Review article published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution
Volume 23, Issue 4, April 2008, Pages 211-219

Abstract: 
Agricultural expansion and intensification have altered the quantity and quality of global water flows. Research suggests that these changes have increased the risk of catastrophic ecosystem regime shifts. Authors identify and review evidence for agriculture-related regime shifts in three parts of the hydrological cycle: interactions between agriculture and aquatic systems, agriculture and soil, and agriculture and the atmosphere. They describe the processes that shape these regime shifts and the scales at which they operate. As global demands for agriculture and water continue to grow, it is increasingly urgent for ecologists to develop new ways of anticipating, analyzing and managing nonlinear changes across scales in human-dominated landscapes.

Authors point to three main ways that agriculture influences water
(i) agriculture and aquatic systems, including changes in runoff quality and quantity that lead to regime shifts
in downstream aquatic systems;
(ii) agriculture and soil, in which changes in infiltration and soil moisture result in terrestrial regime shifts, and
(iii) agriculture and the atmosphere, in which changes in evapotranspiration result in regime shifts in the
climatic system itself or in terrestrial ecosystems as a consequence of climatic changes.

The paper considers spatial and temporal scaling issues