Megan Konar
Biographic Data
| ID | 6019903 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Megan Konar |
| GIVEN NAMES | Megan |
| FAMILY NAME | Konar |
| SIGNATURE | KONAR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0540-8438 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
International trade and groundwater depletion: An econometric analysis
We contribute to the debate on trade and the environment by investigating the relationship between countries’ international trade and their groundwater use. We go beyond the virtual water literature that calculates the virtual water content of trade to assess how water use relates to international trade. We develop a suite of econometric regressions to account for the impact of trade liberalizations in a framework that includes standard determina…
Groundwater and trade: Towards an interdisciplinary consensus and roadmap for future research
The consequences of trade for agricultural water use: Evidence from subnational trade flows
We investigate the subnational impact of trade on water use in the contiguous United States (CONUS). We develop an econometric model employing the instrumental variable (IV) approach to understand the causal impact of previous-year trade on current-year water use. Specifically, our analysis focuses on irrigated area and irrigation water use by water source (surface, groundwater, and total) across states in the CONUS for 2012–13, 2017–18, and 2022…
A review of open data for studying global groundwater in social–ecological systems
Global data have served an integral role in characterizing large-scale groundwater systems, identifying their sustainability challenges, and informing on socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of groundwater. These insights have revealed groundwater as a dynamic component of the water cycle and social–ecological systems, leading to an expansion in groundwater science that increasingly focuses on groundwater’s interactions with ecological, socioe…
Spatially detailed agricultural and food trade between China and the United States
The United States and China are key nations in global agricultural and food trade. They share a complex bilateral agri-food trade network in which disruptions could have a global ripple effect. Yet, we do not understand the spatially resolved connections in the bilateral US–China agri-food trade. In this study, we estimate the bilateral agri-food trade between Chinese provinces and U.S. states and counties. First, we estimate bilateral imports an…
A complex network framework for the efficiency and resilience trade-off in global food trade
Global food trade is crucial for food security and availability. Trade is typically optimized to promote efficiency, whereas resilience is increasingly being recognized as another important objective. However, it is not clear if prioritizing resilience comes at the expense of efficiency or if the two objectives can be promoted simultaneously. We develop a complex network framework to assess the relationship between efficiency and resilience of fo…
Crop-specific exposure to extreme temperature and moisture for the globe for the last half century
Global assessments of climate extremes typically do not account for the unique characteristics of individual crops. A consistent definition of the exposure of specific crops to extreme weather would enable agriculturally-relevant hazard quantification. To this end, we develop a database of both the temperature and moisture extremes facing individual crops by explicitly accounting for crop characteristics. To do this, we collate crop-specific temp…
A gravity model and network analysis of household food sharing in Zambia
Food sharing is an important part of smallholder food systems and can help households to buffer food security shocks. Household food sharing is the smallest scale food exchange system, yet we do not understand how it compares with food exchange networks at other spatial scales. To this end, we collect information on bilateral household food sharing in two villages in Zambia with approximately 50 households each. We observed seasonal fluctuations …
Sociohydrology: Scientific Challenges in Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is domina…
Exposure of urban food–energy–water (FEW) systems to water scarcity
Global virtual water trade and the hydrological cycle: Patterns, drivers, and socio-environmental impacts
The increasing global demand for farmland products is placing unprecedented pressure on the global agricultural system and its water resources. Many regions of the world, that are affected by a chronic water scarcity relative to their population, strongly depend on the import of agricultural commodities and associated embodied (or virtual ) water. The globalization of water through virtual water trade (VWT) is leading to a displacement of water u…
Probabilistic global maps of crop-specific areas from 1961 to 2014
Agriculture has substantial socioeconomic and environmental impacts that vary between crops. However, information on how the spatial distribution of specific crops has changed over time across the globe is relatively sparse. We introduce the Probabilistic Cropland Allocation Model (PCAM), a novel algorithm to estimate where specific crops have likely been grown over time. Specifically, PCAM downscales annual and national-scale data on the crop-sp…
Food flows between counties in the United States
Food consumption and production are separated in space through flows of food along complex supply chains. These food supply chains are critical to our food security, making it important to evaluate them. However, detailed spatial information on food flows within countries is rare. The goal of this paper is to estimate food flows between all county pairs within the United States. To do this, we develop the Food Flow Model, a data-driven methodolog…
