Featured Post from University of Delaware

How Diverse Crop Mixes Can Help Solve the Water Scarcity Crisis

Nov 9, 2023

1 min

Kyle Davis

How exactly can alternative crop mixes come to our rescue in this water scarcity crisis? Different crops have different water needs in order to grow without stress. And it is often the case that the thirstiest crops are grown in places where little water is available. Shifting crop mixes to crops that require less water but still ensure farmer profits is a promising way to reduce the amount of water needed to irrigate crops and to avoid conditions of water scarcity.


Kyle Davis, assistant professor in Geography and Spatial Sciences at the University of Delaware, can offer commentary on this. He is an expert in food systems, sustainability, global environmental change and geospatial data science among other things.


Diverse crop mixes can save water, maintain economic output, and provide for the needs of aquatic ecosystems. Davis and others recently released a study that looks at issue. 



"These findings demonstrate strong opportunities for economic, food security and environmental co-benefits in irrigated agriculture and provide both hope and direction to regions struggling with water scarcity around the world," the study notes. 


Davis has been featured in publications such as Earth.com and Phys.org and was recently awarded an Early Career Award for pioneering global research in sustainable agricultural food systems. He can be contacted by clicking the "View Profile" button. 

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Kyle Davis

Kyle Davis

Assistant Professor, Geography and Spacial Sciences

Prof. Davis' work focuses on food systems, water sustainability, and global environmental change.

Human MigrationNutritionGlobal Environmental ChangeFood SystemsSustainability

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5 min

Health for the holidays: Expert provides tips for keeping diets in tact

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2 min

Study: Intuitive introverts lead the most successful teams

An unwritten law of leadership states the loudest voices in the room are not always the wisest. Some of history’s most notable and successful leaders were known introverts who wrangled loads of information for sizable teams: Abraham Lincoln, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, to name a few. New research from the University of Delaware found introverted leaders who rely on intuition to handle this large bundle of information lead the most successful teams. The research, co-authored by professor Dustin Sleesman, explored the concept of intuition and when it's helpful for leaders who are in charge of large teams. Sleesman and his co-authors from Michigan State University studied more than 3,000 U.S. Air Force captains at a military base in Alabama. As part of their leadership training, the captains participated in a team-based battlefield simulation, which gave the researchers an opportunity to observe and analyze their behavior. Sleesman and his co-authors accurately predicted that teams performed better when their leaders were armed with high amounts of information. But they made two interesting findings they didn't expect:  • Introverted leaders led more successful teams when intuitively handling large amounts of information. • Intuitive leaders, in general, led more successful teams when they had to handle a lot of information. "Introverted people tend to be more reflective, more introspective, they tend to be more observational than extroverted leaders," Sleesman said. "So pairing intuition with introversion tended to be very effective for team performance." Sleesman, an associate professor of management in UD's Lerner College of Business & Economics, studies the psychology of decision-making, negotiation and conflict resolution, as well as team effectiveness. To set up an interview, click on the link below.

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