Sources

Verification status as of July 2026. Entries under Verified were checked against publisher records or indexed metadata and have a references.bib entry with a resolved DOI. Entries under Unverified — trace before citing are real sources whose full citation has not been confirmed, gray literature (unrefereed reports, tools, fact sheets), or moving conventions — recorded here so the claim can be traced, but they should be handled with care before they appear in a proposal or publication. Gray literature stays in the second block even where its references.bib entry is complete: the caution is about the source, not the citation.

Verified

Ecovoltaics

  • Sturchio, M.A. & Knapp, A.K. (2023). Ecovoltaic principles for a more sustainable, ecologically informed solar energy future. Nature Ecology & Evolution 7(11):1746–1749. DOI 10.1038/s41559-023-02174-x. — definitional source for “ecovoltaics.”
  • Sturchio, M.A. & Knapp, A.K. (2025). Evidence of photovoltaic aridity mitigation in semi-arid grasslands. Environmental Research Letters 20(6):064047. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/add94d.
  • Knapp, A.K. & Sturchio, M.A. (2024). Ecovoltaics in an increasingly water-limited world: an ecological perspective. One Earth 7(10):1705–1712. DOI 10.1016/j.oneear.2024.09.003. — source for the operational/tracking-schedule argument.
  • Tölgyesi, C., Bátori, Z., Pascarella, J., Erdős, L., Török, P., Batáry, P., et al. (2023). Ecovoltaics: framework and future research directions to reconcile land-based solar power development with ecosystem conservation. Biological Conservation 285:110242. DOI 10.1016/j.biocon.2023.110242. — five-pillar framework; few-large vs. many-small.
  • Walston, L.J., Hartmann, H.M., Fox, L., Macknick, J., McCall, J., Janski, J. & Jenkins, L. (2024). If you build it, will they come? Insect community responses to habitat establishment at solar energy facilities in Minnesota, USA. Environmental Research Letters 19(1):014053. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ad0f72.
  • Walston, L.J., et al. (2025). Ecovoltaic solar energy development can promote grassland bird communities. Journal of Applied Ecology 62:3341–3354. DOI 10.1111/1365-2664.70208.
  • Bruninga-Socolar, B., McCall, J., Walston, L.J., Cariveau, D.P., Hartmann, H.M., Lane, I., Lonsdorf, E.V., Macknick, J., Martin, J. & Portman, Z.M. (2025). Pollinator habitat in solar facilities has potential to support high diversity of bee species. Environmental Research Communications 7(4):042501. DOI 10.1088/2515-7620/adccb4.
  • Krasner, N.Z., Li, Y., Friis, D.C., Benitez, J., Stebbins, E., Pinilla, P., Maciel, P., Thompson, A., Wong, M., Condon, D., Lybrand, R.A. & Hernandez, R.R. (2025). Soil surface properties and implications for soil carbon sequestration in early-stage ecovoltaic grassland restoration. Frontiers in Environmental Science 13:1646181. DOI 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1646181.
  • Pinos, J., Munson, S.M., Karban, C.C. & Petrie, M.D. (2026). Ecovoltaic solar energy development effects to microclimate, temperature, and soil moisture in panel array interspaces in a warm desert. Journal of Environmental Management 398:128436. DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.128436. — scope is desert array interspaces; available online 2025, issue dated Jan 2026.
  • Graham, M., Ates, S., Melathopoulos, A.P., Moldenke, A.R., DeBano, S.J., Best, L.R. & Higgins, C.W. (2021). Partial shading by solar panels delays bloom, increases floral abundance during the late-season for pollinators in a dryland, agrivoltaic ecosystem. Scientific Reports 11(1):7452. DOI 10.1038/s41598-021-86756-4. — source for the bloom-timing shift under partial shade (§Ecology); the finding is from a dryland site.
  • Blaydes, H., Gardner, E., Whyatt, J.D., Potts, S.G. & Armstrong, A. (2022). Solar park management and design to boost bumble bee populations. Environmental Research Letters 17(4):044002. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac5840. — source for the timing of mowing and grazing as a design lever in its own right (§Ecology, §7  Archetypal Forms); the evidence base is UK solar parks.
  • Kannenberg, S.A., Sturchio, M.A., Venturas, M.D. & Knapp, A.K. (2023). Grassland carbon-water cycling is minimally impacted by a photovoltaic array. Communications Earth & Environment 4:238. DOI 10.1038/s43247-023-00904-4. — the bound on effect size in §Water: at one semi-arid grassland array the carbon and water cycles barely changed.
  • Carvalho, F., Healing, S. & Armstrong, A. (2024). Enhancing soil carbon in solar farms through active land management: a systematic review of the available evidence. Environmental Research: Ecology 3(4):042001. DOI 10.1088/2752-664X/ad8ce4. — source for §Agriculture and soils’s “multi-decade curve is still open” reading: direct long-run soil-carbon measurements at solar farms are scarce. Note the venue — Environmental Research: Ecology, not Environmental Research Letters.

Design theory the lexicon borrows from

  • Zha, E., He, J., Cao, A. & Shi, X. (2025). Selecting ecological restoration modes for watershed ecosystems: a case study in Loess Plateau. Environmental Research Letters 20(4):044049. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/adc022. — prior use of restoration mode in ecological restoration, where it means a package of restoration techniques matched to a site’s degree of degradation rather than, as in §5  Restoration Modes and Potential, which design lever carries the work. Verified against Crossref; note the first author is Zha, not Wang.

  • Reed, B. (2007). Shifting from ‘sustainability’ to regeneration. Building Research & Information 35(6):674–680. DOI 10.1080/09613210701475753. — source for the restorative/regenerative distinction behind Restorative (§8  Terminology); in Reed’s trajectory restorative sits one rung below regenerative, which is the modesty the lexicon keeps deliberately. Verified against Crossref.

