Publications

Aleah Wong, Malin Jonell, Michelle Tigchelaar, Max Troell, Colette C C Wabnitz, Edward H Allison, Karl Deering, Patrik J G Henriksson, Kristin M Kleisner, J Zachary Koehn, Julia G Mason, Marleen S Schutter, Elizabeth R Selig. 2026. Feasibility, co-benefits, and trade-offs of climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in blue food systems. Environmental Research: Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.1088/2976-601X/ae7a77

Blue food—aquatic organisms fished or farmed in marine and freshwater areas, including fish, shellfish, and aquatic plants—make critical contributions to nutrition, livelihoods, and economies, and can have lower carbon footprints than other animal-source foods. While blue foods are increasingly discussed as part of climate change mitigation and adaptation, climate change also affects the feasibility, performance, and equity ou...

Wesley Malcorps, Richard Newton, Stephanie Horn, Björn Kok, Max Troell, David C. Little. 2026. Fish as Food or Feed? Aligning FIFO with LCA and Food System Objectives. Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture. https://doi.org/10.1080/23308249.2026.2679959

Aquatic animals contain essential and unique nutrients for human health. They are produced from a continuum, rather than a dichotomy, of aquaculture and fisheries, from which, it is crucial to maximize nutrient availability for human populations. Marine ingredients (primarily fishmeal and fish oil) have been a critical part of carnivorous fish diets, for fish performance, and delivering omega-3 fatty acids to consumers, but ha...

Gaisheng Liu, Don Whittemore, Erin Seybold, Sam Zipper, Brownie Wilson, James Butler. 2026. Modeling Assessment of Aquifer Contamination by Sulfate and Uranium in the Upper Arkansas River Corridor in Kansas. Groundwater Monitoring & Remediation. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwmr.70044

Groundwater in the upper Arkansas River corridor has been contaminated by elevated concentrations of dissolved solids in Arkansas River water. Most of the dissolved solids originate from the soils and bedrock in eastern Colorado, where river water is diverted for irrigation and storage systems, and evapotranspiration significantly increases the salinity of return flow to the river. Dissolved solids contents in low flows of the...

Sam Zipper, Ian Gambill, Monty Schmitt, Claire Kouba, Leland Scantlebury, Thomas Harter, Nicholas P. Murphy. 2026. Lagged streamflow depletion due to pumping-induced stream drying: Incorporation into analytical streamflow depletion estimation methods. Journal of Hydrology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026.134909

Water management often requires accounting for reductions in streamflow caused by groundwater pumping (‘streamflow depletion’). Since streamflow depletion cannot be quantified from observational data, it is typically modeled. Analytical depletion functions (ADFs) are a low-cost, low-complexity approach for estimating streamflow depletion with utility for decision support, but ADFs adopt several simplifying assumptions, includi...

Qiuyun Cecilia Yu, Chung‐Yi Lin, Maria Elena Orduña Alegría, Jisang Yu, Jennifer Ifft, Sam Zipper, Landon T. Marston. 2026. Impacts of Policy Design and Risk Management on Groundwater Conservation Program Effectiveness. Earth's Future. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006745

Irrigated agriculture has led to aquifer depletion in many places, necessitating effective groundwater conservation policies to slow unsustainable water use. However, the success of conservation policies is contingent on complex interactions between agronomic production, aquifer response, and risk management tools, all of which shape agricultural water diversions. This study uses an agent-based model to evaluate how uniform pu...

Chung-Yi Lin, Bo-yu Chen, Sameer Dhakal, Sam Zipper, Maria Elena Orduna Alegria, Landon Marston. 2026. Internal variability can dominate inference of groundwater conservation policy effectiveness in coupled human–environment systems: evidence from the Sheridan-6 LEMA, Kansas. Environmental Research Communications. https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/ae85de

Groundwater conservation policies are typically evaluated using historical observations. However, in coupled human-water systems, outcomes can vary substantially even under unchanged mean conditions of the climatic, economic, and land-use inputs due to nonlinear dynamics and spatiotemporal interactions. This phenomenon is referred to as internal variability. Here, we quantify how internal variability shapes inference about pol...

Camden Hatley, Erin C. Seybold, Sam Zipper, Amy J. Burgin, Dustin W. Kincaid, Li Li, Julia N. Perdrial, Donna M. Rizzo, Kristen L. Underwood. 2026. Reservoir releases and land cover interact to drive event-scale nitrate export in a large agricultural basin. Journal of Hydrology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026.136177

Understanding the drivers of nitrate export in rivers is critical for developing effective nutrient management strategies. However, few studies have explored event-scale drivers of export in large river basins with human modifications like reservoirs. Here, we analyzed nitrate concentration-discharge (C-Q) relationships from 215 events at the outlet of the Kansas River Basin, USA (155,690 km2) from 2014 to 2022 to (1) characte...

Ella-Kari Muhl, Vitor Renck, Maria B. Battaglia, Lívia R. Cruz, Lowine S. Hill, Rafael Lembi, Willem Malherbe, Deborah S. Prado, Kinga Psiuk, Mia Strand. 2026. Navigating Ethical Place-Based Research in Transdisciplinary Marine Science (and Beyond). Ocean and Society. https://doi.org/10.17645/oas.12800

Place-based research (PBR) allows for genuine engagement with the deep-rooted dynamics of complex social-ecological systems. Ideally, PBR centres reciprocal relationships with communities to co-produce research grounded in transdisciplinary, participatory, and solution-oriented approaches. Yet, for early career researchers (ECRs), the ethical, relational, and cultural dimensions of PBR can be difficult to navigate, especially ...

Willem Malherbe, Odirilwe Selomane, Nadia Sitas, Reinette Biggs. 2026. Mapping the equity of food system landscapes: A Metacoupling approach. Global Environmental Change Advances. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecadv.2026.100037

Global food value chains can offer significant benefits to those able to participate in them. Participation is shaped by governance mechanisms that regulate access and compliance, which often excludes less powerful producers. In South Africa, the inclusion of historically disadvantaged producers in agricultural value chains has received considerable attention, but most studies focus on local production contexts and overlook ho...

Courtney Adamson, L. Jamila Haider, Rebecka Milestad. 2026. Governing local and regional food systems for resilience - accounting for multi-agency interactions in practice. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-026-10938-x

Definitions and frameworks for governing food systems point to the highly complex nature of holistically governing food-related activities from production through to consumption, and from local to global scales. Beyond this, there remains a shortage of insights into the practical dimensions of implementing holistic food system governance in practice. This study provides such an on-the-ground perspective, employing ethnographic...