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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The area of agricultural land that will require irrigation in future could be up to four times larger than currently estimated, a new study has revealed.
Research by the University of Reading, University of Bergen and Princeton University shows the amount of land that will require human intervention to water crops by 2050 has been severely underestimated due to computer models not taking into account many uncertainties, such as population changes and availability of water.
The authors of the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, argue forecasters and policy-makers need to acknowledge multiple future scenarios in order to be prepared for potential water shortages that would have huge environmental costs.
[...] "If the amount of water needed to grow our food is much larger than calculated, this could put severe pressure on water supplies for agriculture as well as homes. These findings show we need strategies to suit a range of possible scenarios and have plans in place to cope with unexpected water shortages."
[...] The new research suggests that projections of irrigated areas made by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation and others have always underestimated the amount of irrigation required in future by basing them on other assumptions.
The study highlights that the potential global extension of irrigation might be twice, or in the most extreme scenario, even four times larger than what has been suggested by previous models.
[...] Agricultural land where crops cannot be supported by rainwater alone is often irrigated by channelling water from rivers or springs, sprinkler systems, or by controlled flooding. Increased irrigation in future would mean more water consumption, machinery, energy consumption and fertilisers, and therefore more greenhouse gas emissions.
Journal Reference
A. Puy, S. Lo Piano, A. Saltelli. Current Models Underestimate Future Irrigated Areas, Geophysical Research Letters (DOI: 10.1029/2020GL087360)
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 06 2020, @10:51PM (1 child)
Anyway, attempting to curve fit human population growth onto a simple curve is a fool's errand. There are different phases caused by different environmental factors such as mastery of fire, mastery of communication, mastery of energy sources, and eventually resource shortages, that drive the population on quite unrelated trajectories. It makes sense to curve fit piecewise, with each section having a simpler curve that has parameters which have real world analogues (such that a multiplier would correlate directly to a children-per-household figure, say).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @01:06AM
No, an exponential function with a big enough exponent wouldn't be super-exponential for the same reason that exponential functions aren't linear. They not only are in different forms, but the resulting functions have different properties.