Agrivoltaic typology

  • Toledo, C. & Scognamiglio, A. (2021). Agrivoltaic systems design and assessment: a critical review, and a descriptive model towards a sustainable landscape vision (three-dimensional agrivoltaic patterns). Sustainability 13(12):6871. DOI 10.3390/su13126871. — source for pore space and 3D pattern.
  • Vaverková, M.D., Kousal, M., Kosakiewicz, M., Krysiańska, K. & Winkler, J. (2026). Agrivoltaics for sustainable land use: a critical review of synergistic and antagonistic effects. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 226:116482. DOI 10.1016/j.rser.2025.116482. — source for the elevated / vertical bifacial / tracking / semitransparent typology. A corrigendum (RSER 226:116496, DOI 10.1016/j.rser.2025.116496) corrects this article; confirm any specific figure against it before quoting.
  • Maity, R., Hariram, N.P., Quazi, M.M. & Kumarasamy, S. (2025). Agrivoltaic systems for sustainability: an overview of emerging trends and practices. Solar Compass 16:100148. DOI 10.1016/j.solcom.2025.100148. — source for the livestockvoltaics / crop-based / aquavoltaics / zoovoltaics taxonomy.
  • Oudes, D., van den Brink, A. & Stremke, S. (2022). Towards a typology of solar energy landscapes: mixed-production, nature based and landscape inclusive solar power transitions. Energy Research & Social Science 91:102742. DOI 10.1016/j.erss.2022.102742. — the nearest existing typology of solar energy landscapes; §The positions positions the farming axis as cutting across its types rather than replacing them.

Crop response, shade tolerance, and microclimate

  • Zhang, W., Hendriks, P.-W., Uchanski, M., Page, S., Renwick, A., Maxwell, T., Kaiser, C., Dong, J. & de Koning, W. (2025). Climatic and design tipping points in agrivoltaic crop production systems. A meta-analysis. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 45:69. DOI 10.1007/s13593-025-01060-z. — source for shade-tolerance responses (physiology-dependent rather than a fixed sensitive/tolerant scheme) and climatic/design tipping points.
  • Weselek, A., Ehmann, A., Zikeli, S., Lewandowski, I., Schindele, S. & Högy, P. (2019). Agrophotovoltaic systems: applications, challenges and opportunities. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 39:35. DOI 10.1007/s13593-019-0581-3.
  • Barron-Gafford, G.A., Pavao-Zuckerman, M.A., Minor, R.L., Sutter, L.F., Barnett-Moreno, I., Blackett, D.T., Thompson, M., Dimond, K., Gerlak, A.K., Nabhan, G.P. & Macknick, J.E. (2019). Agrivoltaics provide mutual benefits across the food–energy–water nexus in drylands. Nature Sustainability 2:848–855. DOI 10.1038/s41893-019-0364-5.
  • Adeh, E.H., Selker, J.S. & Higgins, C.W. (2018). Remarkable agrivoltaic influence on soil moisture, micrometeorology and water-use efficiency. PLoS ONE 13(11):e0203256. DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0203256. — source for raised water-use efficiency under shaded pasture (§Water).
  • Wu, C., Liu, H., Yu, Y., Zhao, W., Liu, J., Yu, H. & Yetemen, O. (2022). Ecohydrological effects of photovoltaic solar farms on soil microclimates and moisture regimes in arid Northwest China: a modeling study. Science of The Total Environment 802:149946. DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.149946. — modeling counterpart to the measured dryland soil-moisture response in §Water; results are modeled, not observed.

Hydrologic function and water budgets (§Water)

  • Yavari, R., Zaliwciw, D., Cibin, R. & McPhillips, L. (2022). Minimizing environmental impacts of solar farms: a review of current science on landscape hydrology and guidance on stormwater management. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability 2(3):032002. DOI 10.1088/2634-4505/ac76dd. — source for the infiltration / recharge / stormwater-runoff side of the hydrologic function (§Water) and for the recharge-enhancement archetype (§7  Archetypal Forms). Formerly listed as unconfirmed; the entry is now complete and cited, and the venue and volume reported here are the confirmed ones.
  • Stid, J.T., Shukla, S., Kendall, A.D., Anctil, A., Hyndman, D.W., Rapp, J. & Anex, R.P. (2025). Impacts of agrisolar co-location on the food–energy–water nexus and economic security. Nature Sustainability 8:702–713. DOI 10.1038/s41893-025-01546-4. — REAL team publication; the demand-side, basin-scale water-saving logic in §Water and the water-sustainability archetype (§7  Archetypal Forms).
  • Zwickle, A., Feltman, B.C., Brady, A.J., Kendall, A.D. & Hyndman, D.W. (2021). Sustainable irrigation through local collaborative governance: evidence for a structural fix in Kansas. Environmental Science & Policy 124:517–526. DOI 10.1016/j.envsci.2021.07.021. — REAL team publication; source for the governance condition on a retired-irrigation saving (§Water, §7  Archetypal Forms) — the saving only counts where it is not pumped elsewhere.
  • Partridge, T., Winter, J., Kendall, A., Basso, B., Pei, L. & Hyndman, D. (2023). Irrigation benefits outweigh costs in more US croplands by mid-century. Communications Earth & Environment 4(1):274. DOI 10.1038/s43247-023-00889-0. — REAL team publication; background on the irrigation economics that the demand-side water case is argued against.

