The US Northern Great Plains is one of the largest expanses small grain agriculture, but excessive reliance on off-farms inputs and predicted warmer drier conditions hinder its agricultural sustainability. In this region, use cover crops represents a promising approach to increase biodiversity reduce external inputs; however little information exists about how crop mixture composition, climate ...

Wheat is one of the world's most favoured food sources, reaching millions of people on a daily basis. However, its production has climatic consequences. Fuel, inorganic fertilizers and pesticides used in wheat production emit greenhouse gases that can contribute negatively to climate change. It is unknown whether adopting alternative farming practices will increase crop yield while reducing car...

Agaves can grow in marginal arid and semiarid lands where their special ecological and physiological adaptations to environmental conditions give them the potential to produce substantial biomass. Agave americana was the first agave species shown to be a Crassulacean Acid Metabolism plant, with CO2 uptake occurring primarily at night and with high wateruse efficiency (photosynthesis/transpirati...

The geometry of foreland basins is controlled by a dynamic balance between thrust-belt migration, fl exural subsidence, and fl uvial deposition. To improve our ability to quantify the relationships between tectonics, climate, and foreland basin geometry, I developed analytic solutions for basin topography and stratigraphy using a classic two-dimensional mathematical model of foreland basin evol...

[1] Characterization of the space-time variability of soil moisture is important for land surface and climate studies. Here we develop an analytical model to investigate how, at the dry-end of the soil moisture range, the main characteristics of the soil moisture field (spatial mean and variability, steady state distribution) depend on the intermittent character of low intensity rain storms. Ou...