces and fragments great ape habitats, bringing them closer to humans and often resulting in conflict. Though the impact of agriculture on great apes is well-recognized, there is still a need for [...]
Yield declines and producer responses to shifting climate and economic conditions in Mexican coffee production
Published: 2023-04-06
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences
Coffee’s climate sensitivity contributes to extreme production and price fluctuations. However, as coffee is a perennial crop, producers have difficulty responding to short-term market shifts. Combining historical climate, production and price data from all coffee-growing municipalities in Mexico, we examined trends of climate and coffee production and then characterized and quantified coffee [...]
The Global Forest Health Crisis: A Public Good Social Dilemma in Need of International Collective Action
Published: 2022-03-10
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Behavioral Economics, Biodiversity, Biology, Biosecurity, Botany, Economics, Entomology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Environmental Studies, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, International Relations, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Other Plant Sciences, Pathogenic Microbiology, Plant Biology, Plant Pathology, Plant Sciences, Political Science, Science and Technology Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Society is confronted by interconnected threats to ecological sustainability. Among these is the devastation of forests by destructive non-native pathogens and insects introduced through global trade, leading to the loss of critical ecosystem services and a global forest health crisis. We argue that the forest health crisis is a public good social dilemma and propose a response framework that [...]
Indicators of Complexity and Over-complexification in Global Food Systems
Published: 2021-10-02
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Global food systems have increased in complexity significantly since the mid-20th century, through such innovations as mechanization, irrigation, genetic modification, and the globalization of supply chains. While complexification can be an effective problem-solving strategy, over-complexification can cause environmental degradation and lead systems to become increasingly dependent on external [...]
Comment on ‘Carbon intensity of corn ethanol in the United States: state of the science’
Published: 2021-05-06
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Science, Agriculture, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Life Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Energy Policy, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Policy, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Life Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Plant Sciences, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science, Sustainability
Scully et al [1] in their recent contribution review and revise past life cycle assessments (LCAs) of corn-grain ethanol’s carbon (C) intensity to suggest that a current ‘central best estimate’ is considerably less than all prior estimates. Their conclusion emerges from selection and recombination of sector-specific greenhouse gas emission predictions from disparate studies in a way that [...]
Conserving rhinos by legal trade: Insights from a choice experiment on rhino horn consumers
Published: 2021-04-11
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Economic Theory, Economics, Environmental Studies, Social and Behavioral Sciences
A legal rhino horn trade is suggested to reduce poaching. To examine this proposition we conducted a choice experiment with 345 rhino horn consumers in Vietnam investigating their preferences for legality, source, price and peer experience of medicinal efficacy as attributes in their decision to purchase rhino horn. We calculated consumers’ willingness to pay for each attribute level. Consumers [...]
Agricultural Beneficial Management Practices: A Synthesis of Co-benefits, Tradeoffs, and Co-costs between Crop Yield and Non-provisioning Ecosystem Services
Published: 2020-12-17
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Agricultural Economics, Agriculture, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although agricultural “best (or beneficial) management practices” (BMPs) first emerged to mitigate agro-environmental resource challenges, they may also enhance ‘non-provisioning’ ecosystem services. The enthusiasm for adopting BMPs partially depends on evidence that doing so will lead to agro-environmental benefits while not substantially reducing crop productivity or farmer income. We survey [...]
Land use-induced spillover: priority actions for protected and conserved area managers
Published: 2020-11-23
Subjects: Agricultural and Resource Economics, Biodiversity, Communication, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Policy, Environmental Studies, Geography, Health Policy, Immunity, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Immunology of Infectious Disease, International and Area Studies, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Other Immunology and Infectious Disease, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation, Population Biology, Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration, Public Health, Public Policy, Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Veterinary Medicine
Earth systems are under ever greater pressure from human population expansion and intensifying natural resource use. Consequently, novel micro-organisms that cause disease are emerging, dynamics of pathogens in wildlife are altered by land use change bringing wildlife and people in closer contact. We provide a brief overview of the processes governing ‘land use-induced spillover’, emphasising [...]