Climate and Agriculture9
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Making Sense of Climate’s Impact on Food Security
From warmer temperatures to natural disasters such as flooding and drought, changing patterns of climate are having billion-dollar impacts on our food-growing systems. But scientists are struggling to find ways to measure and predict what may happen in the future—and to translate that into policies to help feed a bulging world population.
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Improving Seeds to Meet Future Challenges
Scientists and agronomists are racing to develop seeds that are higher yielding, more nutritious, and both drought and climate resilient to meet the challenge of feeding the world in the future.
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Rosario’s Farm: Rising Tides, Shrimp from the Forest
Rosario Costa-Cabral and her brothers harvest hundreds of fruits, oils and wood products from the stream-laced forest of the Amazon River delta. But the climate here is changing: Tides rise higher, and seasonal floods are growing worse.
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Watering the World’s Crops, Drop by Drop
Dr. Daniel Hillel was recently honored with the World Food Prize for his pioneering work in sustainable agriculture.
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Forecasting Climate’s Effects on Global Food Production
The worst drought to hit the U.S. in decades has already brought corn yields to a 17-year low and will almost certainly raise food prices. Wealth will soften the blow in the U.S., but in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, prolonged drought has often had deadly consequences. Is there a better way to anticipate climate’s…
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Preparing for a Future of Perpetual Drought
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that droughts will likely increase in central North America this century. How can we prepare for a future of perpetual drought?
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Investigating Impacts of Increased Fertilizer Use in Africa
The rains came late this year in Kenya. I was there for several months in the winter and spring to conduct research for a post-doctoral fellowship, examining the consequences of increases in fertilizer use on soil fertility, maize yields, nitrogen gas emissions and nitrogen leaching losses.
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Why Soil Matters
Soil is the source of all life. Yet “we know more about soils of Mars than about soils of Africa,” says Pedro Sanchez, director of the Earth Institute’s Tropical Agriculture and the Rural Environment Program. To remedy this situation, the Earth Institute is taking part in an ambitious undertaking to map the world’s soils.
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Growing Food, Protecting the Land in Africa
The new Africa Monitoring System aims to help land managers and policy makers identify and tackle tradeoffs between intensified food production on the African continent and the vital services provided by healthy ecosystems.
AGU25, the premier Earth and space science conference, takes place December 15-19, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year’s theme—Where Science Connects Us—puts in focus how science depends on connection, from the lab to the field to the ballot box. Once again, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia Climate School scientists, experts, students, and educators are playing an active role, sharing our research and helping shape the future of our planet. #AGU25 Learn More
