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Sándor, R., Barcza, Z., Hidy, D., Lellei-Kovács, E., Ma, S., & Bellocchi, G. (2016). Modelling of grassland fluxes in Europe: evaluation of two biogeochemical models. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ., 215, 1–19.
Abstract: Two independently developed simulation models – the grassland-specific PaSim and the biome-generic Biome-BGC MuSo (BBGC MuSo) – linking climate, soil, vegetation and management to ecosystem biogeochemical cycles were compared in a simulation of carbon (C) and water fluxes. The results were assessed against eddy-covariance flux data from five observational grassland sites representing a range of conditions in Europe: Grillenburg in Germany, Laqueuille in France with both extensive and intensive management, Monte Bondone in Italy and Oensingen in Switzerland. Model comparison (after calibration) gave substantial agreement, the performances being marginal to acceptable for weekly-aggregated gross primary production and ecosystem respiration (R-2 similar to 0.66 – 0.91), weekly evapotranspiration (R-2 similar to 0.78 – 0.94), soil water content in the topsoil (R-2 similar to 0.1 -0.7) and soil temperature (R-2 similar to 0.88 – 0.96). The bias was limited to the range -13 to 9 g C m(-2) week(-1) for C fluxes (-11 to 8 g C m(-2) week(-1) in case of BBGC MuSo, and -13 to 9 g C m(-2) week(-1) in case of PaSim) and -4 to 6 mm week for water fluxes (with BBGC MuSo providing somewhat higher estimates than PaSim), but some higher relative root mean square errors indicate low accuracy for prediction, especially for net ecosystem exchange The sensitivity of simulated outputs to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration ([CO2]), temperature and precipitation indicate, with certain agreement between the two models, that C outcomes are dominated by [CO2] and temperature gradients, and are less due to precipitation. ET rates decrease with increasing [CO2] in PaSim (consistent with experimental knowledge), while lack of appropriate stomatal response could be a limit in BBGC MuSo responsiveness. Results of the study indicate that some of the errors might be related to the improper representation of soil water content and soil temperature. Improvement is needed in the model representations of soil processes (especially soil water balance) that strongly influence the biogeochemical cycles of managed and unmanaged grasslands. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Conradt, T., Gornott, C., & Wechsung, F. (2016). Extending and improving regionalized winter wheat and silage maize yield regression models for Germany: Enhancing the predictive skill by panel definition through cluster analysis. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 216, 68–81.
Abstract: Regional agricultural yield assessments allowing for weather effect quantifications are a valuable basis for deriving scenarios of climate change effects and developing adaptation strategies. Assessing weather effects by statistical methods is a classical approach, but for obtaining robust results many details deserve attention and require individual decisions as is demonstrated in this paper. We evaluated regression models for annual yield changes of winter wheat and silage maize in more than 300 German counties and revised them to increase their predictive power. A major effort of this study was, however, aggregating separately estimated time series models (STSM) into panel data models (PDM) based on cluster analyses. The cluster analyses were based on the per-county estimates of STSM parameters. The original STSM formulations (adopted from a parallel study) contained also the non-meteorological input variables acreage and fertilizer price. The models were revised to use only weather variables as estimation basis. These consisted of time aggregates of radiation, precipitation, temperature, and potential evapotranspiration. Altering the input variables generally increased the predictive power of the models as did their clustering into PDM. For each crop, five alternative clusterings were produced by three different methods, and similarities between their spatial structures seem to confirm the existence of objective clusters about common model parameters. Observed smooth transitions of STSM parameter values in space suggest, however, spatial autocorrelation effects that could also be modeled explicitly. Both clustering and autocorrelation approaches can effectively reduce the noise in parameter estimation through targeted aggregation of input data. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Schönhart, M., Schauppenlehner, T., Kuttner, M., Kirchner, M., & Schmid, E. (2016). Climate change impacts on farm production, landscape appearance, and the environment: Policy scenario results from an integrated field-farm-landscape model in Austria. Agricultural Systems, 145, 39–50.
