Scientific frontiers of agrivoltaic cropping systems Nature Reviews Clean Technology - Agrivoltaic systems co-locate crop production and energy conversion alongside each other, helping to reduce land-use conflicts that can arise from conventional...

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands | PNAS United States (US) croplands are ideal recipient environments for solar photovoltaic (PV) energy because they are flat and have a high solar resour...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Agrivoltaics in New York! 🧑‍🌾

Check out our new paper reporting how microclimate ☀️🌧️🌡️ created by solar arrays controls patterns of crop productivity during a fall growing season.

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Evidence of photovoltaic aridity mitigation in semi-arid grasslands - IOPscienceSearch Evidence of photovoltaic aridity mitigation in semi-arid grasslands, Sturchio, Matthew A, Knapp, Alan K

Full open-access manuscript shared here:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

These findings have several implications in a warmer and increasingly water limited world. Primarily, the ability to increase forage production for grazing animals in times of scarcity, thus alleviating some of the economic hardship faced by producers.

Furthermore, we compared grassland productivity across wet, average, and dry years (decreasing water availability) and found an inverse relationship where productivity increased relative to control.

This finding supports our hypothesis that growth benefits from reduced water stress could outweigh potential reductions in growth from solar panel shading. We refer to this as the Aridity Mitigation Potential (AMP) hypothesis.

We found that grassland co-located with solar PV was 20% more productive than control grassland during a dry year.

Newly published multi-year study! ☀️ ⚡ 🌾

If you're interested in hearing about the benefits of grassland and solar energy co-location, you'll most certainly enjoy this.

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Managing for climate and production goals on crop-lands - Nature Climate Change Climate mitigation through natural climate solutions in crop-lands may be a way to reconcile climate goals with food security. However, here the authors show that some natural climate solution practic...

🚨New paper alert🚨

We show that maintaining crop yields lowers the global climate benefits of natural climate solutions on croplands. But, we highlight where win-win opportunities exist for these practices to contribute to climate and production goals. 1/N

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New toy! Couldn't help but run some tests in the backyard... @li-corenv.bsky.social

Map of corn ethanol land-cover with high technical potential for solar energy development across the United States (yellow) and runoff in the Mississippi River watershed (blue).

Converting a small fraction of fields producing corn for ethanol in the Mississippi River watershed into solar farms could greatly expand renewable energy production while mitigating pollution of the Mississippi River from fertilizer runoff. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How can we find win-wins for solar siting in agricultural land? Substitute solar for corn headed to ethanol production, especially where runoff from corn fertilizer contaminates waterways: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands | PNAS United States (US) croplands are ideal recipient environments for solar photovoltaic (PV) energy because they are flat and have a high solar resour...

You're probably asking yourself "how could solar energy☀️ significantly reduce the spatial footprint of energy production in croplands 🌽 while providing several ecological benefits?"

We had the same question! Answers can be found in our recent publication ⬇️

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands | PNAS United States (US) croplands are ideal recipient environments for solar photovoltaic (PV) energy because they are flat and have a high solar resour...

Many people assume replacing farm crops 🌱 with solar ☀️panels is bad. In fact, it's usually good for the environment because a lot of crops are turned into biofuels, and solar is way more efficient than any biofuel 🧪

More evidence on this from @msturch.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...