Abstract: The EU-FP7 project AnimalChange (AN Integration of Mitigation and Adaptation options for sustainable Livestock production under climate CHANGE, http://www.animalchange.eu, 2011-2015) addresses mitigation and adaptation options and provides scientific guidance for their integration in sustainable development pathways for livestock production under climate change in Europe, Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. The project provides insights, innovations, tools and models for livestock production incorporating socio-economic and environmental (particularly GHG emission) variables. Scenario studies are carried out at scales ranging from animal and pasture, to farm and to region, for given management options. A wide range of livestock production systems is included in the project. The core analytical spine of the project is a series of coupled biophysical and socio-economic models combined with experimentation. This allows exploring future scenarios for the livestock sector under baseline and atmospheric CO2 stabilization scenarios. These scenarios are first constructed and then elaborated and enriched by breakthrough mitigation and adaptation options at field and animal scales, integrated and evaluated at farm scale and finally used to assess policy options and their socio-economic consequences. The modelling results are useful for governments, agricultural and food industry and the agricultural sector (farmers). There are many synergies between the European activities of AnimalChange and those of the LiveM theme of MACSUR, in particular with respect to access to livestock production datasets, dialogue with stakeholders and comparison and integration of grassland and livestock models with crop and socio-economic models in pilot studies at a variety of scales.

Abstract: Centre for Regionalchange in the Earth System (CRES, cres-centre.net) is funded by the DanishStrategic Research Council for the period 2009-2014 and is coordinated by theDanish Meteorological Institute. CRES has established a coordinated researcheffort aiming to improve societal preparedness for climate change, inparticular for Denmark. The overall objective of CRES is to extend knowledge ofand reduce the uncertainties surrounding regional climate change and itsimpacts and thereby support future climate change adaptation and mitigationpolicies. Some of the objectives that also have large synergies with theeffects in the CropM theme of MACSUR are a) to reduce uncertainty surroundingregional climate change and its impacts for the period 2020-2050 by improvingmodel formulation and process understanding; b) identify key changes andtipping points in the regional hydrological system, agriculture, freshwater andestuarine ecosystems caused by changes in seasonality, dynamics and extremeevents of precipitation, droughts, heat waves and sea level rise; c) quantifyconfidence and uncertainties in predictions of future regional climate and itsimpacts, by improving the statistical methodology and substance and byintegrating interdisciplinary risk analyses; d) interpret these results inrelation to risk management approaches for climate change adaptation andmitigation. Studies in CRES of particular interest to MACSUR include a)Estimation on generic crop model uncertainties in projection of climate changeimpacts on wheat year, b) Assessment of uncertainties in projected effects onwater balance, crop productivity and nitrate leaching of changes in land use,climate and assessment models.

Abstract: Global mean surface temperature is projected to rise by 0.4-2.6°C until 2050, and the contrast in precipitations between wet and dry regions and wet and dry seasons will also increase according to the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (2013). The climate change will impact livestock in many ways going from heat stress through livestock diseases to feed quality and availability (Thornton et al., 2009). Recently, projected climate change impacts on crop and grassland productivity became available with high spatial resolution at global scale through the AgMIP and ISI-MIP projects. The objective of this paper is to investigate how climate change impacts on crops and grassland will influence livestock production globally and its distribution across regions. This analysis is carried out using the global partial equilibrium agricultural and forestry sector model GLOBIOM (Havlík et al., 2013). The model represents agricultural production at a spatial resolution going down to 5 x 5 minutes of arc. Crop and grassland productivities are estimated by means of biophysical process based models (EPIC and CENTURY) at this resolution for current and future climate. Livestock representation follows a simplified version of the Seré and Steinfeld (1996) production system classification. This approach recognizes differences in feed base and productivities between grazing and mixed crop-livestock production systems across different agro-ecological zones (arid, humid, temperate/highlands). Our study highlights that the differential impacts of climate change on crop and grassland productivity will influence the relative competitiveness of different livestock production systems. Maintaining livestock production in some regions will depend on their capacity to adapt. Institutional and physical infrastructure will be needed to facilitate these transformations.