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Attenuation of urban agricultural production potential and crop water footprint due to shading from buildings and trees [1]

Urban agriculture requires local water to replace 'hydrologic externalities' associated with food produced outside of the local area, with an accompanying shift of the water footprint (WF) for agricultural production from rural to urban areas. Water requirements of urban agriculture have been difficult to estimate due to the heterogeneity of shading from trees and buildings within urban areas. We developed CityCrop, a plant growth and evapotranspiration (ET) model that couples a 3D model of tree canopies and buildings derived from LiDAR with a ray-casting approach to estimate spatially-explicit solar inputs in combination with local climate data. Evaluating CityCrop over a 1 km2 mixed use, residential neighborhood of Vancouver Canada, we estimated median light attenuation to result in 12% reductions in both reference ET (ETo) and crop ET (ETc). However, median crop yields were reduced by only 3.5% relative to potential yield modeled without any light attenuation, while the median crop WF was 9% less than the WF for areas unimpeded by shading.

Publication Date: 
09/06/2015
Mark S Johnson [2], Michael J Lathuillière [3], Thoreau R Tooke & et al [4]
Environmental Research Letters [5]
10
6
1-11
Tags:
Urban Agriculture [6], Irrigation [7], Water Policy [8], Food Security [9], Water Management [10], Solar Radiation [11], Nutrition [12], Vegetables [13], Green Spaces [14], Home Gardens [15], Rainfall [16], Trees [17], Canada [18]

Technology Partners: MimirTech

Source URL: http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/feature-article/attenuation-urban-agricultural-production-potential-and-crop-water-footprint-due

Links:
[1] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/feature-article/attenuation-urban-agricultural-production-potential-and-crop-water-footprint-due
[2] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/mark-s-johnson
[3] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/michael-j-lathuilli%C3%A8re
[4] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/author/thoreau-r-tooke-et-al
[5] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/journal/environmental-research-letters
[6] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/urban-agriculture
[7] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/irrigation
[8] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/water-policy
[9] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/food-security
[10] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/water-management
[11] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/solar-radiation
[12] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/nutrition
[13] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/vegetables
[14] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/green-spaces
[15] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/home-gardens
[16] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/rainfall
[17] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/trees
[18] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/canada