Integrated approaches to understanding and reducing drought impact on food security across scales
Understanding the cross-scale linkages between drought and food security is vital to developing tools to reduce drought impacts and support decision making. This study reviews how drought hazards transfer to food insecurity through changes in physical processes and socio-environmental systems across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. We propose a multi-scale, integrated framework leveraging modeling advances (e.g. drought and crop monit…
The U.S. food–energy–water system: A blueprint to fill the mesoscale gap for science and decision-making
Trade openness and the nutrient use of nations
To contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment we ask the question: what is the impact of trade openness on the nutrient use of nations? We address this question by using econometric methods to quantify the causal relationship between the trade openness and the nutrient use of nations on a global scale. In our empirical analysis we go beyond a cross-sectional analysis. We exploit time-series variation for an unbalanced panel o…
The water footprint of staple crop trade under climate and policy scenarios
Trade in staple crop commodities has become increasingly important in the global food system, with ramifications for both food security and water resources sustainability. It is thus essential to understand how the water footprint (WF) of staple crop trade may change in the future. To this end, we project international staple crop trade and its WF under climate and policy scenarios for the year 2030. We use the H08 global hydrologic model to dete…
Evolution of the global virtual water trade network
Global freshwater resources are under increasing pressure from economic development, population growth, and climate change. The international trade of water-intensive products (e.g., agricultural commodities) or virtual water trade has been suggested as a way to save water globally. We focus on the virtual water trade network associated with international food trade built with annual trade data and annual modeled virtual water content. The evolut…
Integrated approaches to understanding and reducing drought impact on food security across scales
Understanding the cross-scale linkages between drought and food security is vital to developing tools to reduce drought impacts and support decision making. This study reviews how drought hazards transfer to food insecurity through changes in physical processes and socio-environmental systems across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. We propose a multi-scale, integrated framework leveraging modeling advances (e.g. drought and crop monit…
Evolution of the global virtual water trade network
Global freshwater resources are under increasing pressure from economic development, population growth, and climate change. The international trade of water-intensive products (e.g., agricultural commodities) or virtual water trade has been suggested as a way to save water globally. We focus on the virtual water trade network associated with international food trade built with annual trade data and annual modeled virtual water content. The evolut…
The water footprint of staple crop trade under climate and policy scenarios
Trade in staple crop commodities has become increasingly important in the global food system, with ramifications for both food security and water resources sustainability. It is thus essential to understand how the water footprint (WF) of staple crop trade may change in the future. To this end, we project international staple crop trade and its WF under climate and policy scenarios for the year 2030. We use the H08 global hydrologic model to dete…
Trade openness and the nutrient use of nations
To contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment we ask the question: what is the impact of trade openness on the nutrient use of nations? We address this question by using econometric methods to quantify the causal relationship between the trade openness and the nutrient use of nations on a global scale. In our empirical analysis we go beyond a cross-sectional analysis. We exploit time-series variation for an unbalanced panel o…
Sociohydrology: Scientific Challenges in Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations Agenda 2030 represent an ambitious blueprint to reduce inequalities globally and achieve a sustainable future for all mankind. Meeting the SDGs for water requires an integrated approach to managing and allocating water resources, by involving all actors and stakeholders, and considering how water resources link different sectors of society. To date, water management practice is domina…
Exposure of urban food–energy–water (FEW) systems to water scarcity
Global virtual water trade and the hydrological cycle: Patterns, drivers, and socio-environmental impacts
The increasing global demand for farmland products is placing unprecedented pressure on the global agricultural system and its water resources. Many regions of the world, that are affected by a chronic water scarcity relative to their population, strongly depend on the import of agricultural commodities and associated embodied (or virtual ) water. The globalization of water through virtual water trade (VWT) is leading to a displacement of water u…
Probabilistic global maps of crop-specific areas from 1961 to 2014
