Lex Bouwman

Biographic Data

ID6015472
NAMELex Bouwman
GIVEN NAMESLex
FAMILY NAMEBouwman
SIGNATUREBOUWMAN L
AFFILIATIONSNetherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
ORCID0000-0002-2045-1859
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS40
TOTAL CITATIONS155
WORKS AS AUTHOR40
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1990
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX6

  • Ambitious food system interventions required to mitigate the risk of exceeding Earth’s environmental limits

    Open AccessMichalis Hadjikakou, Nicholas Bowles et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2025

  • Nutrient transport from the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna River system to the Bay of Bengal

    Open AccessHamdy Elsayed, Arthur Beusen et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2025

    The Ganga–Brahmaputra–Meghna (GBM) river basin is a lifeline for the livelihoods and well-being of millions of inhabitants. It has been experiencing increasing nutrient emissions from anthropogenic activities since the 1970s. This paper describes total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) sources and transport in the GBM basin at a 0.5-degree resolution for the past (1970–2019) and future (2020–2050) according to Shared Socioeconomic Pathways …

  • Impact of groundwater nitrogen legacy on water quality

    Open AccessXiaochen Liu, Arthur Beusen et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2024References: 4

    The loss of agricultural nitrogen (N) is a leading cause of global eutrophication and freshwater and coastal hypoxia. Despite regulatory efforts, such as the European Union’s Nitrogen Directive, high concentrations of N persist in freshwaters. Excessive N leaching and accumulation in groundwater has created a substantial N reservoir as groundwater travel times are orders-of-magnitude slower than those of surface waters. In this study we reconstru…

  • Impact of lifestyle, human diet and nutrient use efficiency in food production on eutrophication of global aquifers and surface waters

    Open AccessLex Bouwman, A F Bouwman et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2024Cited by: 1References: 1

    Good water quality requires end-of-pipe control plus lifestyle and food system change. • Local dominance of natural sources can hinder mitigation strategies for N and P. • Unbalanced reductions of N versus P loads can lead to unexpected negative impacts. A spatially explicit (0.5 degree resolution) analysis is presented of the impact of human lifestyle, diet and nutrient use efficiency in food production and wastewater treatment on exceedance of …

  • Ambitious food system interventions required to mitigate the risk of exceeding Earth’s environmental limits

    Michalis Hadjikakou, Nicholas Bowles et al.PREPRINT2023

    Transforming the global food system is essential to avoid exceeding Earth’s environmental limits. A robust evidence base is crucial to assess the scale and combination of interventions required for a sustainable transformation. We developed a risk assessment framework, underpinned by an evidence synthesis of global food system modeling studies, to quantify the potential of individual and combined interventions to mitigate the risk of exceeding gl…

  • Nitrogen and the food system

    Open AccessGeneviève S Metson, Abhishek Chaudhary et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2021

  • Phosphorus for Sustainable Development Goal target of doubling smallholder productivity

    Open AccessChristoph Langhans, Arthur Beusen et al.ARTICLENature Sustainability2021References: 5

    Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for life. In many tropical countries, P-fixing soils and very low historical P input limit uptake of P in crops and thus yields. This presents a serious obstacle for achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 2.3 of doubling productivity in smallholder farms. We calculated the geographic distribution of P limitation (1 – actual/potential P uptake) and the P input required to achieve this SDG ta…

  • Exploring river nitrogen and phosphorus loading and export to global coastal waters in the Shared Socio-economic pathways

    Open AccessArthur Beusen, A H W Beusen et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2021Cited by: 3References: 5

    This global spatially explicit (0.5 by 0.5 degree) analysis presents the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) inputs, processing and biogeochemical retention and delivery to surface waters and river export to coastal seas according to the five shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP). Four systems are considered: (i) human system; (ii) agriculture; (iii) aquaculture; (iv) nature. Exploring the changes during 1980–2015 and 2015–2050 according to the SSPs sh…

  • A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks

    Open AccessHanqin Tian, Rongting Xu et al.ARTICLENature2020

  • Integrating Life Cycle and Impact Assessments to Map Food's Cumulative Environmental Footprint

    Open AccessCaitlin D Kuempel, Melanie Frazier et al.ARTICLEOne Earth2020

    Feeding a growing, increasingly affluent population while limiting environmental pressures of food production is a central challenge for society. Understanding the location and magnitude of food production is key to addressing this challenge because pressures vary substantially across food production types. Applying data and models from life cycle assessment with the methodologies for mapping cumulative environmental impacts of human activities (…

  • A framework for nitrogen futures in the shared socioeconomic pathways

    Open AccessDavid Kanter, David R Kanter et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2020Cited by: 6

    Humanity's transformation of the nitrogen cycle has major consequences for ecosystems, climate and human health, making it one of the key environmental issues of our time. Understanding how trends could evolve over the course of the 21 st century is crucial for scientists and decision-makers from local to global scales. Scenario analysis is the primary tool for doing so, and has been applied across all major environmental issues, including nitrog…

  • Global Environment Outlook – GEO-6

    Open AccessDetlef P Van Vuuren, U N UN Environment et al.BOOKGlobal Environment Outlook - GEO-62019

