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Saetnan, E. R., & Kipling, R. P. (2016). Evaluating a European knowledge hub on climate change in agriculture: Are we building a better connected community. Scientometrics, 109(2), 1057–1074.
Abstract: In order to maintain food security and sustainability of production under climate change, interdisciplinary and international collaboration in research is essential. In the EU, knowledge hubs are important funding instruments for the development of an interconnected European Research Area. Here, network analysis was used to assess whether the pilot knowledge hub MACSUR has affected interdisciplinary collaboration, using co-authorship of peer reviewed articles as a measure of collaboration. The broad community of all authors identified as active in the field of agriculture and climate change was increasingly well connected over the period studied. Between knowledge hub members, changes in network parameters suggest an increase in collaborative interaction beyond that expected due to network growth, and greater than that found in the broader community. Given that interdisciplinary networks often take several years to have an impact on research outputs, these changes within the relatively new MACSUR community provide evidence that the knowledge hub structure has been effective in stimulating collaboration. However, analysis showed that knowledge hub partners were initially well-connected, suggesting that the initiative may have gathered together researchers with particular resources or inclinations towards collaborative working. Long term, consistent funding and ongoing reflection to improve networking structures may be necessary to sustain the early positive signs from MACSUR, to extend its success to a wider community of researchers, or to repeat it in less connected fields of science. Tackling complex challenges such as climate change will require research structures that can effectively support and utilise the diversity of talents beyond the already well-connected core of scientists at major research institutes. But network research shows that this core, well-connected group are vital brokers in achieving wider integration.
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Kollas, C., Kersebaum, K. C., Nendel, C., Manevski, K., Müller, C., Palosuo, T., et al. (2015). Crop rotation modelling—A European model intercomparison. European Journal of Agronomy, 70, 98–111.
Abstract: • First model inter-comparison on crop rotations. • Continuous simulation of multi-year crop rotations yields outperformed single-year simulation. • Low accuracy of yield predictions in less commonly modelled crops such as potato, radish, grass vegetation. • Multi-model mean prediction was found to minimise the likely error arising from single-model predictions. • The representation of intermediate crops and carry-over effects in the models require further research efforts.
Diversification of crop rotations is considered an option to increase the resilience of European crop production under climate change. So far, however, many crop simulation studies have focused on predicting single crops in separate one-year simulations. Here, we compared the capability of fifteen crop growth simulation models to predict yields in crop rotations at five sites across Europe under minimal calibration. Crop rotations encompassed 301 seasons of ten crop types common to European agriculture and a diverse set of treatments (irrigation, fertilisation, CO2 concentration, soil types, tillage, residues, intermediate or catch crops). We found that the continuous simulation of multi-year crop rotations yielded results of slightly higher quality compared to the simulation of single years and single crops. Intermediate crops (oilseed radish and grass vegetation) were simulated less accurately than main crops (cereals). The majority of models performed better for the treatments of increased CO2 and nitrogen fertilisation than for irrigation and soil-related treatments. The yield simulation of the multi-model ensemble reduced the error compared to single-model simulations. The low degree of superiority of continuous simulations over single year simulation was caused by (a) insufficiently parameterised crops, which affect the performance of the following crop, and (b) the lack of growth-limiting water and/or nitrogen in the crop rotations under investigation. In order to achieve a sound representation of crop rotations, further research is required to synthesise existing knowledge of the physiology of intermediate crops and of carry-over effects from the preceding to the following crop, and to implement/improve the modelling of processes that condition these effects.
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Özkan, Ş., Hill, J., & Cullen, B. (2014). Effect of climate variability on pasture-based dairy feeding systems in south-east Australia. Animal Production Science, 55(9), 1106–1116.
Abstract: The Australian dairy industry relies primarily on pasture for its feed supply. However, the variability in climate affects plant growth, leading to uncertainty in dryland pasture supply. This paper models the impact of climate variability on pasture production and examines the potential of two pasture-based dairy feeding systems: (1) to experience winter deficits; (2) to carry forward the conserved pasture surpluses as silage for future use; and (3) to conserve pasture surpluses as hay. The two dairy feeding systems examined were a traditional perennial ryegrass-based feeding system (ryegrass max. – RM) and a system that incorporated double cropping into the perennial ryegrass pasture base (complementary forage – CF). The conditional probability of the RM and CF systems to generate pasture deficits in winter were 94% and 96%, respectively. Both systems could carry forward the surplus silage into the following lactation almost once in every 4-5 years with the RM system performing slightly better than the CF system. The proportions of the grain-based concentrates fed in the two systems were 25% and 27% for the RM and CF systems, respectively. This study suggests that double-cropping systems have the potential to provide high-quality feed to support the feed gaps when pasture is not available due to increased variability in climatic conditions.
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Semenov, M. A., Pilkington-Bennett, S., & Calanca, P. (2013). Validation of ELPIS 1980-2010 baseline scenarios using the observed European Climate Assessment data set. Clim. Res., 57(1), 1–9.
Abstract: Local-scale daily climate scenarios are required for assessment of climate change impacts. ELPIS is a repository of local-scale climate scenarios for Europe, which are based on the LARS-WG weather generator and future projections from 2 multi-model ensembles, CMIP3 and EU-ENSEMBLES. In ELPIS, the site parameters for the 1980-2010 baseline scenarios were estimated by LARS-WG using daily weather from the European Crop Growth Monitoring System (CGMS) used in many European agricultural assessment studies. The objective of this paper was to compare ELPIS baseline scenarios with observed daily weather obtained independently from the European Climate Assessment (ECA) data set. Several statistical tests were used to compare distributions of climatic variables derived from ECA-observed daily weather and ELPIS-generated baseline scenarios. About 30% of selected sites have a difference in altitude of > 50 m compared with the CGMS grid-cell altitude that was selected to represent agricultural land within a grid-cell. Differences in altitude can explain significant Kolmogorov-Smirnov test (KS-test) results for distribution of daily temperature and in t-tests for temperature monthly means, because of the well-known negative correlation between temperature and elevation. For daily precipitation, the KS-test showed little difference between generated and observed data; however, the more sensitive t-test showed significant results for the sites where altitude differences were large. Approximately 11% of sites showed small positive or negative bias in monthly solar radiation, although 86% sites showed > 3 significant t-test results for monthly means. These results can be explained by differences in conversion of sunshine hours to solar radiation used in CGMS and LARS-WG. We conclude that, considering the limitations above, ELPIS baseline scenarios are suitable for agricultural impact assessments in Europe.
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Milford, A. B., & Kildal, C. (2019). Meat Reduction by Force: The Case of “Meatless Monday” in the Norwegian Armed Forces. Sustainability, 11(10), 2741.
Abstract: Despite the scientific evidence that more plants and less animal-based food is more sustainable, policy interventions to reduce meat consumption are scarce. However, campaigns for meat free days in school and office canteens have spread globally over the last years. In this paper, we look at the Norwegian Armed Forces’ attempt to introduce the Meatless Monday campaign in their camps, and we evaluate the implementation process as well as the effect of the campaign on soldiers. Qualitative interviews with military staff indicate that lack of conviction about benefits of meat reduction, and the fact that kitchen staff did not feel ownership to the project, partly explain why vegetarian measures were not fully implemented in all the camps. A multivariate regression analysis with survey data from soldiers indicate that those who have experienced meat free days in the military kitchen are more prone to claim that joining the military has given them a more positive view on vegetarian food. Furthermore, the survey gives evidence that stated willingness to eat more vegetarian food is higher among soldiers who believe in the environmental and health benefits of meat reduction.
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