The Effect of Climate Change on Crops and Natural Ecosystems, 2nd Volume

On a global scale, rangelands occupy approximately half of the world’s land base surface; have a critical role in carbon sequestration and biodiversity; and support a diverse and critical economy, but at the same time, are under threat by many factors, including climate change. California rangelands, which are no exception to these aforementioned characteristics, are also unique socio-ecological systems that provide a broad range of ecosystem services and support a >$3 billion annual cattle ranching industry. However, climate change both directly and indirectly poses significant challenges to the future sustainability of California rangelands and, ultimately, the management of livestock, which has important economic implications for the state’s agricultural economy. In this study, we examined the changes in overall climate exposure and climatic water deficit (CWD), which was used as a physiological plant water stress gauge, to evaluate potential impacts of climate change on various rangeland vegetation types across California. We used two downscaled global climate models, MIROC and CNRM, under the ‘business-as-usual’ emissions scenario of RCP8.5 at a mid-century time horizon of 2040–2069 and known vegetation–climate relationships. Using the models, we predicted climate change effects using metrics and spatial scales that have management relevance and that can support climate-informed decision making for livestock managers. We found that more than 80% of the area of the rangeland vegetation types considered in this study will have higher CWD by 2040–2069. We evaluated these results with beef cattle inventory data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture by county and found that, on average, 71.6% of rangelands in the top 30 counties were projected to be highly climate-stressed. We found that current proactive and reactive ranching practices such as resting pastures, reducing herd size, and rotational grazing may need to be expanded to include additional strategies for coping with declining plant productivity. Full article

We evaluated the impact of weather and fertilization treatments (Control, PK, NPK1, NPK2, and NPK3) on winter wheat grain yields in a long-term trial in Ivanovice, Czech Republic, established in 1956. A total of 15 seasons were evaluated. The mean, maximal, and minimal temperatures in Ivanovice have been significantly increasing since 1961, with annual increases of 0.04 °C, 0.03 °C, and 0.05 °C, respectively. Precipitation has been decreasing annually by −0.54 mm (trend is insignificant). Four significant correlations between weather and grain yield were recorded. There were positive correlations between mean (r = 0.7) and minimal (r = 0.5) temperatures in November and negative correlations between mean temperatures in May (r = −0.6) and June (r = −0.6). The combination of naturally fertile chernozem soil and a beneficial preceding crop (alfalfa) enables sustainable cultivation of wheat, even without mineral fertilizers. The application of mineral nitrogen (N) significantly increases wheat grain yield and yield stability. Without mineral N or with high doses of mineral N, yield stability decreases. According to two response models (quadratic and quadratic-plateau), a reasonable dose of fertilizer is 107 kg ha⁻¹ N for modern wheat varieties, corresponding to a yield of 8.1 t ha⁻¹. Full article