Solar grazing and vegetation management

  • McCall, J., Macdonald, J., Burton, R. & Macknick, J. (2023). Vegetation management cost and maintenance implications of different ground covers at utility-scale solar sites. Sustainability 15(7):5895. DOI 10.3390/su15075895. Also NREL/TP-6A20-85418. — source for §Five zones on one gradient cost figures. Table 4 reports activity costs by ground cover: median mowing cost was $113/acre/yr ($279/ha) at sheep-grazing sites, $121/acre ($299/ha) at native-vegetation sites, and $203/acre at turfgrass sites; median herbicide at gravel sites was $293/acre ($724/ha); the grazing activity itself had a median of $50/acre/yr. Stewart et al. (2025) relabels the $279/ha mowing figure as “the median cost for sheep grazing” — a transposition; McCall’s table is the arbiter.
  • Stewart, W.C., Scasta, J.D., Maierle, C., Ates, S., Burke, J.M. & Campbell, B.J. (2025). Vegetation management utilizing sheep grazing within utility-scale solar: agro-ecological insights and existing knowledge gaps in the United States. Small Ruminant Research 243:107439. DOI 10.1016/j.smallrumres.2025.107439.
  • Andrew, A.C., Antoszewski, K., Goldberg, Z.A., Barter, J., Hain, L., DeSario, A., White, A., Roszell, C., Cole, E., Peterson, S. & Meys, B. (2025). Sheep grazing as sustainable vegetation management for solar energy production in the northeastern USA. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 9. DOI 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1625483. — authorship spans ASGA, American Farmland Trust, and NYSERDA; useful for §4  The Farming Axis positioning.
  • Bacon, et al. (2025). Agrivoltaic grazing systems for a sustainable future: a multi-disciplinary review and gap analysis. Earth’s Future. DOI 10.1029/2024EF005429.

Land sharing / land sparing

  • Green, R.E., Cornell, S.J., Scharlemann, J.P.W. & Balmford, A. (2005). Farming and the fate of wild nature. Science 307(5709):550–555. DOI 10.1126/science.1106049. — canonical anchor for the sharing/sparing framing in §4  The Farming Axis.
  • Phalan, B., Onial, M., Balmford, A. & Green, R.E. (2011). Reconciling food production and biodiversity conservation: land sharing and land sparing compared. Science 333(6047):1289–1291. DOI 10.1126/science.1208742.

Deployment scale, land use, and cropland displacement

  • Kruitwagen, L., Story, K.T., Friedrich, J., Byers, L., Skillman, S. & Hepburn, C. (2021). A global inventory of photovoltaic solar energy generating units. Nature 598(7882):604–610. DOI 10.1038/s41586-021-03957-7. — one of the three sources behind §4  The Farming Axis’s “roughly half of US ground-mounted solar was built on former cropland.”
  • Fujita, K.S., Ancona, Z.H., Kramer, L.A., Straka, M., Gautreau, T.E., Robson, D., Garrity, C., Hoen, B. & Diffendorfer, J.E. (2023). Georectified polygon database of ground-mounted large-scale solar photovoltaic sites in the United States. Scientific Data 10(1):760. DOI 10.1038/s41597-023-02644-8. — the USGS site-polygon database underlying the same §4  The Farming Axis land-cover figures.
  • Stid, J.T., Shukla, S., Anctil, A., Kendall, A.D., Rapp, J. & Hyndman, D.W. (2022). Solar array placement, electricity generation, and cropland displacement across California’s Central Valley. Science of The Total Environment 835:155240. DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155240. — REAL team publication; source for cropland displacement in §4  The Farming Axis and for the co-location share read in §Scale and position interact to determine feasibility. Scope is California’s Central Valley, not the nation: where the text carries a US-wide figure it is written as an estimate (“on the order of”), and the national land-cover fractions rest on Fujita et al. (2023) and Kruitwagen et al. (2021).
  • Hernandez, R.R., Easter, S.B., Murphy-Mariscal, M.L., Maestre, F.T., Tavassoli, M., Allen, E.B., et al. (2014). Environmental impacts of utility-scale solar energy. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 29:766–779. DOI 10.1016/j.rser.2013.08.041. — source for §8  Terminology’s baseline claim that US arrays are designed primarily to maximize output and minimize cost.
  • Jenkins, J.D., Mayfield, E.N., Larson, E.D., Pacala, S.W. & Greig, C. (2021). Mission net-zero America: the nation-building path to a prosperous, net-zero emissions economy. Joule 5(11):2755–2761. DOI 10.1016/j.joule.2021.10.016. — the peer-reviewed companion to the Net-Zero America report, which is the gray-literature source of the land-area figure in the introduction.
  • Markwith, S. (2025). Solar parking lot capacity: an abundant dual-use alternative to meet demand for the renewable energy transition. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability 5(1):015004. DOI 10.1088/2634-4505/adaa9a. — the built-surface alternative to farmland siting; single-author paper.

Ecosystem services and techno-ecological framing

  • Hernandez, R.R., Armstrong, A., Burney, J., Ryan, G., Moore-O’Leary, K., Diédhiou, I., et al. (2019). Techno-ecological synergies of solar energy for global sustainability. Nature Sustainability 2(7):560–568. DOI 10.1038/s41893-019-0309-z. — source for restorative goals as a design objective co-equal with generation (§2  Design Pressures), and for the ecovoltaic side of the dual-use dispute (§4  The Farming Axis) and the brightfield archetype (§7  Archetypal Forms). Also the prior art for §Where benefits are delivered: it sorts techno-ecological outcomes into sympatric* (overlapping the site of generation) and disjunct (spatially separated from it), and assigns each a serviceshed, which is the distinction the lexicon relabels as benefit delivery.*
  • Randle-Boggis, R.J., White, P.C.L., Cruz, J., Parker, G., Montag, H., Scurlock, J.M.O. & Armstrong, A. (2020). Realising co-benefits for natural capital and ecosystem services from solar parks: a co-developed, evidence-based approach. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 125:109775. DOI 10.1016/j.rser.2020.109775. — cited as @boggis2020; the lead author’s surname is Randle-Boggis. Source for §Scale controls restoration potential from each mode’s observation that utility-scale restorative practice is largely ground cover and grazing.
  • Semeraro, T., Scarano, A., Santino, A., Emmanuel, R. & Lenucci, M. (2022). An innovative approach to combine solar photovoltaic gardens with agricultural production and ecosystem services. Ecosystem Services 56:101450. DOI 10.1016/j.ecoser.2022.101450.

