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Webber, H., Ewert, F., Kimball, B. A., Siebert, S., White, J. W., Wall, G. W., et al. (2016). Simulating canopy temperature for modelling heat stress in cereals. Env. Model. Softw., 77, 143–155.
Abstract: Crop models must be improved to account for the effects of heat stress events on crop yields. To date, most approaches in crop models use air temperature to define heat stress intensity as the cumulative sum of thermal times (TT) above a high temperature threshold during a sensitive period for yield formation. However, observational evidence indicates that crop canopy temperature better explains yield reductions associated with high temperature events than air temperature does. This study presents a canopy level energy balance using Monin ObukhovSimilarity Theory (MOST) with simplifications about the canopy resistance that render it suitable for application in crop models and other models of the plant environment. The model is evaluated for a uniform irrigated wheat canopy in Arizona and rainfed maize in Burkina Faso. No single variable regression relationships for key explanatory variables were found that were consistent across sowing dates to explain the deviation of canopy temperature from air temperature. Finally, thermal times determined with simulated canopy temperatures were able to reproduce thermal times calculated with observed canopy temperature, whereas those determined with air temperatures were not. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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De Pascale, S., Maggio, A., Orsini, F., Stanghellini, C., & Heuvelink, E. (2015). Growth response and radiation use efficiency in tomato exposed to short-term and long-term salinized soils. Scientia Horticulturae, 189, 139–149.
Abstract: Farmlands are increasingly exposed to degradation phenomena associated to climate change and agricultural practices, including irrigation. It is estimated that about 20% of the world’s irrigated land is salt affected. In this paper we aimed at evaluating the effect of seasonal and multiannual soil satinization on growth, yield, and radiation use efficiency of tomato in open field. Two field experiments were carried out at the Experimental Station of the University of Naples Federico II (latitude 40 degrees 31’N longitude 14 degrees 58’E) (Italy) on tomato during 2004 and 2005 to study the effect of five levels of water salinity: NSC (EC = 0.5 dS m(-1)), SW1 (EC= 2.3 dS m(-1)), SW2 (EC= 4.4 dS m(-1)), SW3 (EC= 8.5 dS m(-1)) and SW4 (EC= 15.7 dS m(-1)) in a soil exposed to one-season salinization (ST = short-term) and an adjacent soil exposed to >20 years salinization (LT = long-term). Plant growth, yield and fruit quality (pH, EC, total soluble solids and the concentration of reducing sugars and of titratable acids), and plant water relations were measured and radiation use efficiency (RUE) was calculated. Increasing water salinity negatively affected the leaf area index (LAI), radiation use efficiency (RUE) and above-ground dry weight (DW) accumulation resulting in lower total and marketable yield. Maximum total and marketable yield obtained with the NSC treatment were respectively 117.9 and 111.0 Mg ha(-1) in 2004 and 113.1 and 107.9 Mg ha(-1) in 2005. Although the smaller leaf area of salinized plants was largely responsible for reduced RUE, we found approximately 50% of this reduction to be accounted for by processes other than changed crop architecture. These may include an increased stomatal resistance, increased mesophyll resistance and other impaired metabolic functions that may occur at high salinity. Remarkably, we found that LT salinized plants had a slightly better efficiency of use of intercepted radiation (RUEIR) at a given EC of soil extract than ST salinized plants indicating that LT salinization, and consequent permanent modifications of the soil physical properties, may trigger additional physiological mechanisms of adaptation compared to ST salinized plants. These differences are relevant in light of the evolution of salinized areas, also in response to climate change.
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Holman, I. P., Brown, C., Janes, V., & Sandars, D. (2017). Can we be certain about future land use change in Europe? A multi-scenario, integrated-assessment analysis. Agric. Syst., 151, 126–135.
