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This study aims to better understand flash droughts worldwide and their varying characteristics and impacts. We surveyed the experiences of people affected by flash droughts and then examined a wide range of literature, including non-English and nonacademic sources. This helped us understand how flash droughts can differ from those commonly studied in the United States and China. We identified and described five types of flash droughts, some of which may not be detected by current drought measurement methods. It is crucial to include all types of flash droughts in drought monitoring systems and management plans, as they are expected to become more common due to global warming. We can then better prepare for and reduce the impacts of this growing threat.

Mycotoxin contamination of corn is a pervasive problem that negatively impacts human and animal health and causes economic losses to …

We introduce Version 2 of our widely used 1-km Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps for historical and future climate conditions. …

Land use and cover change (LUCC) in Brazil encompass a complex interplay of diverse factors across different biomes. Understanding …

Smallholder agriculture is critical for current and future food security, yet quantifying the sources of smallholder yield variance …

We assessed how advanced soil properties maps can improve soil moisture modeling using a Land Surface Model. The results showed that using contemporary soil properties maps and pedotransfer functions to estimate soil properties improved soil moisture modeling performance, especially when soil properties data is available at different soil layers.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the climatic and biophysical potential to grow the crops it needs to meet rapidly growing food demand; …

In this study we show how a surrogate model can accurately predict the spatial structure of Land Surface Model’s (LSM) hydrological output fields. For a target level of complexity, the optimal LSM tile configuration was determined using a multi-objective Pareto efficiency analysis. We found that approximately 100 tiles can effectively reproduce a quasi-fully distributed LSM setup with 1% of the computational cost. This method provides a path forward to efficiently determine the optimal tile configurations for LSMs while simultaneously considering the spatial heterogeneity and spatial accuracy of hydrologic processes.

This study provides a framework for direct integration of soil moisture observations collected from soil sensors and satellite imagery into process-based crop models for improving the representation of agricultral systems. The performance of this framework was evaluated across 19 site-years for crop yield, NDVI, soil moisture, tile flow drainage and nitrate leaching.