publications

2024

1. ERFS

   Georgia’s potentials for sustainable intensification, increasing food security and rural incomes

   Florian Gollnow, Owen Cortner, Shijuan Chen, and 2 more authors

   Environmental Research: Food Systems, Dec 2024

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   Increasing global demand for agricultural commodities spurs conversions of natural ecosystems. Sustainable intensification in areas of high yield gaps has been proposed as a pathway to achieve food security, support rural livelihoods, and improve resource efficiency while also reducing the impact of commodity production by narrowing yield gaps on existing agricultural lands. Following the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Georgia experienced one of the highest losses of agricultural productivity among all former USSR countries and is now highly dependent on food imports. Closing yield gaps in Georgia through sustainable intensification has the potential to increase food self-sufficiency, support rural livelihoods, and strengthen food security and sovereignty. We estimated Georgia’s potential for sustainable intensification in current agricultural areas to achieve self-sufficiency for wheat, maize, and barley. We found that crop yields can be doubled to tripled under high-input production systems, using high-yielding varieties, optimized inputs, fertilizers, and pest control. Yet, self-sufficiency in wheat can only be reached if at least 80% of the attainable yields are achieved and if land is strategically allocated between crops. To achieve such increases, farmers need access to and training for using different crop varieties, fertilizers, and pest and disease control practices and products. Intensification with very high levels of inputs can increase the ecological and human risks of agriculture and raise equity concerns. Yet, intensifying very low input agricultural production systems is often found to be more sustainable, with high yield increases compared to limited impacts on the environment. The high employment rate in the agricultural sector in Georgia provides opportunities for intensification to help reduce poverty and improve livelihoods by increasing incomes and food security.

2. GEC

   Exploring natural and social drivers of forest degradation in post-Soviet Georgia

   Owen Cortner, Shijuan Chen, Pontus Olofsson, and 3 more authors

   Global Environmental Change, Dec 2024

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   The Caucasus Mountains harbor high concentrations of endemic species and provide an abundance of ecosystem services yet are significantly understudied compared to other ecosystems in Eurasia. In the country of Georgia, at the heart of the Caucasus region, forest degradation has been the largest land change process over the last thirty years. The prevailing narrative is that legal and illegal cutting of trees for fuelwood is primarily responsible for this process. Yet, since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has undergone rapid socioeconomic and institutional changes which have not been explored as drivers of forest change. We combine newly available land-cover change estimates, Georgian statistical data, and historical institutional change data to examine socioeconomic drivers of forest degradation. Our analysis controls for concurrent changes in climate that would affect degradation and examines variation at the regional (state) level from 2011 to 2019, as well as at the national level from 1987 to 2019. We find that higher winter temperature and drought are associated with higher degradation at the regional scale, while major institutional changes and drought are associated with higher forest degradation at the national level. Access to natural gas, the major energy alternative to fuelwood, had no significant association with degradation. Our results challenge the narrative that poverty and a lack of alternative energy infrastructure drive forest degradation and suggest that government policies banning household fuelwood cutting, including the new Forest Code of 2020, may not reduce forest degradation. Given these results, improved data on wood harvesting and more research on the commercial drivers of degradation and their links to economic and political reforms is needed to better inform forest policy in the region, especially given ongoing risks from climate change.

3. LE

   Same, but different: similar states of forest structure in temperate mountain regions of Europe despite different social-ecological forest disturbance regimes

   Ana Stritih, Cornelius Senf, Tobias Kuemmerle, and 6 more authors

   Landscape Ecology, Dec 2024

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4. report

   Report of the Yale Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Appendix 7: Artificial Intelligence at the School of the Environment

   William Lauenroth, Jennifer Marlon, Owen Cortner, and 2 more authors

   Jun 2024

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2023

1. SZF

   Walder, baume und partnerschaften - vom wissen bis hin zur politik.

   Tamaki Ohmura, Veronika Schick, Owen Cortner, and 1 more author

   Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Forstwesen, Jun 2023

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2020

1. ES

   Drivers of decoupling and recoupling of crop and livestock systems at farm and territorial scales

   Rachael D Garrett, Julie Ryschawy, Lindsay W Bell, and 9 more authors

   Ecology and Society, Jun 2020

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2019

1. LUP

   Perceptions of integrated crop-livestock systems for sustainable intensification in the Brazilian Amazon

   Owen Cortner, R.D. Garrett, Judson F Valentim, and 4 more authors

   Land Use Policy, Jun 2019

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2017

1. AS

   Social and ecological analysis of commercial integrated crop livestock systems: Current knowledge and remaining uncertainty

   R.D. Garrett, M.T. Niles, J.D.B. Gil, and 15 more authors

   Agricultural Systems, Jun 2017

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