Abstract
The Lower Mekong River basin (LMB) has experienced droughts in recent decades, causing detrimental economic losses and food security conundrums. This study quantified the impact of climate change on drought, and rainfed rice production in the LMB. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and AquaCrop models were used to evaluate long-term drought indices and rainfed rice yields under historical and future climate conditions (1954–2099) with four climate models and two emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP8.5) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). We found that rice yield might increase (24–43%) due to the elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration (+ 34.3 to + 121.9%) and increases in precipitation. Contrastingly, considerable decreases in rice yield up to 1.5 ton/ha in the Vietnam Central High Plain (VCHP) region could be expected resulting from reduced precipitation by about 34% during drought years. To avert any major food crisis, an expansion of irrigation areas could be required to compensate for the expected reduction in rice yields. We conclude that a framework combining hydrology and crop models to assess climate change impacts on food production is key to develop adaptation strategies in the future.
Highlights
Drought is a natural disaster that has a detrimental influence on water resources, economy, environment, and crop production[1,2,3]
We have focused on the rainfed rice yield analysis because it is a primary crop in the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), and it accounts for 58% of the paddy area of the LMB21
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) data was at 2.5-degree resolution, while the estimated multivariate standardized drought index (MSDI) was at 0.25-degree, primarily driven by the resolution of meteorological data
Summary
Drought is a natural disaster that has a detrimental influence on water resources, economy, environment, and crop production[1,2,3]. Decreases in rice production due to failed monsoon, climate change, and drought in the LMB will adversely impact the regional to global food s ecurity[27]. In plants as a result from increased C O2 levels[30] These results pointed out that there were decreases in rice yields in the middle of twenty-first century without the irrigation and C O2 fertilization effect in the Mekong Delta. Poulton et al.[33] found that C O2 level and rainfall variability have significant influences on rainfed rice production in Cambodia after 2030 They concluded that expanding irrigation areas would be required to compensate for the impacts of climate change
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