Abstract
Improving agricultural water productivity, under rainfed or irrigated conditions, holds significant scope for addressing climate change vulnerability. It also offers adaptation capacity needs as well as water and food security in the southern African region. In this study, evidence for climate change impacts and adaptation strategies in rainfed agricultural systems is explored through modeling predictions of crop yield, soil moisture and excess water for potential harvesting. The study specifically presents the results of climate change impacts under rainfed conditions for maize, sorghum and sunflower using soil-water-crop model simulations, integrated based on daily inputs of rainfall and evapotranspiration disaggregated from GCM scenarios. The research targets a vast farming region dominated by heavy clay soils where rainfed agriculture is a dominant practice. The potential for improving soil water productivity and improved water harvesting have been explored as ways of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. This can be utilized to explore and design appropriate conservation agriculture and adaptation practices in similar agro-ecological environments, and create opportunities for outscaling for much wider areas. The results of this study can suggest the need for possible policy refinements towards reducing vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in rainfed farming systems.
Highlights
Climate change and other global drivers of socio-economic, energy, global trade, resources and demographic changes are set to affect present and future human development including the vulnerable areas such as southern Africa region (SADC) [1]
In order to simulate the impact of changed climate simulated by general circulation models (GCMs) on the soil water balances, a simplified procedure was used through external coupling of the interaction between monthly weather generation models, the climate models and the crop-water balance model (SMACS)
The results suggest that the current atmospheric general circulation models (GCMs) yield inconsistent results concerning changes in mean precipitation at particular locations, and the sign and magnitude of any change in the interannual variability is even less clear
Summary
Climate change and other global drivers of socio-economic, energy, global trade, resources and demographic changes are set to affect present and future human development including the vulnerable areas such as southern Africa region (SADC) [1]. Faced with imperatives of increased food production and poverty alleviation, present day conditions call for high vigilance in developing and preserving the raw materials for food production: land and water. Climate model studies show that the average temperature of earth’s surface is expected to increase by 3 ̊C over the century, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at the current rates [3]. This has a negative impact on crop yields and food security in the Southern African region where 60% 80% of the population is directly dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods [2]
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