Publication coverage, gifts and awards, people, and events from our group at Harvard.
Peter Huybers, Jon Proctor, Donghoon Lee, and Mike Foley are convening “Data, Methods, and Applications for Understanding Climate Impacts on Global Agriculture” at AGU26 in San Francisco, December 7–11, 2026. The session brings together research on climate impacts on agriculture, from data and methods to applications.
Session: GC035 · Session ID: 280673. See the AGU session program.
Congratulations to Alex Berry on the acceptance of “Dietary shifts during food stress in southern Madagascar informed by satellite remote sensing” in Communications Earth & Environment, with Christopher Golden, Joanna Upton, Angela Rigden, and Peter Huybers. Satellite measurements of vegetation greenness (NDVI) track the leading pattern of dietary variation among households in southern Madagascar, showing how closely local diets depend on local weather.
The findings show how remote sensing can help fill gaps left by reductions in food-security monitoring, including programs supported by USAID. Read the manuscript PDF.
Congratulations to Mukta Dharmapurikar on her paper in Environmental Research Letters. After controlling for other influences, Mukta finds that irrigation expansion—particularly in Nebraska—accounts for the historical reduction in year-to-year variability of Midwestern maize yields.
The study also finds more stable yields in nearby unirrigated fields, consistent with cooling and moisture supplied by irrigation-driven evapotranspiration. Declining groundwater reserves, including in the Ogallala Aquifer, raise questions about how long these gains can persist as temperatures and atmospheric moisture demand rise. Manuscript PDF.
Anna Lea Albright’s PNAS paper, “Rainfall extremes drive cocoa yield losses across the tropics,” shows that extreme heavy rainfall is a skillful predictor of cocoa yield losses, while low rainfall matters through drought. Co-authored with Rebecca Berkoh-Oforiwaa and Peter Huybers, the study was covered by the Salata Institute, CBC News, and AFP via Le Journal de Montréal.
The findings also underpin a submitted proposal to improve predictions of West African rainfall with support from NVIDIA. Thanks to Rebecca for her insights into regional rainfall and cocoa production, and to Mike Foley for helping prepare the proposal. Manuscript PDF.
Caro Park’s paper in Environmental Research Letters, with Jon Proctor and Peter Huybers, compares estimates of agricultural weather sensitivity from survey and satellite yield data. It finds that noisier agricultural reporting can make yields appear less sensitive to weather, helping explain why some estimates suggest lower sensitivity in less developed countries.
This distinction matters for assessing adaptation: an apparent lack of sensitivity may reflect measurement error rather than agricultural resilience. Both survey and satellite estimates have uncertainties, underscoring the need for better monitoring. Manuscript PDF.
Lucas Vargas Zeppetello’s paper with Jon Proctor and Peter Huybers on water stress and crop yields was featured in an Eos Editor’s Highlight.
Jon Proctor’s study of climate change and year-to-year crop yield variability received coverage at Phys.org.
Hélène Benveniste’s research on how climate changes who migrates was covered by Nature Reviews Earth & Environment and Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability.
Greta Berendes, Xiang Liu, and Klara Kuemmerle joined the group as graduate students.
Helene Benveniste joined Stanford as an Assistant Professor in Environmental Social Sciences.
A gift from Cornelius “Neil” Prior Jr. supports the Sea Level Investigation and Management (SLIM) project. Led by Peter Huybers, the project explores whether retaining more water on land, including through aquifer recharge and reduced groundwater depletion, could slow sea-level rise. The work considers technical feasibility alongside societal and environmental trade-offs. Read the Harvard Gazette announcement.
Lucas started a new job at UC Berkeley
Amazon Web Services and Harvard Data Science Initiative funded a project on 'Climate change and volatility in food supply'.
Lucas was awarded the James R. Holton Award
Jon started a new job at UBC
Duo started a new job at Southampton
Anna Lea's article on impressionism and pollution was well-described by Hyperallergic