Community response, siting, and community acceptance (§2  Design Pressures, §Community and economy)

  • Moore, S., Graff, H., Ouellet, C., Leslie, S. & Olweean, D. (2022). Can we have clean energy and grow our crops too? Solar siting on agricultural land in the United States. Energy Research & Social Science 91:102731. DOI 10.1016/j.erss.2022.102731. — source for §4  The Farming Axis’s claim that the public argument about solar on farmland is conducted without the axis.
  • Crawford, J., Bessette, D. & Mills, S.B. (2022). Rallying the anti-crowd: organized opposition, democratic deficit, and a potential social gap in large-scale solar energy. Energy Research & Social Science 90:102597. DOI 10.1016/j.erss.2022.102597. — REAL team publication; source for §2  Design Pressures’s “organized rather than diffuse” local veto.
  • Ryder, S., Walker, C., Batel, S., Devine-Wright, H., Devine-Wright, P. & Sherry-Brennan, F. (2023). Do the ends justify the means? Problematizing social acceptance and instrumentally-driven community engagement in proposed energy projects. Socio-Ecological Practice Research 5(2):189–204. DOI 10.1007/s42532-023-00148-8. — source for §2  Design Pressures’s warning that benefit offered without a fair process reads as a bribe.
  • Bessette, D.L., Hoen, B., Rand, J., Hoesch, K., White, J., Mills, S.B. & Nilson, R. (2024). Good fences make good neighbors: stakeholder perspectives on the local benefits and burdens of large-scale solar energy development in the United States. Energy Research & Social Science 108:103375. DOI 10.1016/j.erss.2023.103375. — REAL team publication; the burden side of §Community and economy — who gains and who bears the costs.
  • Elmallah, S., Hoen, B., Fujita, K.S., Robson, D. & Brunner, E. (2023). Shedding light on large-scale solar impacts: an analysis of property values and proximity to photovoltaics across six US states. Energy Policy 175:113425. DOI 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113425. — the property-value evidence cited in §Community and economy; scope is six states, not national.
  • Susskind, L., Chun, J., Gant, A., Hodgkins, C., Cohen, J. & Lohmar, S. (2022). Sources of opposition to renewable energy projects in the United States. Energy Policy 165:112922. DOI 10.1016/j.enpol.2022.112922.
  • Buckley Biggs, N., Shivaram, R., Acuña Lacarieri, E., Varkey, K., Hagan, D., Young, H. & Lambin, E.F. (2022). Landowner decisions regarding utility-scale solar energy on working lands: a qualitative case study in California. Environmental Research Communications 4(5):055010. DOI 10.1088/2515-7620/ac6fbf. — cited as @biggs2022; the lead author’s surname is Buckley Biggs. A qualitative California case study — do not generalize the landowner findings nationally.
  • O’Shaughnessy, E., Wiser, R., Hoen, B., Rand, J. & Elmallah, S. (2022). Drivers and energy justice implications of renewable energy project siting in the United States. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 25(3):258–272. DOI 10.1080/1523908X.2022.2099365. — published online 2022; the issue is dated 2023, so year-of-record differs by style.
  • Swanson, T., Seay-Fleming, C., Gerlak, A.K. & Barron-Gafford, G.A. (2025). “Enough is enough, we like our farms”: the role of landscape ideology in shaping perceptions of solar energy and agrivoltaics in the rural American Southwest. Journal of Rural Studies 114:103572. DOI 10.1016/j.jrurstud.2025.103572.
  • Pascaris, A.S., Schelly, C., Burnham, L. & Pearce, J.M. (2021). Integrating solar energy with agriculture: industry perspectives on the market, community, and socio-political dimensions of agrivoltaics. Energy Research & Social Science 75:102023. DOI 10.1016/j.erss.2021.102023.
  • Pascaris, A.S., Gerlak, A.K. & Barron-Gafford, G.A. (2023). From niche-innovation to mainstream markets: drivers and challenges of industry adoption of agrivoltaics in the U.S. Energy Policy 181:113694. DOI 10.1016/j.enpol.2023.113694.

Where the terms came from (§8  Terminology) — traced for the provenance notes on individual glossary entries.

  • Goetzberger, A. & Zastrow, A. (1982). On the coexistence of solar-energy conversion and plant cultivation. International Journal of Solar Energy 1(1):55–69. DOI 10.1080/01425918208909875. — the agrivoltaic concept, with its geometry, nearly thirty years before the English word. Often miscited as 1981; the published issue is 1982.
  • Dupraz, C., Marrou, H., Talbot, G., Dufour, L., Nogier, A. & Ferard, Y. (2011). Combining solar photovoltaic panels and food crops for optimising land use: towards new agrivoltaic schemes. Renewable Energy 36(10):2725–2732. DOI 10.1016/j.renene.2011.03.005. — the English coinage of agrivoltaic, and what carried the land equivalent ratio into the field.
  • Mead, R. & Willey, R.W. (1980). The concept of a ‘land equivalent ratio’ and advantages in yields from intercropping. Experimental Agriculture 16(3):217–228. DOI 10.1017/S0014479700010978. — where LER was defined, for intercropping, which is where its assumption of commensurable yields comes from.
  • Taylor, P.D., Fahrig, L., Henein, K. & Merriam, G. (1993). Connectivity is a vital element of landscape structure. Oikos 68(3):571–573. DOI 10.2307/3544927. — landscape ecology’s functional sense of connectivity, which this lexicon uses unchanged and which collides with both the map-adjacency and the electrical senses.
  • Pacala, S. & Socolow, R. (2004). Stabilization wedges: solving the climate problem for the next 50 years with current technologies. Science 305(5686):968–972. DOI 10.1126/science.1100103. — not a source for anything here; cited because the feasible wedge is coined in this document and will be heard against these wedges.
  • Eisenack, K., Oberlack, C. & Sietz, D. (2021). Avenues of archetype analysis: roots, achievements, and next steps in sustainability research. Ecology and Society 26(2):31. DOI 10.5751/ES-12484-260231. — the formal method this lexicon’s archetypes are deliberately not.
  • Salafsky, N., Salzer, D., Stattersfield, A.J., Hilton-Taylor, C., Neugarten, R., Butchart, S.H.M., Collen, B., Cox, N., Master, L.L., O’Connor, S. & Wilkie, D. (2008). A standard lexicon for biodiversity conservation: unified classifications of threats and actions. Conservation Biology 22(4):897–911. DOI 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00937.x. — the IUCN-CMP conservation actions classification, the nearest prior art for sorting interventions by the instrument that delivers them.

