关键词： agriculture   climate change   adaptation   transformational change   uncertainty   robust adaptation   agricultural systems  

摘要： Climate change might impact crop yields considerably and anticipated transformations of agricultural systems are needed in the coming decades to sustain affordable food provision. However, decision-making on transformational shifts in agricultural systems is plagued by uncertainties concerning the nature and geography of climate change, its impacts, and adequate responses. Locking agricultural systems into inadequate transformations costly to adjust is a significant risk and this acts as an incentive to delay action. It is crucial to gain insight into how much transformation is required from agricultural systems, how robust such strategies are, and how we can defuse the associated challenge for decision-making. While implementing a definition related to large changes in resource use into a global impact assessment modelling framework, we find transformational adaptations to be required of agricultural systems in most regions by 2050s in order to cope with climate change. However, these transformations widely differ across climate change scenarios: uncertainties in large-scale development of irrigation span in all continents from 2030s on, and affect two-thirds of regions by 2050s. Meanwhile, significant but uncertain reduction of major agricultural areas affects the Northern Hemisphere's temperate latitudes, while increases to non-agricultural zones could be large but uncertain in one-third of regions. To help reducing the associated challenge for decision-making, we propose a methodology exploring which, when, where and why transformations could be required and uncertain, by means of scenario analysis.

关键词： 春季气候变化   气温   降水   春播   冬小麦   山西省  

摘要： 对山西省1961-2008年春季气候变化特征进行分析得出,山西省春季平均气温变化呈上升趋势,增温速率为0.32/10a,春季平均气温变化趋势具有北多南少,山区多于山谷的特征;近48 a中春季降水量呈"上升—下降—上升—下降"的波动变化特征,其中太原以北多地区降水呈增加趋势、以南呈下降趋势,而且越向南降水下降趋势越明显。春季平均气温升高对正常开展春播极为有利,减少了作物生长期早霜冻危害,但降水的不稳定、土壤蒸发量增大加剧了春旱灾害的频发发生,对适时春播和冬小麦增产不利。

关键词： 风气候变化特征   设施农业   防御措施   辽宁喀左   1961--2010年  

摘要： 根据1961—2010年喀左县逐年风的气象资料,统计分析该县平均风速、最大风速、大风日数的气候变化特征。结果表明:喀左县的风速呈线性减少的趋势,并通过对近年来设施农业的风灾统计分析,得知6、7级风是危害当地设施农业的主要风灾,并针对风灾提出设施农业相应的防御措施。

关键词： Lower Mekong Basin   Irrigation   Agricultural water use   Climate change   Drought   Rice production  

摘要： According to hydrological simulations by the Mekong River Commission, average annual flow of the Mekong will not change significantly despite climate change. However, they projected increased variability in wet and dry season flows, which will tend to increase the flood and drought risks to crops. To learn the implications of climate change for rice farming in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), a lower part of the Basin from China-Lao PDR border to the South China Sea, climate and hydrological figures related to rice production were compared in between the baseline in 1985-2000 and the climate change scenario in 2010-2050. Special attention was given to their 10 and 90 % exceedance values, which are rough equivalence of 10 and 90 % cumulative probabilities, to see changes in the frequency and extent of extreme weather events. Major findings of this study include the followings: (1) evapo-transpirations will increase in both average and 90 % cumulative probability values, raising irrigation demand. (2) Deviation of the annual rainfall will become larger, causing water shortage in reservoirs more frequently in the future. (3) The transplanting date of rain-fed rice will be delayed more likely due to insufficient precipitation in the early wet season, which may result in decreasing rice production. (4) Longer dry spells will be observed during the wet season, raising the drought risk to rain-fed rice. (5) These changes will be generally observed across the LMB, while the extent of the changes varies among regions.

关键词： agriculture   Teaching   United States Department of Agriculture  

摘要： The article reviews the three 20 million U.S. dollars projects of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Coordinated Agricultural Projects (CAPs) chosen for funding. Topics discussed include the challenge faced by managers of large projects to ensure participants can comprehend how their work fits into the project as a whole and the implications of geographic separation limiting face-to-face interactions critical for the quality of collaborations.

关键词： Climate change   Adaptation   Integrated assessment models   Investment   New technologies   Developing countries  

摘要： In this paper we discuss the scope of the adaptation challenge facing world agriculture in the coming decades. Due to rising temperatures throughout the tropics, pressures for adaptation will be greatest in some of the poorest parts of the world where the adaptive capacity is least abundant. We discuss both autonomous (market driven) and planned adaptations, distinguishing: (a) those that can be undertaken with existing technology, (b) those that involve development of new technologies, and (c) those that involve institutional/market and policy reforms. The paper then proceeds to identify which of these adaptations are currently modeled in integrated assessment studies and related analyses at global scale. This, in turn, gives rise to recommendations about how these models should be modified in order to more effectively capture climate change adaptation in the farm and food sector. In general, we find that existing integrated assessment models are better suited to analyzing adaptation by relatively well-endowed producers operating in market-integrated, developed countries. They likely understate climate impacts on agriculture in developing countries, while overstating the potential adaptations. This is troubling, since the need for adaptation will be greatest amongst the lower income producers in the poorest tropical countries. This is also where policies and public investments are likely to have the highest payoff. We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for improving the empirical foundations of integrated assessment modeling with an emphasis on the poorest countries. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

关键词： Conservation agriculture   Maize yields   DSSAT   Climate change   Risk averse farmers  