Agriculture has substantial socioeconomic and environmental impacts that vary between crops. However, information on how the spatial distribution of specific crops has changed over time across the globe is relatively sparse. We introduce the Probabilistic Cropland Allocation Model (PCAM), a novel algorithm to estimate where specific crops have likely been grown over time. Specifically, PCAM downscales annual and national-scale data on the crop-sp…
Food flows between counties in the United States
Food consumption and production are separated in space through flows of food along complex supply chains. These food supply chains are critical to our food security, making it important to evaluate them. However, detailed spatial information on food flows within countries is rare. The goal of this paper is to estimate food flows between all county pairs within the United States. To do this, we develop the Food Flow Model, a data-driven methodolog…
Integrated approaches to understanding and reducing drought impact on food security across scales
Understanding the cross-scale linkages between drought and food security is vital to developing tools to reduce drought impacts and support decision making. This study reviews how drought hazards transfer to food insecurity through changes in physical processes and socio-environmental systems across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. We propose a multi-scale, integrated framework leveraging modeling advances (e.g. drought and crop monit…
The U.S. food–energy–water system: A blueprint to fill the mesoscale gap for science and decision-making
A gravity model and network analysis of household food sharing in Zambia
Food sharing is an important part of smallholder food systems and can help households to buffer food security shocks. Household food sharing is the smallest scale food exchange system, yet we do not understand how it compares with food exchange networks at other spatial scales. To this end, we collect information on bilateral household food sharing in two villages in Zambia with approximately 50 households each. We observed seasonal fluctuations …
A complex network framework for the efficiency and resilience trade-off in global food trade
Global food trade is crucial for food security and availability. Trade is typically optimized to promote efficiency, whereas resilience is increasingly being recognized as another important objective. However, it is not clear if prioritizing resilience comes at the expense of efficiency or if the two objectives can be promoted simultaneously. We develop a complex network framework to assess the relationship between efficiency and resilience of fo…
Crop-specific exposure to extreme temperature and moisture for the globe for the last half century
Global assessments of climate extremes typically do not account for the unique characteristics of individual crops. A consistent definition of the exposure of specific crops to extreme weather would enable agriculturally-relevant hazard quantification. To this end, we develop a database of both the temperature and moisture extremes facing individual crops by explicitly accounting for crop characteristics. To do this, we collate crop-specific temp…
Spatially detailed agricultural and food trade between China and the United States
The United States and China are key nations in global agricultural and food trade. They share a complex bilateral agri-food trade network in which disruptions could have a global ripple effect. Yet, we do not understand the spatially resolved connections in the bilateral US–China agri-food trade. In this study, we estimate the bilateral agri-food trade between Chinese provinces and U.S. states and counties. First, we estimate bilateral imports an…
International trade and groundwater depletion: An econometric analysis
We contribute to the debate on trade and the environment by investigating the relationship between countries’ international trade and their groundwater use. We go beyond the virtual water literature that calculates the virtual water content of trade to assess how water use relates to international trade. We develop a suite of econometric regressions to account for the impact of trade liberalizations in a framework that includes standard determina…
Groundwater and trade: Towards an interdisciplinary consensus and roadmap for future research
The consequences of trade for agricultural water use: Evidence from subnational trade flows
We investigate the subnational impact of trade on water use in the contiguous United States (CONUS). We develop an econometric model employing the instrumental variable (IV) approach to understand the causal impact of previous-year trade on current-year water use. Specifically, our analysis focuses on irrigated area and irrigation water use by water source (surface, groundwater, and total) across states in the CONUS for 2012–13, 2017–18, and 2022…
A review of open data for studying global groundwater in social–ecological systems
Global data have served an integral role in characterizing large-scale groundwater systems, identifying their sustainability challenges, and informing on socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of groundwater. These insights have revealed groundwater as a dynamic component of the water cycle and social–ecological systems, leading to an expansion in groundwater science that increasingly focuses on groundwater’s interactions with ecological, socioe…
Economics (13 works) · Environmental Science (12 works) · Geography (11 works) · Ecology (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Agriculture (8 works) · Environmental Impact and Sustainability (8 works) · Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies (8 works) · Natural resource economics (7 works) · Environmental resource management (6 works)