Regulatory frameworks

  • US Department of Agriculture. Prime and Unique Farmlands, 7 CFR Part 657 (657.5). https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-VI/subchapter-F/part-657 — the federal definition behind prime farmland; a rule rather than a description, and the one glossary term that can by itself stop a project. Current eCFR text as accessed July 2026.
  • McDonnell, N. (2025). The multi-functionality of ecovoltaics: comparative analysis of large-scale solar regulatory frameworks in New South Wales and England. Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law 43(3):401–423. DOI 10.1080/02646811.2025.2540700.

Prairie strips

  • Luther, Z.R., Swinton, S.M. & Van Deynze, B. (2022). Potential supply of Midwest cropland for conversion to in-field prairie strips. Land Economics 98(2):274–291. DOI 10.3368/le.98.2.082020-0129R1. — KBS LTER publication.
  • Schulte, L.A., Niemi, J., Helmers, M.J., Liebman, M., Arbuckle, J.G., James, D.E., et al. (2017). Prairie strips improve biodiversity and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services from corn–soybean croplands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(42):11247–11252. DOI 10.1073/pnas.1620229114. — the STRIPS result behind §4  The Farming Axis’s S5 example and the solar-prairie-strips archetype (§7  Archetypal Forms); previously recorded only inside the §7  Archetypal Forms exemplar note below.

Land-use allocation and multi-use synthesis

  • Merheb, C., Macknick, J., Davatzes, N. & Ravi, S. (2025). Synergies and trade-offs of multi-use solar landscapes. Nature Sustainability 8:857–870. DOI 10.1038/s41893-025-01600-1. — the field’s umbrella review; source of the multi-use solar term and its three-way split into agrivoltaics, rangevoltaics, and ecovoltaics (§8  Terminology), the temperature-dependent shade–yield synthesis (n = 367) behind §4  The Farming Axis and §The same pressures, weighted by place, the grazing species-compatibility findings (§Five zones on one gradient), and the grassland soil-carbon-debt caution (§Agriculture and soils).
  • Sturchio, M.A., Gallaher, A. & Grodsky, S.M. (2025). Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 122(17):e2501605122. DOI 10.1073/pnas.2501605122. — the corn-ethanol land-efficiency and nutrient-load argument behind §4  The Farming Axis’s S5 case and §Water; also the ecovoltaic siting tenet of avoiding intact native ecosystems (§8  Terminology).
  • Gallaher, A., Koch, T., Kalies, E.L., Woodbury, P.B. & Grodsky, S.M. (2026). Sustainability trade-offs at the nexus of solar energy, agriculture, and biodiversity. Geography and Sustainability 7:100483. DOI 10.1016/j.geosus.2026.100483. — the New York State optimization behind §4  The Farming Axis’s displacement boundary, §Where the pressures collide’s 0.17% cost result, and §The same pressures, weighted by place’s prior-land-cover contrast.
  • Brock, C., Roehrdanz, P.R., Beringer, T., Chaplin-Kramer, R., Enquist, B.J., Frazier, A.E., et al. (2026). Balancing land use for conservation, agriculture, and renewable energy. Nature Communications 17:3623. DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-69952-6. — global multi-sector land allocation; cited in §9  Evidence Base and Research Needs for its explicit inability to represent co-location, which is the space this lexicon describes.

Siting drivers and land-class economics (§Scale controls restoration potential from each mode)

  • Wu, G.C., Min, Y., Deshmukh, R., Cartwright, P., DeCesaro, J., Kerstan, D., Somasundaram, D. & Strecker, H. (2026). Factors shaping the siting of utility-scale solar and wind projects in the United States. Environmental Research Letters 21(9):094003. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ae5faa. — what utility-scale siting actually responds to: roads, transmission, substations, population density, non-forested cover, flatter terrain. Cited for the mechanism behind assembly-driven placement. Note the limit: the study uses a 1 MW floor and treats each project as one observation, so it does not test whether siting drivers differ by project size, and cannot on its own support the contrast this document draws with smaller projects.

Design theory borrowed from architecture (§1  Design Levers)

  • Brand, S. (1994). How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. Viking, New York. — the shearing-layers argument, after Frank Duffy: a building is several layers of differing longevity, and a design works when the fast layers can move without tearing the slow ones. The lexicon borrows the pattern rather than the layers, to explain why management is both the most powerful lever at utility scale and the most fragile.
  • Habraken, N.J. (2002). The uses of levels. Open House International 27(2). — open-building levels, each with its own decision-maker. Originally a keynote to the UNESCO Regional Seminar on Shelter for the Homeless, Seoul 1988, and re-issued in 2002; cite the 2002 re-issue and note the 1988 delivery. The source for the claim that a decision category implies a decider, which is the ownership lever stated as design theory.

Permanent-crop agrivoltaics (§7  Archetypal Forms, emerging)

