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Weindl, I., Lotze-Campen, H., Popp, A., Müller, C., Havlík, P., Herrero, M., et al. (2015). Livestock in a changing climate: production system transitions as an adaptation strategy for agriculture. Environ. Res. Lett., 10(9), 094021.
Abstract: Livestock farming is the world’s largest land use sector and utilizes around 60% of the global biomass harvest. Over the coming decades, climate change will affect the natural resource base of livestock production, especially the productivity of rangeland and feed crops. Based on a comprehensive impact modeling chain, we assess implications of different climate projections for agricultural production costs and land use change and explore the effectiveness of livestock system transitions as an adaptation strategy. Simulated climate impacts on crop yields and rangeland productivity generate adaptation costs amounting to 3% of total agricultural production costs in 2045 (i.e. 145 billion US$). Shifts in livestock production towards mixed crop-livestock systems represent a resource-and cost-efficient adaptation option, reducing agricultural adaptation costs to 0.3% of total production costs and simultaneously abating deforestation by about 76 million ha globally. The relatively positive climate impacts on grass yields compared with crop yields favor grazing systems inter alia in South Asia and North America. Incomplete transitions in production systems already have a strong adaptive and cost reducing effect: a 50% shift to mixed systems lowers agricultural adaptation costs to 0.8%. General responses of production costs to system transitions are robust across different global climate and crop models as well as regarding assumptions on CO2 fertilization, but simulated values show a large variation. In the face of these uncertainties, public policy support for transforming livestock production systems provides an important lever to improve agricultural resource management and lower adaptation costs, possibly even contributing to emission reduction.
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Wolf, J., Kanellopoulos, A., Kros, J., Webber, H., Zhao, G., Britz, W., et al. (2015). Combined analysis of climate, technological and price changes on future arable farming systems in Europe. Agricultural Systems, 140, 56–73.
Abstract: In this study, we compare the relative importance of climate change to technological, management, price and policy changes on European arable farming systems. This required linking four models: the SIMPLACE crop growth modelling framework to calculate future yields under climate change for arable crops; the CAPRI model to estimate impacts on global agricultural markets, specifically product prices; the bio-economic farm model FSSIM to calculate the future changes in cropping patterns and farm net income at the farm and regional level; and the environmental model INTEGRATOR to calculate nitrogen (N) uptake and losses to air and water. First, the four linked models were applied to analyse the effect of climate change only or a most likely baseline (i.e. B1) scenario for 2050 as well as for two alternative scenarios with, respectively, strong (i.e. A1-b1) and weak economic growth (B2) for five regions/countries across Europe (i.e. Denmark, Flevoland, Midi Pyrenees, Zachodniopomorsld and Andalucia). These analyses Were repeated but assuming in addition to climate change impacts, also the effects of changes in technology and management on crop yields, the effects of changes in prices and policies in 2050, and the effects of all factors together. The outcomes show that the effects of climate change to 2050 result in higher farm net incomes in the Northern and Northern-Central EU regions, in practically unchanged farm net incomes in the Central and Central-Southern EU regions, and in much lower farm net incomes in Southern EU regions compared to those in the base year. Climate change in combination with improved technology and farm management and/or with price changes towards 2050 results in a higher to much higher farm net incomes. Increases in farm net income for the B1 and A1-b1 scenarios are moderately stronger than those for the B2 scenario, due to the smaller increases in product prices and/or yields for the B2 scenario. Farm labour demand slightly to moderately increases towards 2050 as related to changes in cropping patterns. Changes in N2O emissions and N leaching compared to the base year are mainly caused by changes in total N inputs from the applied fertilizers and animal manure, which in turn are influenced by changes in crop yields and cropping patterns, whereas NH3 emissions are mainly determined by assumed improvements in manure application techniques. N emissions and N leaching strongly increase in Denmark and Zachodniopomorski, slightly decrease to moderately increase in Flevoland and Midi-Pyrenees, and strongly decrease in Andalucia, except for NH3 emissions which zero to moderately decrease in Flevoland and Denmark. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All tights reserved.
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Castañeda-Vera, A., Leffelaar, P. A., Álvaro-Fuentes, J., Cantero-Martínez, C., & Mínguez, M. I. (2015). Selecting crop models for decision making in wheat insurance. European Journal of Agronomy, 68, 97–116.
