Call for papers: Tradeoffs among Food Production, Forests, and Water Resources in Tropical Agricultural Frontiers

Dear colleagues,

We would like to announce a call for papers for our Special Issue in Water entitled "Tradeoffs among Food Production, Forests, and Water Resources in Tropical Agricultural Frontiers".

The Special Issue will explore a wide range of relationships between agricultural production, the hydrologic cycle and its associated eco-hydrological systems in the tropics worldwide. Our objective is to gather high impact research focused on the tropics by considering a wide geographic scope, a range of hydrological scales, and a mix of both biophysical and economic perspectives.

Please note that the deadline for submissions is December 31^st 2020. 

Thank you for your consideration, we hope to hear from you soon,

Best Regards,

Dr. Michael Coe
Dr. Marcia Macedo
Dr. Michael Lathuillière

Guest Editors

Special Issue Information

"Tradeoffs among Food Production, Forests, and Water Resources in Tropical Agricultural Frontiers"

In recent decades, agricultural frontiers have expanded rapidly in the tropics, where the large pool of available arable land has allowed for the rapid growth of internationally traded commodities to meet increasing global food demands. This rapid deforestation and agricultural expansion has had significant impacts on the hydrologic cycle and associated eco-hydrological systems. Understanding of the scope of these changes requires interdisciplinary analysis from both biophysical and economic perspectives. For example, river discharge could increase as a fraction of precipitation at local scales, but decrease if diminished water vapor transfers to the atmosphere affect regional rainfall regimes. These effects can be viewed from the perspective of water users (e.g., up- and downstream), as well as local producers or distant consumers of agricultural exports. This Special Issue focuses on changes in the hydrological cycle due to land cover and land use change for tropical agriculture, as observed across multiple scales—whether from farm to river basin, or from production to consumption centers across international boundaries.

We welcome submissions that explore both biophysical changes to the water cycle described through field measurements or hydrologic modeling, but also invite research focused on impact assessment of water use for products through production system modeling. Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Empirical studies (e.g., paired catchments);
• River basin, biome or continental scale hydrologic modeling;
• Implications for water availability across scales (e.g., up- or downstream, inside or outside of the basin or biome);
• Production and consumption center effects on hydrology through (e.g., life cycle assessments, water footprint, water productivity).

To submit your paper, please access the following link and press the “Submit to Special Issue” on the top right hand side of the page: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/water/special_issues/tropical_agricultural. As an open access journal, Water has an article processing charge of 1800 Swiss Francs with the possibility of discounts based on your affiliation to the MDPI Institutional Open Access Program (see list of institutions here), or if you have acted as a Reviewer for the journal in the past.