摘要： Adoption of conservation agriculture (CA) is increasingly being promoted as a way of adapting agricultural systems to increasing climate variability, especially for areas such as southern Africa where rainfall is projected to decrease. The DSSAT crop simulation models can be a valuable tool in evaluating the effects of CA which are viable both economically and environmentally. Our objectives were: (1) to evaluate the ability of DSSAT to predict continuous maize (Zea mays L.) yield for conventional tillage (CT) and CA systems as well as maize yield for a CA maize-cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) rotation on an Oxic rhodustalf (2) to use DSSAT to project weather effect of climate change on yield, economic returns and risk in CT and CA systems. The DSSAT model was calibrated using data from 2007-2008 season and validated against independent data sets of yield of 2008-2009 to 2011-2012 seasons. Simulations of maize yields were conducted on projected future weather data from 2010 to 2030 that was generated by RegCM4 using the A1B scenario. The DSSAT model calibration and validation showed that it could be used for decision-making to choose specific CA practices especially for no-till and crop residue retention. Long term simulations showed that maize-cowpea rotation gave 451 kg ha(-1) and 1.62 kg mm(-1) rain more maize grain yield and rain water productivity, respectively compared with CT. On the other hand, CT (3131-5023 kg ha(-1)) showed larger variation in yield than both CA systems (3863 kg ha(-1) and 4905 kg ha(-1)). CT and CA systems gave 50% and 10% cumulative probability of obtaining yield below the minimum acceptable limit of 4000 kg ha-1 respectively suggesting that CA has lower probability of low yield than CT, thus could be preferred by risk-averse farmers in uncertain climatic conditions. Using similar reasoning, Mean-Gini Dominance analysis showed the dominancy of maize-cowpea rotation and indicated it as the most efficient management system. This study therefore

关键词： Climate change   River basins   Agriculture   Ecosystems   Socioeconomic factors  

摘要： The Upper Brahmaputra River Basin is prone to natural disasters and environmental stresses (floods, droughts and bank erosion, delayed rainfall, among others) creating an environment of uncertainty and setting the basin back in terms of socio-economic development. The climate change literature shows that agriculture and ecosystems and their services are highly climate sensitive, yet they are the main sources of livelihood that supports a large proportion of residents of the tributaries of the Brahmaputra River Basin. The continuous depletion of ecosystems and loss of agricultural outputs resulting from environmental stressors has a substantial impact on the socio-economic wellbeing of the basins residents, particularly the vulnerable rural poor. This paper uses spatially explicit data from Census, Household Surveys and Earth Observation to develop a transferable methodological approach which investigates the extent of dependence on agriculture and ecosystems as a source of livelihood in the contrasting sub-basins of the Brahmaputra River in the State of Assam, India and Bhutan, and the risk to these livelihood dependencies in these sub-basins due to potential environmental impacts of climate change. The results from this study constitute a case study in the development of a systematic and spatially explicit set of tools that inform and assist policy makers in the appropriate interventions to secure the livelihood benefits of sustainably managed agriculture in the face of environmental change.

关键词： Carbon sequestration   Natural resource management   Governance   Forestry   Nitrous oxide   Carbon Farming Initiative  

摘要： Rural and regional hinterlands provide the ecosystem service needs for increasingly urbanised communities across the globe. These inter-related ecosystem services provide key opportunities in securing climate change mitigation and adaptation. Their integrated management in the face of climate change, however, can be confounded by fragmentation within the complex institutional arrangements concerned with natural resource management. This suggests the need for a more systemic approach to continuous improvement in the integrated and adaptive governance of natural resources. This paper explores the theoretical foundations for integrated natural resource management and reviews positive systemic improvements that have been emerging in the Australian context. In setting clear theoretical foundations, the paper explores both functional and structural aspects of natural resource governance systems. Functional considerations include issues of connectivity, knowledge use and capacity within the natural resource decision making environment. Structural considerations refer to the institutions and processes that undertake planning through to implementation, monitoring and evaluation. From this foundation, we review the last decade of emerging initiatives in governance regarding the integration of agriculture and forests across the entire Australian landscape. This includes the shift towards more devolved regional approaches to integrated natural resource management and recent progress towards the use of terrestrial carbon at landscape scale to assist in climate change mitigation and adaptation. These developments, however, have also been tempered by a significant raft of new landscape-scale regulations that have tended to be based on a more centralist philosophy that landowners should be providing ecosystem services for the wider public good without substantive reward. Given this background, we explore a case study of efforts taken to integrate the management of landscape-scale a

关键词： Governance   Forestry   Agriculture   Tenure   Enforcement   Payments for ecosystem services  

摘要： This introduction to the special section on "Governing Agriculture-Forest Landscapes to Achieve Climate Change Mitigation" reviews external interventions to improve forest conditions and reduce deforestation, and by extension, influence carbon storage in agriculture-forest landscapes. The review is based on a careful survey of 123 cases of project-based and policy interventions to influence land use and forest cover outcomes. We propose that outcomes of interventions can be explained in terms of rights, incentives, and technologies related to land use and apply this framework to examine 12 types of interventions in agriculture-forest landscapes. The analysis of the identified 123 cases raises concerns about consistency of data and comparability of cases. Our preliminary evidence suggests limited association between the stated objective of an intervention and its success. This evidence also suggests that smaller scale and effective enforcement may be positively associated with improved forest outcomes. But the effectiveness of interventions across different agriculture-forest landscapes varies and available evidence does not permit easy generalizations. The variable effects of interventions across different agriculture-forest landscapes point to the need to better understand the forms and functions of interventions and to problems associated with assessing their relative efficacy. Published by Elsevier Ltd.