Abstract: The global land system is facing unprecedented pressures from growing human populations and climatic change. Understanding the effects these pressures may have is necessary to designing land management strategies that ensure food security, ecosystem service provision and successful climate mitigation and adaptation. However, the number of complex, interacting effects involved makes any complete understanding very difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, the recent development of integrated modelling frameworks allows for the exploration of the co-development of human and natural systems under scenarios of global change, potentially illuminating the main drivers and processes in future land system change. Here, we use one such integrated modelling framework (the CLIMSAVE Integrated Assessment Platform) to investigate the range of projected outcomes in the European land system across climatic and socio-economic scenarios for the 2050s. We find substantial consistency in locations and types of change even under the most divergent conditions, with results suggesting that climate change alone will lead to a contraction in the agricultural and forest area within Europe, particularly in southern Europe. This is partly offset by the introduction of socioeconomic changes that change both the demand for agricultural production, through changing food demand and net imports, and the efficiency of agricultural production. Simulated extensification and abandonment in the Mediterranean region is driven by future decreases in the relative profitability of the agricultural sector in southern Europe, owing to decreased productivity as a consequence of increased heat and drought stress and reduced irrigation water availability. The very low likelihood (<33% probability) that current land use proportions in many parts of Europe will remain unchanged suggests that future policy should seek to promote and support the multifunctional role of agriculture and forests in different European regions, rather than focusing on increased productivity as a route to agricultural and forestry viability.
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Dumont, B., Leemans, V., Mansouri, M., Bodson, B., Destain, J. - P., & Destain, M. - F. (2014). Parameter identification of the STICS crop model, using an accelerated formal MCMC approach. Env. Model. Softw., 52, 121–135.
Abstract: This study presents a Bayesian approach for the parameters’ identification of the STICS crop model based on the recently developed Differential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm. The posterior distributions of nine specific crop parameters of the STICS model were sampled with the aim to improve the growth simulations of a winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L) culture. The results obtained with the DREAM algorithm were initially compared to those obtained with a Nelder-Mead Simplex algorithm embedded within the OptimiSTICS package. Then, three types of likelihood functions implemented within the DREAM algorithm were compared, namely the standard least square, the weighted least square, and a transformed likelihood function that makes explicit use of the coefficient of variation (CV). The results showed that the proposed CV likelihood function allowed taking into account both noise on measurements and heteroscedasticity which are regularly encountered in crop modelling. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Weindl, I., Bodirsky, B. L., Rolinski, S., Biewald, A., Lotze-Campen, H., Muller, C., et al. (2017). Livestock production and the water challenge of future food supply: Implications of agricultural management and dietary choices. Global Environmental Change-Human and Policy Dimensions, 47, 121–132.
Abstract: Human activities use more than half of accessible freshwater, above all for agriculture. Most approaches for reconciling water conservation with feeding a growing population focus on the cropping sector. However, livestock production is pivotal to agricultural resource use, due to its low resource-use efficiency upstream in the food supply chain. Using a global modelling approach, we quantify the current and future contribution of livestock production, under different demand-and supply-side scenarios, to the consumption of “green” precipitation water infiltrated into the soil and “blue” freshWater withdrawn from rivers, lakes and reservoirs. Currently, cropland feed production accounts for 38% of crop water consumption and grazing involves 29% of total agricultural water consumption (9990 km(3) yr(-1)). Our analysis shows that changes in diets and livestock productivity have substantial implications for future consumption of agricultural blue water (19-36% increase compared to current levels) and green water (26-69% increase), but they can, at best, slow down trends of rising water requirements for decades to come. However, moderate productivity reductions in highly intensive livestock systems are possible without aggravating water scarcity. Productivity gains in developing regions decrease total agricultural water consumption, but lead to expansion of irrigated agriculture, due to the shift from grassland/green water to cropland/blue water resources. While the magnitude of the livestock water footprint gives cause for concern, neither dietary choices nor changes in livestock productivity will solve the water challenge of future food supply, unless accompanied by dedicated water protection policies.
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