Abstract: Developing scenarios is a common interest within MACSUR researchers. This report  outlines the main results of a survey of TRADE-M participants with respect to the  scenarios used within modelling, the time frame and the importance of factors in  their development. Most researchers are generating their own regionally defined  scenarios, though some are basing these on IPCC scenarios. Generally, they adopt  a short-term time frame of up to 2020 to estimate impacts. Most see food  production as the main driver behind the scenarios followed by climate change  mitigation and adaptation. The main weakness seems to be lack of interest in  modelling variability due to weather effects, these may be an argument for  stronger cross-collaboration between different MACSUR consortia within the crops  and animals groups. No Label

Abstract: The first TradeM workshop was held at Haifa University (Israel), 3-5 March 2013. It was a  state-of-the-art Workshop ‘Economic Modelling on Agriculture with Climate Change for  Food Security’. Sixteen papers are presented, following a call for abstracts submitted in  December 2012.  Presented, reviewed and discussed models, their inputs, outputs and main results of  case-study analyses let indicate of how the model can be used to analyze the  impacts of climate change on food security, how the model can contribute to, and  benefit from other economic and/or crop and livestock models and what input is  needed from CropM and LiveM. There were explored ideas for closer integration and  linkage between agriculture and economic models and between economic models at  different levels, addressing issues of model structure, scale and data processing. Focus was  on model comparison, gap analysis, scientific advancements and improvements. We also  addressed the key challenges of the economic models (macro- versus micro-economics;  uncertainty versus risks; variability and distribution), and identified ways to cope with  scaling, uncertainty, risks. The workshop let identify the requirements from CropM and  LiveM, find policy questions that MACSUR is going to address, start with the content of the  case studies and plan for publication of scientific papers.  The sessions were broadcast live via the internet. Twenty-four registered participants and  about 65 local visitors attended the workshop.This work was co-financed by NCBiR, Contract no. FACCE JPI/04/2012 – P100 PARTNER No Label

Abstract: In the MACSUR project, there are several grassland models in use that were designed for and adjusted with data from different climatic regions. To be able to run these modelsfor a wide geographical range, there is a need to validate and calibrate them on the same basis.Therefore, a high-quality dataset is needed, which includes a wide range of climatic conditions, management systems and other variables.Through this search 23 grassland related institutes from eleven countries were found and contacted, where 12 of them responded to the request. Nine institutes from cooler (e.g. Finland) and warmer regions (e.g. Israel) are now willing to provide their experimental data. One contributor is even planning to join the project bringing its own grassland model.These new grassland datasets cover in addition to already available ones (Fig. 1) a wide range of climatic regions for a substantiated calibration and validation of the models. Data supplied by the institutes have been checked for internal consistency and cast into a common format. The data have been passed on to WP L2 (Model intercomparison on climate change in relation to livestock and grassland). No Label