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Hoffmann, H., Zhao, G., Van Bussel, L. G. J., Enders, A., Specka, X., Sosa, C., et al. (2014). Effects of climate input data aggregation on modelling regional crop yields. CropM International Symposium and Workshop.
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Hoffmann, H., Zhao, G., Van Bussel, L., Enders, A., Specka, X., Sosa, C., et al. (2014). Effects of climate input data aggregation on modelling regional crop yields. FACCE MACSUR Mid-term Scientific Conference, 3(S) Sassari, Italy.
Abstract: Crop models can be sensitive to climate input data aggregation and this response may differ among models. This should be considered when applying field-scale models for assessment of climate change impacts on larger spatial scales or when coupling models across scales. In order to evaluate these effects systematically, an ensemble of ten crop models was run with climate input data on different spatial aggregations ranging from 1, 10, 25, 50 and 100 km horizontal resolution for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Models were minimally calibrated to typical sowing and harvest dates, and crop yields observed in the region, subsequently simulating potential, water-limited and nitrogen-limited production of winter wheat and silage maize for 1982-2011. Outputs were analysed for 19 variables (yield, evapotranspiration, soil organic carbon, etc.). In this study the sensitivity of the individual models and the model ensemble in response to input data aggregation is assessed for crop yield. Results show that the mean yield of the region calculated from climate time series of 1 km horizontal resolution changes only little when using climate input data of higher aggregation levels for most models. However, yield frequency distributions change with aggregation, resembling observed data better with increasing resolution. With few exceptions, these results apply to the two crops and three production situations (potential, water-, nitrogen-limited) and across models including the model ensemble, regardless of differences among models in simulated yield levels and spatial yield patterns. Results of this study improve the confidence of using crop models at varying scales.
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Zhao, G., Hoffmann, H., Van Bussel, L., Enders, A., Specka, X., Sosa, C., et al. (2014). Weather data aggregation’s effects on simulation of cropping systems: a model, production system and crop comparison. FACCE MACSUR Mid-term Scientific Conference, 3(S) Sassari, Italy.
Abstract: Interactions of climate, soil and management practices in cropping systems can be simulated at different scales to provide information for decision making. Low resolution simulation need less effort, but important details could be lost through data aggregation effects (DAEs). This paper aims to provide a general method to assess the DAEs on weather data and the simulation of cropping systems, and further investigate how the DAEs vary with changing crop models, crops, variables and production systems. A 30-year continuous cropping system was simulated for winter wheat and silage maize and potential, water-limited and water-nitrogen-limited production situations. Climate data of 1 km resolution and aggregations to resolutions of 10 to 100 km was used as input for the simulations. The data aggregation narrowed the variation of weather data and DAEs increased with increasingly coarser spatial resolution, causing the loss of hot spots in simulated results. Spatial patterns were similar across different resolutions. Consistent with DAEs on weather data, the DAEs on simulated yield (0 to 1.2 t ha-1 for winter wheat and 0 to 1.7 t ha-1 for silage maize), evapotranspiration (3 to 45 mm yr-1 for winter wheat and 4 to 40 mm yr-1 for silage maize), and water use efficiency (0.02 to 0.25 kg m-3 for winter wheat and 0.04 to 0.4 kg m-3 for silage maize), increased with coarser spatial resolution. Thus, if spatial information is needed for local management decisions, higher resolution is needed to adequately capture the spatial heterogeneity or hot spots in the region.
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Hoffmann, H., Zhao, G., Asseng, S., Bindi, M., Biernath, C., Constantin, J., et al. (2016). Impact of spatial soil and climate input data aggregation on regional yield simulations. PLoS One, 11(4), e0151782.
Abstract: We show the error in water-limited yields simulated by crop models which is associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate input data. Crop simulations at large scales (regional, national, continental) frequently use input data of low resolution. Therefore, climate and soil data are often generated via averaging and sampling by area majority. This may bias simulated yields at large scales, varying largely across models. Thus, we evaluated the error associated with spatially aggregated soil and climate data for 14 crop models. Yields of winter wheat and silage maize were simulated under water-limited production conditions. We calculated this error from crop yields simulated at spatial resolutions from 1 to 100 km for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Most models showed yields biased by <15% when aggregating only soil data. The relative mean absolute error (rMAE) of most models using aggregated soil data was in the range or larger than the inter-annual or inter-model variability in yields. This error increased further when both climate and soil data were aggregated. Distinct error patterns indicate that the rMAE may be estimated from few soil variables. Illustrating the range of these aggregation effects across models, this study is a first step towards an ex-ante assessment of aggregation errors in large-scale simulations.
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Tao, F., Roetter, R. P., Palosuo, T., Hernandez Diaz-Ambrona, C. G., Ines Minguez, M., Semenov, M. A., et al. (2018). Contribution of crop model structure, parameters and climate projections to uncertainty in climate change impact assessments. Glob. Chang. Biol., 24(3), 1291–1307.
Abstract: Climate change impact assessments are plagued with uncertainties from many sources, such as climate projections or the inadequacies in structure and parameters of the impact model. Previous studies tried to account for the uncertainty from one or two of these. Here, we developed a triple-ensemble probabilistic assessment using seven crop models, multiple sets of model parameters and eight contrasting climate projections together to comprehensively account for uncertainties from these three important sources. We demonstrated the approach in assessing climate change impact on barley growth and yield at Jokioinen, Finland in the Boreal climatic zone and Lleida, Spain in the Mediterranean climatic zone, for the 2050s. We further quantified and compared the contribution of crop model structure, crop model parameters and climate projections to the total variance of ensemble output using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Based on the triple-ensemble probabilistic assessment, the median of simulated yield change was -4% and +16%, and the probability of decreasing yield was 63% and 31% in the 2050s, at Jokioinen and Lleida, respectively, relative to 1981-2010. The contribution of crop model structure to the total variance of ensemble output was larger than that from downscaled climate projections and model parameters. The relative contribution of crop model parameters and downscaled climate projections to the total variance of ensemble output varied greatly among the seven crop models and between the two sites. The contribution of downscaled climate projections was on average larger than that of crop model parameters. This information on the uncertainty from different sources can be quite useful for model users to decide where to put the most effort when preparing or choosing models or parameters for impact analyses. We concluded that the triple-ensemble probabilistic approach that accounts for the uncertainties from multiple important sources provide more comprehensive information for quantifying uncertainties in climate change impact assessments as compared to the conventional approaches that are deterministic or only account for the uncertainties from one or two of the uncertainty sources.
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