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Ventrella, D., Charfeddine, M., Moriondo, M., Rinaldi, M., & Bindi, M. (2012). Agronomic adaptation strategies under climate change for winter durum wheat and tomato in southern Italy: irrigation and nitrogen fertilization. Reg Environ Change, 12(3), 407–419.
Abstract: Agricultural crops are affected by climate change due to the relationship between crop development, growth, yield, CO2 atmospheric concentration and climate conditions. In particular, the further reduction in existing limited water resources combined with an increase in temperature may result in higher impacts on agricultural crops in the Mediterranean area than in other regions. In this study, the cropping system models CERES-Wheat and CROPGRO-Tomato of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) were used to analyse the response of winter durum wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) crops to climate change, irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer managements in one of most productive areas of Italy (i.e. Capitanata, Puglia). For this analysis, three climatic datasets were used: (1) a single dataset (50 km x 50 km) provided by the JRC European centre for the period 1975-2005; two datasets from HadCM3 for the IPCC A2 GHG scenario for time slices with +2A degrees C (centred over 2030-2060) and +5A degrees C (centred over 2070-2099), respectively. All three datasets were used to generate synthetic climate series using a weather simulator (model LARS-WG). Adaptation strategies, such as irrigation and N fertilizer managements, have been investigated to either avoid or at least reduce the negative impacts induced by climate change impacts for both crops. Warmer temperatures were primarily shown to accelerate wheat and tomato phenology, thereby resulting in decreased total dry matter accumulation for both tomato and wheat under the +5A degrees C future climate scenario. Under the +2A degrees C scenario, dry matter accumulation and resulting yield were also reduced for tomato, whereas no negative yield effects were observed for winter durum wheat. In general, limiting the global mean temperature change of 2A degrees C, the application of adaptation strategies (irrigation and nitrogen fertilization) showed a positive effect in minimizing the negative impacts of climate change on productivity of tomato cultivated in southern Italy.
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Lotze-Campen, H., Verburg, P. H., Popp, A., Lindner, M., Verkerk, P. J., Moiseyev, A., et al. (2018). A cross-scale impact assessment of European nature protection policies under contrasting future socio-economic pathways. Reg. Environ. Change, 18(3), 751–762.
Abstract: Protection of natural or semi-natural ecosystems is an important part of societal strategies for maintaining biodiversity, ecosystem services, and achieving overall sustainable development. The assessment of multiple emerging land use trade-offs is complicated by the fact that land use changes occur and have consequences at local, regional, and even global scale. Outcomes also depend on the underlying socio-economic trends. We apply a coupled, multi-scale modelling system to assess an increase in nature protection areas as a key policy option in the European Union (EU). The main goal of the analysis is to understand the interactions between policy-induced land use changes across different scales and sectors under two contrasting future socio-economic pathways. We demonstrate how complementary insights into land system change can be gained by coupling land use models for agriculture, forestry, and urban areas for Europe, in connection with other world regions. The simulated policy case of nature protection shows how the allocation of a certain share of total available land to newly protected areas, with specific management restrictions imposed, may have a range of impacts on different land-based sectors until the year 2040. Agricultural land in Europe is slightly reduced, which is partly compensated for by higher management intensity. As a consequence of higher costs, total calorie supply per capita is reduced within the EU. While wood harvest is projected to decrease, carbon sequestration rates increase in European forests. At the same time, imports of industrial roundwood from other world regions are expected to increase. Some of the aggregate effects of nature protection have very different implications at the local to regional scale in different parts of Europe. Due to nature protection measures, agricultural production is shifted from more productive land in Europe to on average less productive land in other parts of the world. This increases, at the global level, the allocation of land resources for agriculture, leading to a decrease in tropical forest areas, reduced carbon stocks, and higher greenhouse gas emissions outside of Europe. The integrated modelling framework provides a method to assess the land use effects of a single policy option while accounting for the trade-offs between locations, and between regional, European, and global scales.
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Özkan Gülzari, Ş., Vosough Ahmadi, B., & Stott, A. W. (2018). Impact of subclinical mastitis on greenhouse gas emissions intensity and profitability of dairy cows in Norway. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 150, 19–29.
Abstract: Impaired animal health causes both productivity and profitability losses on dairy farms, resulting in inefficient use of inputs and increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced per unit of product (i.e. emissions intensity). Here, we used subclinical mastitis as an exemplar to benchmark alternative scenarios against an economic optimum and adjusted herd structure to estimate the GHG emissions intensity associated with varying levels of disease. Five levels of somatic cell count (SCC) classes were considered namely 50,000 (i.e. SCC50), 200,000, 400,000, 600,000 and 800,000 cells/mL (milliliter) of milk. The effects of varying levels of SCC on milk yield reduction and consequential milk price penalties were used in a dynamic programming (DP) model that maximizes the profit per cow, represented as expected net present value, by choosing optimal animal replacement rates. The GHG emissions intensities associated with different levels of SCC were then computed using a farm-scale model (HolosNor). The total culling rates of both primiparous (PP) and multiparous (MP) cows for the five levels of SCC scenarios estimated by the model varied from a minimum of 30.9% to a maximum of 43.7%. The expected profit was the highest for cows with SCC200 due to declining margin over feed, which influenced the DP model to cull and replace more animals and generate higher profit under this scenario compared to SCC50. The GHG emission intensities for the PP and MP cows with SCC50 were 1.01 kg (kilogram) and 0.95 kg carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) per kg fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM), respectively, with the lowest emissions being achieved in SCC50. Our results show that there is a potential to reduce the farm GHG emissions intensity by 3.7% if the milk production was improved through reducing the level of SCC to 50,000 cells/mL in relation to SCC level 800,000 cells/mL. It was concluded that preventing and/or controlling subclinical mastitis consequently reduces the GHG emissions per unit of product on farm that results in improved profits for the farmers through reductions in milk losses, optimum culling rate and reduced feed and other variable costs. We suggest that further studies exploring the impact of a combination of diseases on emissions intensity are warranted.
