In the 21st century, mapping and monitoring the occurrence of soil degradation will be an important component of successful land management. Remote sensing, with its unique ability to measure across space and time, will be an increasingly indispensible tool for assessing degradation. However, much of the recent experience and progress in using remote sensing and other geospatial technologies to map soil degradation is reported outside of the peer-reviewed literature. This motivated the organization of a special collection of papers focused on remote sensing of soil degradation, to highlight recent successes, common challenges, and promising new approaches. This introductory paper provides an overview of the papers, gaps in knowledge, and future research directions. Across several regions and types of degradation, many assessments to date have relied heavily on data from the Landsat satellite sensor. Many approaches have also relied at some point on subjective visual interpretation, either of the satellite imagery itself or to provide field data used to train models that use satellite data. While subjectivity is not necessarily bad, it precludes repeatability and makes it even more important to rigorously test model estimates with independent data. Overall, it remains quite challenging to find robust relationships between remote sensing measures and soil degradation, particularly for slight to moderate levels of degradation. There have nonetheless been some clear successes, and there remains great potential for progress. Promising directions outlined in the papers include using multi-year measures of vegetation condition, combining different sensor systems including optical and radar data, and using advanced statistical techniques such as Bayesian networks and decision trees.

The ongoing expansion of oil palm plantations in the humid tropics, especially in Southeast Asia, is generating considerable concern and debate. Amid industry and environmental campaigners' claims, it can be hard to perceive reality. Is oil palm a valuable route to sustainable development or a costly road to environmental ruin? Inevitably, any answer depends on many choices. But do decision makers have the information they require to avoid pitfalls and make the best decisions? This review examines what we know and what we don't know about oil palm developments. Our sources include academic publications and ‘grey' literature, along with expert consultations. Some facts are indisputable: among these are that oil palm is highly productive and commercially profitable at large scales, and that palm oil demand is rising. Implementing oil palm developments involves many tradeoffs. Oil palm's considerable profitability offers wealth and development where wealth and development are needed-but also threatens traditional livelihoods. It offers a route out of poverty, while also making people vulnerable to exploitation, misinformation and market instabilities. It threatens rich biological diversity-while also offering the finance needed to protect forest. It offers a renewable source of fuel, but also threatens to increase global carbon emissions. We remain uncertain of the full implications of current choices. How can local, regional and international benefits be increased while costs are minimised? While much important information is available, it is often open to question or hard to generalise. We conclude this review with a list of pressing questions requiring further investigation. Credible, unbiased research on these issues will move the discussion and practice forward.

In this chapter, we focus specifically on agricultural risks and uncertainties related to climate variability and global climate change from a policy viewpoint. Policymakers have little control over the weather, which is driven by very short-run (hourly to daily) patterns in atmosphere and ocean circulation. With good scientific information, however, policymakers in many regions can anticipate longer-run (monthly, yearly, decadal) climate variability and climate change reflected in patterns of temperature and precipitation. Such climate fluctuations involve structural dynamics in the physical system that can be modeled and projected with varying degrees of certainty over different spatial and temporal scales. To the extent that climate variability and change in the mean state can be projected, governments can then facilitate adaptation; that is, they can augment markets by implementing policies to promote domestic food security via trade (e.g., arrange for food imports when crop production is expected to decline domestically), investments (e.g., fund crop research or improvements in irrigation infrastructure), and early-warning systems or safety-net programs for vulnerable populations within their countries.

Presentation from the session session "Biofuels, Tropical Deforestation, and Climate Policy: Key Challenges and Opportunities" at the annual AAAS meeting, Feb 14 2009.

Higher growing season temperatures can have dramatic impacts on agricultural productivity, farm incomes, and food security. We used observational data and output from 23 global climate models to show a high probability (>90%) that growing season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics by the end of the 21st century will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded from 1900 to 2006. In temperate regions, the hottest seasons on record will represent the future norm in many locations. We used historical examples to illustrate the magnitude of damage to food systems caused by extreme seasonal heat and show that these short-run events could become long-term trends without sufficient investments in adaptation.

This paper presents data from six of the first countries incorporated into the Agricultural Lives of the Poor project: Ghana, Guatemala, India, Malawi, Uganda, and Vietnam.  Datasets were selected based on availability and depth of detail on consumption expenditures, sources of income, and agricultural practices.  Each of these survey components is necessary in order for ALP to focus on net consumption/production at the household level, and to understand expenditure and consumption behavior.  Net consumption and production data of individual crops and food groups is further disaggregated by subgroups formed on characteristics that include economic status, household attributes, livelihood strategies, calories available, landholding, tenure types, and agricultural input use.

Armed conflict within nations has had disastrous humanitarian consequences throughout much of the world. Here we undertake the first comprehensive examination of whether global climate change will exacerbate armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. We find strong historical linkages between civil war and temperature on the continent, with warmer years leading to significant increases in the likelihood of war. When combined with climate model projections of future temperature trends, this historical response to temperature suggests a roughly 60% increase in armed conflict incidence by 2030, or an additional 390,000 battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars.  Our results suggest an urgent need to reform African governments' and foreign aid donors' policies to deal with rising temperatures.