Cropland expansion links climate extremes and diets in Nigeria
Date
2025-01-10
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Publisher
Science Advances
Abstract
Climate change threatens smallholder agriculture and food security in the Global South. While cropland expansion is often used to counter adverse climate effects despite ecological trade-offs, the benefits for diets and nutrition remain unclear. This study quantitatively examines relationships between climate anomalies, forest loss from cropland expansion, and dietary outcomes in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Combining high-resolution data on forest cover and climate variables within random forest and panel regression models, we find that 25 to 31% of annual forest loss is linked to climate variability. Using georeferenced household survey data, we then find that changes in forest cover have a significant positive association with changes in child diet diversity—a key proxy of nutritional adequacy—while cropland expansion does not, suggesting that such forest conversions may be an ineffective climate adaptation strategy for improving nutrition. Our findings highlight the potential of nutrition-sensitive climate adaptation to enhance yields, promote nutritious cropping choices, and protect remaining forests.
Description
This article was originally published in Science Advances. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ado5541.
Copyright © 2025 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This research was featured in UDaily on 1/15/2025 at: https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2025/january/nigeria-agriculture-deforestation-farming-farms-food-cropland-expansion-climate-change/
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Citation
Bhoktear Khan et al., Cropland expansion links climate extremes and diets in Nigeria. Sci. Adv.11, eado5541 (2025). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.ado5541