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Höglind, M., Thorsen, S. M., & Semenov, M. A. (2013). Assessing uncertainties in impact of climate change on grass production in Northern Europe using ensembles of global climate models. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 170, 103–113.
Abstract: Forage-based dairy and livestock production is the backbone of agriculture in Northern Europe in economic terms. Changes in growing conditions that affect forage grass yield may have great economic consequences. This study assessed the impact of climate change on two grass species, timothy and ryegrass, at 14 locations in Northern Europe (Iceland, Scandinavia, Baltic countries) in a near-future scenario (2040-2065) compared with the baseline period 1960-1990. Local-scale climate scenarios were based on the CMIP3 multi-model ensembles of 15 global climate models in order to quantify the uncertainty in the impacts relating to highly uncertain projections of future climate. Potential yield of timothy, the most important perennial forage grass in Northern Europe, was simulated under the assumption of optimal overwintering conditions and current CO2 level, in order to obtain an estimate of the effect of changes in summer climate per se. The risk of frost and ice damage during winter was also assessed. The simulation results demonstrated that potential grass yield will increase throughout the study area, mainly as a result of increased growing temperatures. The yield response to climate change was slightly larger in irrigated than non-irrigated conditions (14% and 11%, respectively), due to larger water deficit for the 2050 scenario. However, a geo-climatic gradient was evident, with the largest predicted yield response at western locations. A geo-climatic gradient was also revealed with respect to potential frost damage, which was predicted to increase during winter in some areas east of the Baltic Sea for timothy, and for a larger number of locations both east and west of the Baltic Sea for perennial ryegrass. The risk of frost damage in spring was predicted to increase mainly in western parts of the study area. If frost damage to perennial ryegrass increases during winter, the expected increase in winter temperature due to global warming may not necessarily improve overwintering conditions, so the growing zone may not necessarily expand to the north and east of the study area by 2050. The uncertainty in impacts was frequently, but not consistently, greater in western than eastern locations. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Angulo, C., Rötter, R., Lock, R., Enders, A., Fronzek, S., & Ewert, F. (2013). Implication of crop model calibration strategies for assessing regional impacts of climate change in Europe. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 170, 32–46.
Abstract: Process-based crop simulation models are increasingly used in regional climate change impact studies, but little is known about the implications of different calibration strategies on simulated yields. This study aims to assess the importance of region-specific calibration of five important field crops (winter wheat, winter barley, potato, sugar beet and maize) across 25 member countries of the European Union (EU25). We examine three calibration strategies and their implications on spatial and temporal yield variability in response to climate change: (i) calculation of phenology parameters only, (ii) consideration of both phenology calibration and a yield correction factor and (iii) calibration of phenology and selected growth processes. The analysis is conducted for 533 climate zones, considering 24 years of observed yield data (1983-2006). The best performing strategy is used to estimate the impacts of climate change, increasing CO2 concentration and technology development on yields for the five crops across EU25, using seven climate change scenarios for the period 2041-2064. Simulations and calibrations are performed with the crop model LINTUL2 combined with a calibration routine implemented in the modelling interface LINTUL-FAST. The results show that yield simulations improve if growth parameters are considered in the calibration for individual regions (strategy 3); e.g. RMSE values for simulated winter wheat yield are 2.36, 1.10 and 0.70 Mg ha(-1) for calibration strategies 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The calibration strategy did not only affect the model simulations under reference climate but also the extent of the simulated climate change impacts. Applying the calibrated model for impact assessment revealed that climatic change alone will reduce crop yields. Consideration of the effects of increasing CO2 concentration and technology development resulted in yield increases for all crops except maize (i.e. the negative effects of climate change were outbalanced by the positive effects of CO2 and technology change), with considerable differences between scenarios and regions. Our simulations also suggest some increase in yield variability due to climate change which, however, is less pronounced than the differences among scenarios which are particularly large when the effects of CO2 concentration and technology development are considered. Our results stress the need for region-specific calibration of crop models used for Europe-wide assessments. Limitations of the considered strategies are discussed. We recommend that future work should focus on obtaining more comprehensive, high quality data with a finer resolution allowing application of improved strategies for model calibration that better account for spatial differences and changes over time in the growth and development parameters used in crop models. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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