Abstract: In crop insurance, the accuracy with which the insurer quantifies the actual risk is highly dependent on the availability on actual yield data. Crop models might be valuable tools to generate data on expected yields for risk assessment when no historical records are available. However, selecting a crop model for a specific objective, location and implementation scale is a difficult task. A look inside the different crop and soil modules to understand how outputs are obtained might facilitate model choice. The objectives of this paper were (i) to assess the usefulness of crop models to be used within a crop insurance analysis and design and (ii) to select the most suitable crop model for drought risk assessment in semi-arid regions in Spain. For that purpose first, a pre-selection of crop models simulating wheat yield under rainfed growing conditions at the field scale was made, and second, four selected models (Aquacrop, CERES-Wheat, CropSyst and WOFOST) were compared in terms of modelling approaches, process descriptions and model outputs. Outputs of the four models for the simulation of winter wheat growth are comparable when water is not limiting, but differences are larger when simulating yields under rainfed conditions. These differences in rainfed yields are mainly related to the dissimilar simulated soil water availability and the assumed linkages with dry matter formation. We concluded that for the simulation of winter wheat growth at field scale in such semi-arid conditions, CERES-Wheat and CropSyst are preferred. WOFOST is a satisfactory compromise between data availability and complexity when detail data on soil is limited. Aquacrop integrates physiological processes in some representative parameters, thus diminishing the number of input parameters, what is seen as an advantage when observed data is scarce. However, the high sensitivity of this model to low water availability limits its use in the region considered. Contrary to the use of ensembles of crop models, we endorse that efforts be concentrated on selecting or rebuilding a model that includes approaches that better describe the agronomic conditions of the regions in which they will be applied. The use of such complex methodologies as crop models is associated with numerous sources of uncertainty, although these models are the best tools available to get insight in these complex agronomic systems. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Semenov, M. A., & Stratonovitch, P. (2015). Adapting wheat ideotypes for climate change: accounting for uncertainties in CMIP5 climate projections. Clim. Res., 65, 123–139.
Abstract: This study describes integration of climate change projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) multi-model ensemble with the LARS-WG weather generator, which delivers an attractive option for the downscaling of large-scale climate projections from global climate models (GCMs) to local-scale climate scenarios for impact assessments. A subset of 18 GCMs from the CMIP5 ensemble and 2 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, were integrated with LARS-WG. For computationally demanding impact assessments, where it is not practical to explore all possible combinations of GCM x RCP, a climate sensitivity index could be used to select a subset of GCMs which preserves the range of uncertainty found in CMIP5. This would allow us to quantify uncertainty in predictions of impacts resulting fromthe CMIP5 ensemble by conducting fewer simulation experiments. In a case study, we describe the use of the Sirius wheat simulation model to design in silico wheat ideotypes that are optimised for future climates in Europe, sampling uncertainty in GCMs, emission scenarios, time periods and European locations with contrasting climates. Two contrasting GCMs were selected for the analysis, ‘hot’ HadGEM2-ES and ‘cool’ GISS-E2-R-CC. Despite large uncertainty in future climate projections, we were able to identify target traits for wheat improvement which may assist breeding for high-yielding wheat cultivars with increased yield stability.
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Ghaley, B. B., Sandhu, H. S., & Porter, J. R. (2015). Relationship between C:N/C:O stoichiometry and ecosystem services in managed production systems. PLoS One, 10(4), e0123869.
Abstract: Land use and management intensity can influence provision of ecosystem services (ES). We argue that forest/agroforestry production systems are characterized by relatively higher C:O/C:N and ES value compared to arable production systems. Field investigations on C:N/C:O and 15 ES were determined in three diverse production systems: wheat monoculture (Cwheat), a combined food and energy system (CFE) and a beech forest in Denmark. The C:N/C:O ratios were 194.1/1.68, 94.1/1.57 and 59.5/1.45 for beech forest, CFE and Cwheat, respectively. The economic value of the non-marketed ES was also highest in beech forest (US$ 1089 ha(-1) yr(-1)) followed by CFE (US$ 800 ha(-1) yr(-1)) and Cwheat (US$ 339 ha(-1) yr(-1)). The combined economic value was highest in the CFE (US$ 3143 ha(-1) yr(-1)) as compared to the Cwheat (US$ 2767 ha(-1) yr(-1)) and beech forest (US$ 2365 ha(-1) yr(-1)). We argue that C:N/C:O can be used as a proxy of ES, particularly for the non-marketed ES, such as regulating, supporting and cultural services. These ES play a vital role in the sustainable production of food and energy. Therefore, they should be considered in decision making and developing appropriate policy responses for land use management.
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