  • Yu, L. et al. (2022). Rain shelter cultivation and downy mildew in table grape. Plants. — leaf wetness duration down 85% and 76%, downy mildew delayed 28 and 21 days, disease index down 82–83%. A plastic rain shelter, not PV. Volume and DOI unconfirmed; trace before citing.
  • Scalisi, A. et al. (2026). Overhead photovoltaic shading of blush pear, Victoria, Australia. Horticulturae. — four seasons; sunburn 7.0% control against under 1.2% shaded in the hottest season. Volume and DOI unconfirmed; trace before citing.
  • Caravia, L., Collins, C., Petrie, P.R. & Tyerman, S.D. (2016). Shade treatments during Shiraz berry ripening. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research. — 62% overhead shade lowered alcohol without significant anthocyanin loss; the Brix drop reflects preserved turgor rather than delayed ripening. Volume and DOI unconfirmed; trace before citing.
  • Haidegg agri-PV orchard, Styria, Austria (340 kWp; apple, pear, cherry, apricot, peach, plum). Austrian Klima- und Energiefonds final report. — the source for two corrections in §7  Archetypal Forms: metal flashing between modules was necessary before rain protection appeared, and after the 2023 and 2024 hail seasons the array did not protect the orchard beneath, deflecting stones into the next row. German-language project reporting, not peer-reviewed; trace before citing.
  • Fraunhofer ISE apple agri-PV, Gelsdorf, Rhineland-Palatinate (258 kWp, eight varieties, five variants including hail-net and foil-roof controls). — the trial designed to separate shelter from shade. Published output so far is electrical; agronomic results not yet available. The widely quoted “70% less pesticide” belongs to a different site, Obsthof Bernhard at Kressbronn, and is attributed there to reduced leaf wetness.
  • Elamri, Y. et al. (2018). Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. — at about 30% panel cover, rainfall redistribution gave a coefficient of variation of 2.13, with the dripline collecting roughly eleven times the control depth. The basis for the claim that a sparse array redistributes rain rather than excluding it. Trace before citing.

Unverified — trace before citing

  • Current build-out figures on the landing page. The counts used in the introduction — roughly 15,000 ground-mounted arrays over some 3,000 km², about half of it former cropland and another third agricultural grassland, and agrivoltaics at under two percent of built practice — are as-stated in this group’s REAL vision draft, which cites a cluster of sources for them. They are attributed here to Stid et al. (2022) and Sturchio et al. (2025) as the nearest fit, and that attribution has not been checked claim by claim. Confirm which figure comes from which source before any of them appears in a proposal or paper, and re-check the totals: installed capacity and area both move every year.
  • “Utility-scale” as a definitional convention, not a single threshold. No one primary document fixes the cutoff. SEIA/EIA usage commonly treats projects above ~1 MW as utility-scale, while NREL and LBNL analyses generally use a ~5 MW(AC) floor; other market and regulatory definitions vary more widely. The lexicon uses the term as a rough band, not a fixed number — the specific MW figures are conventions to be checked against whichever edition is finally cited (needs-verification). Anchor documents: SEIA “Land Use & Solar Development” (seia.org) and the LBNL/NREL Utility-Scale Solar report series (emp.lbl.gov).
  • Kochendoerfer, N., Hain, A. & Thonney, M.L. (2019). The agricultural, economic and environmental potential of co-locating utility-scale solar with grazing sheep. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. — research report / gray literature (no DOI); title and author trio traced via the Cornell grazing-program publications page. Not promoted to the peer-reviewed tier.
  • Bock Agricultural Law and Policy Program, University of Illinois (2023). The Economics of Solar Grazing. Survey conducted early 2023, distributed via the American Solar Grazing Association with NREL support. — traced gray literature (non-peer-reviewed); cite the program report directly rather than pv-magazine trade coverage. Specific per-operation figures (e.g., ~55 acres / 125 sheep) not confirmed against the primary report — verify before citing.
  • Hartman, D. (2026). Sheep grazing to maintain solar energy sites in Pennsylvania. Penn State Extension (updated 13 April 2026). — extension guidance / gray literature; source for §Five zones on one gradient’s Northeast stocking line — “for mature ewes, experience in New York and Michigan indicates that a typical stocking rate is 3 ewes/acre.”
  • Center for Rural Affairs (2025). Opportunities for solar energy on marginal agricultural lands [fact sheet]. Lyons, NE; released March 2025, institutionally authored (no individual byline — do not supply one). — gray literature (cfra.org).
  • Michigan State University / KBS LTER (2024). Prairie strips partial budget tool [Excel tool], accompanying the “Budgeting for prairie strips” bulletin (MiSTRIPS program). — gray literature / tool; the bulletin date (reported 10 June 2024) and MiSTRIPS attribution are not independently confirmed — verify before citing.

Program and agency literature now in references.bib — these entries are complete and citable; they sit in this block because they are gray literature (unrefereed program reports and agency pages), not because the citation is in doubt.

  • Larson, E., Greig, C., Jenkins, J., Mayfield, E., Pascale, A., et al. (2021). Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts. Princeton University (netzeroamerica.princeton.edu). — source for the 60,000–90,000 km² land-area figure in the introduction; a university research report, not a refereed paper. The peer-reviewed companion is Jenkins et al. (2021), listed above.
  • Macknick, J., Hartmann, H., Barron-Gafford, G., Beatty, B., Burton, R., et al. (2022). The 5 Cs of Agrivoltaic Success Factors in the United States: Lessons From the InSPIRE Research Study. NREL/TP-6A20-83566, Golden, CO. DOI 10.2172/1882930. — NREL program report; source for the utility-scale ground-cover-and-grazing pattern (§Scale controls restoration potential from each mode) and for the co-location share in §Scale and position interact to determine feasibility. Widely used, but a program output rather than a refereed synthesis.
  • Electric Power Research Institute (2021). Pollinator-Friendly Solar Scorecards: Comprehensive Analysis of Scorecard Attributes. EPRI 3002022121, Palo Alto, CA. — source for the offtake-conformity pressure (§2  Design Pressures) and for §Ecology’s point that scorecard programs differ in what they credit; institutionally authored (no individual byline — do not supply one).
  • Bessette, D.L., White, J., Mills, S.B., Hoen, B., Rand, J., Nilson, R. & Hoesch, K. (2024). Supporting community-centered solar development: a guide to hosting community conversations about large-scale solar development. Michigan State University & Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (CCSD guidebook). — REAL team publication; the community-benefit guidance behind §Community and economy, which the chapter is careful to label gray literature.
  • Gagnon, P., Margolis, R., Melius, J., Phillips, C. & Elmore, R. (2016). Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Technical Potential in the United States: A Detailed Assessment. NREL/TP-6A20-65298, Golden, CO. DOI 10.2172/1236153. — the rooftop alternative to ground-mount siting; a 2016 assessment, so check it against a current edition before quoting a number.
  • U.S. Energy Information Administration (2024). Today in Energy: solar and battery storage to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024 (eia.gov). — agency web page; a single-year projection that is superseded annually — re-check the current release before citing.

