Suchergebnisse

Low technology adoption through agricultural extension may be a consequence of providing generic information without sufficient adaptation to local conditions. Data-rich paradigms may be disruptive to extension services and can potentially change farmer-advisor interactions. This study fills a gap in pre-existing, generic advisory programs by suggesting an approach to "diagnose" farm-specific agricultural issues quantitatively first in order to facilitate advisors in developing farm-centric advisories. A user-friendly Farm Agricultural Diagnostics (FAD) tool is developed in Microsoft Excel VBA that uses farmer surveys and soil testing to quantify current agricultural performance, classify farms into different performance categories relative to a localized performance target, and visualize farm performance within a user-friendly interface. The advisory diagnostics approach is tested in Kanpur, representative of an intensively managed rural landscape in the Ganga river basin in India. The developed open-source tool is made available online to generate data-based agricultural advisories. During the field testing in Kanpur, the tool identifies 24% farms as nutrient-limited, 34% farms as water-limited, 27% farms with nutrient and water co-limitations, and the remaining farms as satisfactory compared to the localized performance target. It is recommended to design advisories in terms of water and nutrient recommendations which can fulfill the farm needs identified by the tool. The tool will add data-based value to pre-existing demand based advisory services in agricultural extension programs. The primary users of the tools are academic, governmental and non-governmental agencies working in the agricultural sector, whose rigorous scientific research, soil testing capacity, and direct stakeholder engagement, respectively, can be harnessed to generate more data-based and customized advisories, potentially improving farmer uptake of agricultural advisories. ; ISSN:2624-9375

In a recent editorial in the journal Nature Sustainability, the editors raised the concern that journal submissions on water studies appear too similar. The gist of the editorial: "too many publications and not enough ideas." In this response, we contest this notion, and point to the numerous new ideas that result from taking a broader view of the water science field. Drawing inspiration from a recently hosted conference geared at transcending traditional disciplinary silos and forging new paradigms for water research, we are, in fact, enthusiastic and optimistic about the ways scientists are investigating political, economic, historical, and cultural intersections toward more just and sustainable human-water relations and ways of knowing.

International audience ; The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is dominated by technocratic, scenario‐based approaches that may work well in the short term but can result in unintended consequences in the long term due to limited accounting of dynamic feedbacks between the natural, technical, and social dimensions of human‐water systems. The discipline of sociohydrology has an important role to play in informing policy by developing a generalizable understanding of phenomena that arise from interactions between water and human systems. To explain these phenomena, sociohydrology must address several scientific challenges to strengthen the field and broaden its scope. These include engagement with social scientists to accommodate social heterogeneity, power relations, trust, cultural beliefs, and cognitive biases, which strongly influence the way in which people alter, and adapt to, changing hydrological regimes. It also requires development of new methods to formulate and test alternative hypotheses for the explanation of emergent phenomena generated by feedbacks between water and society. Advancing sociohydrology in these ways therefore represents a major contribution toward meeting the targets set by the SDGs, the societal grand challenge of our time.

International audience ; The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is dominated by technocratic, scenario‐based approaches that may work well in the short term but can result in unintended consequences in the long term due to limited accounting of dynamic feedbacks between the natural, technical, and social dimensions of human‐water systems. The discipline of sociohydrology has an important role to play in informing policy by developing a generalizable understanding of phenomena that arise from interactions between water and human systems. To explain these phenomena, sociohydrology must address several scientific challenges to strengthen the field and broaden its scope. These include engagement with social scientists to accommodate social heterogeneity, power relations, trust, cultural beliefs, and cognitive biases, which strongly influence the way in which people alter, and adapt to, changing hydrological regimes. It also requires development of new methods to formulate and test alternative hypotheses for the explanation of emergent phenomena generated by feedbacks between water and society. Advancing sociohydrology in these ways therefore represents a major contribution toward meeting the targets set by the SDGs, the societal grand challenge of our time.