  • Assessing future reactive nitrogen inputs into global croplands based on the shared socioeconomic pathways

    Open AccessJosé M Mogollón, Luis Lassaletta et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2018

    Reactive nitrogen (N) inputs in agriculture strongly outpace the outputs at the global scale due to inefficiencies in cropland N use. While improvement in agricultural practices and environmental legislation in developed regions such as Western Europe have led to a remarkable increase in the N use efficiency since 1985, this lower requirement for reactive N inputs via synthetic fertilizers has yet to occur in many developing and transition region…

  • Analysing trade-offs between SDGs related to water quality using salinity as a marker

    Open AccessMartina Flörke, Ilona Bärlund et al.ARTICLECurrent Opinion in Environmental…2018Cited by: 1

  • Modeling phosphorus in rivers at the global scale

    Open AccessJohn A Harrison, Arthur Beusen et al.ARTICLECurrent Opinion in Environmental…2018References: 5

  • Future agricultural phosphorus demand according to the shared socioeconomic pathways

    Open AccessJosé M Mogollón, Arthur Beusen et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2018Cited by: 7References: 1

    A spatially explicit, two-pool soil phosphorus (P) model was used to analyze cropland P dynamics and fertilizer demand based on future crop production as projected in the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The model was initialized with historical data on P inputs and uptake, which governed the soil P accumulation up to present day. In contrast to existing scenario studies, the model accounts for both soil characteristics relevant to P retenti…

  • Nitrogen use in the global food system

    Open AccessLuis Lassaletta, Gilles Billen et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2016

    de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publis ou non, manant des tablissements d'enseignement et de recherche franais ou trangers, des laboratoires publics ou privs

  • Energy, land-use and greenhouse gas emissions trajectories under a green growth paradigm

    Open AccessDetlef P Van Vuuren, Elke Stehfest et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2016Cited by: 78References: 4

    This paper describes the possible developments in global energy use and production, land use, emissions and climate changes following the SSP1 storyline, a development consistent with the green growth (or sustainable development) paradigm (a more inclusive development respecting environmental boundaries). The results are based on the implementation using the IMAGE 3.0 integrated assessment model and are compared with a) other IMAGE implementation…

  • Future air pollution in the Shared Socio-economic Pathways

    Open AccessShilpa Rao, Zbigniew Klimont et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2016Cited by: 23

    Emissions of air pollutants such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides and particulates have significant health impacts as well as effects on natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. These same emissions also can change atmospheric chemistry and the planetary energy balance, thereby impacting global and regional climate. Long-term scenarios for air pollutant emissions are needed as inputs to global climate and chemistry models, and for analysis linking air …

  • Pathways to achieve a set of ambitious global sustainability objectives by 2050

    Open AccessDetlef P Van Vuuren, Marcel Kok et al.ARTICLETechnological Forecasting and…2015

  • Exploring resource efficiency for energy, land and phosphorus use

    Open AccessM Van Den Berg, Kathleen Neumann et al.ARTICLEGlobal Environmental Change2015Cited by: 3References: 2

  • A mid-term analysis of progress toward international biodiversity targets

    Open AccessDerek P Tittensor, Matt Walpole et al.ARTICLEScience2014

    In 2010, the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related “Aichi Targets” to be achieved within a decade. We provide a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On c…

  • Key role of China and its agriculture in global sustainable phosphorus management

    Open AccessSheida Z Sattari, Martin K Van Ittersum et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2014

    Growing global demand for food leads to increased pressure on phosphorus (P), a finite and dwindling resource. China is the largest producer and consumer of P fertilizer in the world. A mass balance analysis of historical P use on China's arable land shows that P input substantially exceeds crop P uptake leading to the accumulation of residual soil P. A Dynamic P Pool Simulator (DPPS) model is applied to estimate future P demand in China's arable…

  • The Haber Bosch–harmful algal bloom (HB–HAB) link

    Open AccessPatricia M Glibert, Roxane Maranger et al.ARTICLEEnvironmental Research Letters2014

    Large-scale commercialization of the Haber–Bosch (HB) process is resulting in intensification of nitrogen (N) fertilizer use worldwide. Globally N fertilizer use is far outpacing that of phosphorus (P) fertilizer. Much of the increase in N fertilizers is also now in the form of urea, a reduced form of N. Incorporation of these fertilizers into agricultural products is inefficient leading to significant environmental pollution and aquatic eutrophi…

  • Exploring global changes in nitrogen and phosphorus cycles in agriculture induced by livestock production over the 1900–2050 period

    Open AccessLex Bouwman, Kees Klein Goldewijk et al.ARTICLEProceedings of the National…2013

    Crop-livestock production systems are the largest cause of human alteration of the global nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) cycles. Our comprehensive spatially explicit inventory of N and P budgets in livestock and crop production systems shows that in the beginning of the 20th century, nutrient budgets were either balanced or surpluses were small; between 1900 and 1950, global soil N surplus almost doubled to 36 trillion grams (Tg)·y −1 and P surp…