Transitions to crop residue burning have multiple antecedents in Eastern India.

Unlabelled: Far removed from the agricultural fire "hotspots" of Northwestern India, rice residue burning is on the rise in Eastern India with implications for regional air quality and agricultural sustainability. The underlying drivers contributing to the increase in burning have been linked to the adoption of mechanized (combine) harvesting but, in general, are inadequately understood. We hypothesize that the adoption of burning as a management practice results from a set of socio-technical interactions rather than emerging from a single factor.

Hydrologic variability governs GHG emissions in rice-based cropping systems of Eastern India.

Reducing methane (CH) emissions is increasingly recognized as an urgent greenhouse gas mitigation priority for avoiding ecosystem 'tipping points' that will accelerate global warming. Agricultural systems, namely ruminant livestock and rice cultivation are dominant sources of CH emissions. Efforts to reduce methane from rice typically focus on water management strategies that implicitly assume that irrigated rice systems are consistently flooded and that farmers exert a high level of control over the field water balance.

Characterizing soil hydrology in the Indo-Gangetic plain of Bihar, India: Methods and preliminary results.

In the Eastern Gangetic Plain (EGP) soil hydrology is a major determinant of land use and also governs the ecosystem services derived from cropping systems, particularly greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from rice fields. To characterize patterns of soil hydrology in these, daily field monitoring of water levels was conducted during the monsoon () season in a comparatively wet (2021) and dry (2022) year with flooding depth and drainage tracked with field water tubes across 47 (2021) and 183 (2022) locations. Fields were clustered into hydrologic response types (HRT) which can then be used for land surface modelling, land use recommendations, and to target agronomic interventions that contribute to sustainable development outcomes.

The choice of spectral similarity algorithms influences suspected soil sample provenance.

Similarity algorithms are commonly used in soil forensic applications to help identify similar samples from an existing reference library as possible source locations of unknown target samples. These algorithms are well-suited to compare soil spectra. However, different similarity algorithms may lead to different clusters of similar samples, and thus different strengths of evidence in forensic investigations.

How do STEM graduate students perceive science communication? Understanding science communication perceptions of future scientists.

Increasingly, communicating science to the public is recognized as the responsibility of professional scientists; however, these skills are not always included in graduate training. In addition, most research on science communication training during graduate school, which is limited, has been program evaluation or literature reviews and does not report on or seek to understand graduate student perspectives. This research study provides a comprehensive analysis of graduate-level science communication training from the perspective of STEM graduate students.