Abstract
Climate change may impact agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and yields under higher temperatures, higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and variable precipitations. This calls for adaptation strategies to optimize agricultural productions with minimal GHGs. This study aimed to identify these optimum agricultural managements in response to current and projected climatic scenarios for the Choctawhatchee Basin in Southeastern USA, an experimentally unexplored data-scarce region lacking validation data. This scenario-based modeling study analyzed a total of 1344 scenarios consisting of four major crops, eight managements (varying tillage, manuring, and residue), and forty climatic combinations under current as wells as two representative concentration pathways with process-based Denitrification and Decomposition (DNDC) model. The results indicated that the region’s GHGs and yields were most affected by higher temperatures (≥+3 °C) and extreme precipitation changes (≥±40%), while high atmospheric CO2 concentrations exerted positive fertilization effects. The manure-related and higher residue incorporation scenarios were found to be better options in varying climates with minimal present global warming potentials (GWP) of 0.23 k to −29.1 k MT equivalent CO2. As such, the study presented climate change impacts and potential mitigation options in the study region while presenting a framework to design GHG mitigation in similar data-scarce regions.
Highlights
This study aimed to identify the best agricultural management as well as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) mitigation options in response to current and plausible climate change scenarios at the Choctawhatchee Basin by generating model estimates of GHGs along with yields
The level of error that occurred in this study was assumed to be acceptable (Table 1 and Figure 4) [20,29]
The main objective of the study was to make a comparison among the scenarios rather than predict precise field emissions
Summary
Agriculture and related land-use changes are some of the major sources of climate change responsible for about 25% of total anthropogenic CO2, 50% of CH4, and 70% of N2O emissions [1,2,3,4,5]. During the past 50 years, agricultural production increased 2.5 to 3 times, whereas the cultivated area increased by only 12% [7]. Despite this increase, approximately one billion people are considered undernourished [8]. The demands for food are estimated to increase by 35% by 2030 [9] and are further estimated to increase by over 50% by 2050 compared with that of 2015 [10]
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