Abstract: Climate change is among the major drivers of agricultural land use change and demands autonomous farm adaptation as well as public mitigation and adaptation policies. In this article, we present an integrated land use model (ILM) mainly combining a bio-physical model and a bio-economic farm model at field, farm and landscape levels. The ILM is applied to a cropland dominated landscape in Austria to analyze impacts of climate change and mitigation and adaptation policy scenarios on farm production as well as on the abiotic environment and biotic environment. Changes in aggregated total farm gross margins from three climate change scenarios for 2040 range between + 1% and + 5% without policy intervention” and compared to a reference situation under the current climate. Changes in aggregated gross margins are even higher if adaptation policies are in place. However, increasing productivity from climate change leads to deteriorating environmental conditions such as declining plant species richness and landscape appearance. It has to be balanced by mitigation and adaptation policies taking into account effects from the considerable spatial heterogeneity such as revealed by the ILM. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Himanen, S. J., Ketoja, E., Hakala, K., Rötter, R. P., Salo, T., & Kahiluoto, H. (2013). Cultivar diversity has great potential to increase yield for feed barley. Agron. Sust. Developm., 33(3), 519–530.
Abstract: This study shows an average yield increase of 415–1,338 kg ha−1 per unit increase of the Shannon diversity index for feed barley cultivar use. There is a global quest to increase food production sustainably. Therefore, judicious farmer choices such as selection of crop cultivars are increasingly important. Cultivar diversity is limited and, as a consequence, corresponding crop yields are highly impacted by local weather variations and global climate change. Actually, there is little knowledge on the relationships between yields of regional crops and cultivar diversity, that is evenness and richness in cultivar use. Here, we hypothesized that higher cultivar diversity is related to higher regional yield. We also assumed that the diversity-yield relationship depends on weather during the growing season. Our data were based on farm yield surveys of feed and malting barley, Hordeum vulgare L.; spring wheat, Triticum aestivum L.; and spring turnip rape, Brassica rapa L. ssp. oleifera, from 1998 to 2009, representing about 4,500–5,500 farms annually. We modeled the relationships between regional yields and Shannon diversity indices in high-yielding (south-west) and low-yielding (central-east) regions of Finland using linear mixed models. Our results show that an increase of Shannon diversity index increases yield of feed barley. Feed barley had also the greatest cultivar diversity. In contrast, an average yield decrease of 1,052 kg ha−1 per unit increase in Shannon index was found for spring rape in 2006 and 2008. Our findings show that cultivar diversification has potential to raise mean regional yield of feed barley. Increasing cultivar diversity thus offers a novel, sustainability-favoring means to promote higher yields.
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Bai, H., Tao, F., Xiao, D., Liu, F., & Zhang, H. (2016). Attribution of yield change for rice-wheat rotation system in China to climate change, cultivars and agronomic management in the past three decades. Clim. Change, 135(3-4), 539–553.
Abstract: Using the detailed field experiment data from 1981 to 2009 at four representative agro-meteorological experiment stations in China, along with the Agricultural Production System Simulator (APSIM) rice-wheat model, we evaluated the impact of sowing/transplanting date on phenology and yield of rice-wheat rotation system (RWRS). We also disentangled the contributions of climate change, modern cultivars, sowing/transplanting density and fertilization management, as well as changes in each climate variables, to yield change in RWRS, in the past three decades. We found that change in sowing/transplanting date did not significantly affect rice and wheat yield in RWRS, although alleviated the negative impact of climate change to some extent. From 1981 to 2009, climate change jointly caused rice and wheat yield change by -17.4 to 1.5 %, of which increase in temperature reduced yield by 0.0-5.8 % and decrease in solar radiation reduced it by 1.5-8.7 %. Cultivars renewal, modern sowing/transplanting density and fertilization management contributed to yield change by 14.4-27.2, -4.7- -0.1 and 2.3-22.2 %, respectively. Our findings highlight that modern cultivars and agronomic management compensated the negative impacts of climate change and played key roles in yield increase in the past three decades.
Keywords: nitrogen-use efficiency; crop yields; winter-wheat; temperature; responses; impacts; decline; models; trends; plain
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