Land-class cost premiums (§Scale controls restoration potential from each mode)

  • Owusu-Obeng, P.Y., Shi, M., Vanatta, M. & Craig, M.T. (2025). Beyond Prime Farmland: Solar Siting Tradeoffs for Cost-Effective Decarbonization. arXiv:2511.07323. — greenfield and prime agricultural land give the lowest levelized cost, roughly $39–57/MWh, while contaminated land carries a 14–33% premium and limited technical potential. The source for the claim that the ground restoration most wants taken is the ground a cost model most wants avoided. Preprint, not peer-reviewed; trace to the published version before citing.

Landscape-architecture prior art on maintenance (§1  Design Levers)

  • Douglas, S. & Deming, M.E. (2015). From the Field: Maintenance, the Missing Link. Landscape Architecture Foundation, Case Study Investigation. https://www.lafoundation.org/news/2015/06/csi-uiuc — the field named this before the lexicon did: parts of many projects fail in the first year or two because maintenance staff have no voice during design and the designer’s scope ends at the final walkthrough. Cited for that priority. Professional-foundation web article, unrefereed and undated on the page beyond its URL; trace to a dated version before citing in a paper.

Working-landscapes framing (§6  Restorative Functions and Outcomes) — still not in references.bib

  • Corridor and connectivity experiments (Haddad and colleagues). The claim in §Ecology that connected patches exchange more individuals and accumulate more species than isolated patches of equal area rests on the long-running corridor experiments in fragmented landscapes, with butterflies as the model organism for movement. The best-known are sited at the Savannah River Site. No citation is given in references.bib yet and none of the specific results are quoted here, precisely because the primary papers have not been checked from this environment; the paragraph is written to the shape of the finding rather than to any number. Trace and cite the primary experiments before this passage is used anywhere it matters.
  • Kremen, C. (2015). Working-landscapes framing behind the archetype × function matrix — reframing the land-sparing/land-sharing debate for biodiversity conservation. Venue (reportedly Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) and full citation unconfirmed; trace before citing.
  • Grass et al. (2019). Working-landscapes / connectivity framing (land-farming axis for ecosystem services and biodiversity), reportedly People and Nature. Full citation unconfirmed; trace before citing.

Archetype exemplars (the Application: cases in §7  Archetypal Forms) — real projects, mostly documented in developer pages, NGO case studies, and extension case studies (gray literature); trace named figures to these before citing.

  • Barnyard Shelter Solar — WCROC dairy, University of Minnesota West Central Research and Outreach Center, Morris, MN (30 kW ground-mount raised over pasture, 2018, shading 30–40 grazing cows and serving the milking parlor; later 240 kW and 500 kW additions). Clean Energy Resource Teams and WCROC renewable-energy program pages; gray literature — trace the capacity figures before citing. Peer-reviewed heat-abatement evidence: Sharpe, K.T. et al. (2021), Evaluation of solar photovoltaic systems to shade cows in a pasture-based dairy herd, Journal of Dairy Science 104(3):2794–2806 (DOI 10.3168/jds.2020-19274) — shaded cows showed lower body temperature and reduced respiration rate; not in references.bib. Poultry variation: Technique Solaire / INRAE photovoltaic-aviary trials, Lot-et-Garonne, France (PV shelters linked by nets; birds range farther and longer under cover) — developer/press reporting, trace before citing. Practitioner framing: Center for Rural Affairs, “cattle-voltaics” fact sheet.
  • Perennial Crop Canopy — Maces Pond, Rockport, ME (4.2 MW on ~10 acres of wild blueberry; built 2021, developed by BlueWave, owned by Navisun, EPC by CS Energy; ~5 acres given to a University of Maine dual-use study under Lily Calderwood running three construction treatments, with the early result that the stand recovered best where construction took the most care). Developer and trade reporting plus UMaine Extension pages; capacities as-reported, trace before citing. Tall-canopy variants at the other end of the same form: Colorado State University’s chardonnay plot at Grand Junction and a peach-orchard installation at Talbott Farms, both press-reported only, trace before citing. Peer-reviewed protection evidence: Scalisi et al. (2026) (apple sunburn), Caravia et al. (2016) (acidity via turgor), Yu et al. (2022) (rain exclusion does not carry from continuous covers).
  • Vegetable Agrivoltaics — Jack’s Solar Garden, Boulder County, CO (1.2 MW single-axis tracking, ~4 acres; chard, greens, and tomatoes grown by partner farmers). NREL / InSPIRE, Colorado State, and University of Arizona research site; NCAT AgriSolar Clearinghouse case study. Dryland shade-benefit evidence: Barron-Gafford et al. (2019).
  • Marginal Land Solar — Cozy Cove Farm, Gurley, AL (50 kW / 208 panels, elevated ~7 ft, TVA offtake). NCAT AgriSolar Clearinghouse case study.
  • Solar Prairie Strips — Ramsey Renewable Station (Connexus Energy), Ramsey, MN. Fresh Energy case study and the DOE PV-SMaRT project (University of Minnesota stormwater modeling); the no-detention-basin result is from PV-SMaRT modeling. Prairie-strip science (the STRIPS project, Iowa State): Schulte et al. (2017), now a full entry under Prairie strips above.
  • Regenerative Solar Grazing — Aurora Solar, Minnesota (150 MW-dc, 16 sites, operational 2017). Enel Green Power project page; Fresh Energy case study; NREL InSPIRE pollinator research. Soil gains under managed solar native cover: Krasner et al. (2025).
  • Retired-Irrigation Solar — Westlands Solar Park (demand side) & Pivot-Corner Recharge, High Plains (supply side). Arid / demand: Westlands Water District Valley Clean Infrastructure Plan, repurposing up to ~136,000 acres of drainage-impaired, previously-irrigated San Joaquin Valley land to solar under SGMA — PPIC, Solar Energy and Groundwater in the San Joaquin Valley (ppic.org). Semi-arid / supply: solar in center-pivot corners for Ogallala recharge — Kansas Geological Survey / Kansas State / Michigan State (FFAR-funded). Both trace before citing; the peer-reviewed anchor for the demand-side water saving is Stid, Shukla, et al. (2025), listed above.

