Effects of climate change on cotton production and soil organic carbon

Abstract

Abstract. As the leading cotton exporter, the United States grows cotton from coast-to-coast in 17 southern States. Climate change will have major impacts on cotton production depending on production location. The objective of this study is to use an agronomic modeling framework to project the likely climate change impacts on cotton production and soil organic carbon variation in the US Cotton Belt. Weather projections from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory’s CM2 climate model simulating the CRES-A2 atmospheric CO2 concentration scenario were used to drive the Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model to simulate cotton production in the first, third and eighth decades of the 21 st century. Results indicated that increased temperature and reduced precipitation can decrease cotton yield in Mid-South and Southeast US to a great extent over that of West and Southwest US without consideration of reduced availability of water for irrigation. Simulated soil organic carbon (OC) contents were generally decreased with increased temperature and decreased precipitation except for soils with low initial OC.