Mitigation of air pollutant impacts on rice yields in China by sector

Abstract

Air quality management is a complex project involving the coordination of multiple sectors and has been identified as an important strategy for food security. However, little is known about how pollutant emissions from each sector affect agriculture. Each sector emits different precursors, resulting in varying impacts of their pollutants and aerosol-climate on rice yield. Therefore, we provide an assessment of air pollution impacts, including direct ozone damage and aerosol-climate effects, on rice yield in four sector (industrial, energy, domestic, and transportation) emission scenarios in China. Our results suggest that without anthropogenic emissions, a reduced surface ozone concentration leads to a 9.8% increase in rice yield; lower aerosol concentrations induce an additional 2.3% increase, leading to a combined 9.7% greater rice yield. Of the four sectors, industrial sector emission control is projected to be the most effective, with 4.4% rice yield gain from ozone reductions and 0.6% from aerosol reductions. The impacts of the energy and transportation sectors are relatively low, resulting in 2.1% (energy sector) and 0.7% (transportation) yield increases on average. The domestic sector has few emissions of ozone precursors; therefore, aerosol-climate effects are more dominant, resulting in a yield increase of 0.9%. These results indicate the importance of reduced emissions in the industrial sector for future agricultural food production while also providing the relative benefits of regulating each sector for food security.