Regionality (§The same pressures, weighted by place) — every figure in that chapter, assembled from secondary and program sources and not checked against primary records. The chapter says so in its own evidence-status note. Each item below names where the number came from and where it should be traced.

  • Solar resource ranges. NREL’s National Solar Radiation Database and solar resource maps (nrel.gov, nsrdb.nrel.gov) are the primary product — satellite-derived GHI/DNI/DHI at ~4 km. The ranges quoted (roughly 5.5–6.5 kWh/m²/day GHI in the desert Southwest, 3.5–4.5 in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, 4–6 across most of the country) are from secondary summaries of those products. Read the NSRDB directly before quoting a number for a specific place.
  • Interconnection queues and curtailment. Berkeley Lab’s Queued Up series (emp.lbl.gov) is the primary source for queue volumes, and the ISO/RTO market-monitor reports for curtailment. The magnitudes used here — MISO carrying 170+ GW awaiting interconnection, ERCOT 2,000+ active requests, SPP curtailment up roughly sixfold since 2020, a comparable jump in PJM in 2024 — come from 2025 trade and consultancy commentary rather than those primary datasets. Trace before citing.
  • Community-solar capacity by state. ILSR’s Community Solar Tracker (ilsr.org) and Wood Mackenzie/SEIA market reports. The figures used (New York ~2.6 GWac; Maine, Minnesota, and Massachusetts each near 0.9–1.0 GW; Illinois well below; Maine’s program closing at the end of 2025) are as-reported in trade coverage, and state program status changes fast enough that any of them may be stale by the time it is read.
  • Aridity and the sign of the shade effect. The direction of this claim is supported by sources already in the verified list (Barron-Gafford et al. (2019), Sturchio and Knapp (2025), Knapp and Sturchio (2024)). The added specifics — irrigation savings of 30–40% in arid agrivoltaic settings, mixed-to-negative yield outcomes for staple grains in humid settings, relief of midday depression in drylands — come from recent reviews and a 2025 npj Sustainable Agriculture paper on dryland midday depression whose full citation is unconfirmed. Trace before citing.
  • Latitude and ground coverage ratio. Reported thresholds — fixed-tilt reaching ~0.55 GCR within 2.5% shading loss at lower latitudes, tracked ~0.22 and vertical ~0.10 at the same loss, guidance spanning 17°N–75°N, bifacial wanting slightly lower GCR than monofacial — are from a 2023 Solar Energy paper on optimal ground coverage ratios for latitudes to 75°N. Author list, volume, and DOI unconfirmed.
  • USDA Farm Resource Regions. USDA Economic Research Service, Farm Resource Regions, Agricultural Information Bulletin No. 760 (ers.usda.gov) — nine regions built from county-level commodity specialization. The regional characterizations used here are from ERS chart-gallery summaries rather than the bulletin text; read the bulletin before quoting shares.
  • Where agrivoltaic practice actually is. NREL/InSPIRE agrivoltaics map and the OpenEI dataset: roughly 596 sites, 65,699 acres, and 10,473 MW identified as of early 2025, with grazing concentrated in Massachusetts, New York, and California, pollinator habitat in Minnesota and Illinois, cropping in the Northeast, West Coast, and Colorado, and greenhouses in Colorado, California, and Georgia. As-reported; the tallies move as the database updates.
  • SGMA and San Joaquin Valley acreage. PPIC’s San Joaquin Valley water and land-transition work (ppic.org), already cited for the Westlands case in §7  Archetypal Forms — at least 500,000 acres (about a tenth of valley cropland) potentially leaving irrigated production, and up to ~136,000 acres in the Westlands Valley Clean Infrastructure Plan.
  • Ogallala. Roughly 13.6 million irrigated acres and water-table declines of 100–200 ft in the thinner southern reaches. These figures circulate widely in secondary coverage; USDA Climate Hubs and the Kansas Geological Survey are where to trace them.

Design typologies & program frameworks (§6  Restorative Functions and Outcomes–§7  Archetypal Forms) — standards and program literature acknowledged in the terminology; trace to the current edition before citing.

  • DIN SPEC 91434 (2021). Agri-Photovoltaic Systems — Requirements for Primary Agricultural Use. Beuth/DIN, Berlin. — source for the overhead (Category I, elevated) vs. interspace (Category II, ground-level between rows) structural typology in §7  Archetypal Forms; a German technical specification, not a peer-reviewed source — verify category wording against the standard.
  • Fraunhofer ISE. Agrivoltaics: Opportunities for Agriculture and the Energy Transition (guideline). Freiburg. — widely-cited design guideline; edition/year moves (2020, updated) — confirm the edition before citing.
  • NREL / DOE InSPIRE (Innovative Site Preparation and Impact Reductions on the Environment). Low-Impact Solar Development resources and the agrivoltaics research library, openei.org / nrel.gov. — program source for the “low-impact solar development” framing (§6  Restorative Functions and Outcomes) and the configuration taxonomy; gray literature / program output. The InSPIRE synthesis that is in references.bib is Macknick et al. (2022), above.
  • NCAT AgriSolar Clearinghouse (agrisolar.org). DOE SETO-funded. — existing usage of “agrisolar” (§8  Terminology) and the source of several §7  Archetypal Forms exemplar case studies; gray literature.
  • US EPA RE-Powering America’s Land (epa.gov/re-powering). — federal program siting renewables on contaminated land, landfills, and mine sites; background for the marginal / brightfield land vocabulary (§8  Terminology) and the Brightfield archetype (§7  Archetypal Forms); gray literature.
  • Ecosystem services — regulating & supporting. The restorative-functions framing (§6  Restorative Functions and Outcomes) parallels the ecosystem-services categories of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) and later national ecosystem assessments. Named for orientation, not cited for a specific figure; use a current assessment if a formal citation is needed.

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