Context and objectives
Over the past 50 years, the growth in global crop production has been impacted by climate change effects, in particular drought and heat stress. Given the central role of crop production in ensuring global food security, crop monitoring and early warning systems are of key importance. But existing models require improvements to better estimate regional crop yields. The unprecedented surge in satellite information provides unique opportunities for improved model performance.
CropWaves will harness these opportunities by using historical and new satellite data to (i) enhance the representation of crop phenology and agricultural management in the crop model AquaCrop and the Earth system model CESM, (ii) assimilate satellite-based soil moisture and vegetation information into both modeling systems, (iii) constrain long-term coarse-scale crop simulations in order to uncover the impacts as well as atmospheric, oceanic and land-based drivers of recent crop failures, (iv) constrain fine-scale crop simulations in support of early warning of crop losses, (v) enable improved future climate projections of crop growth and failure under a suite of climate and socio-economic scenarios.
Project outcome
Expected scientific results
The project is expected to result in 10 peer-reviewed publications and the findings of WP3 and 5 will constitute a direct contribution to IPCC reports of the 7th assessment cycle.
Societal and environmental relevance
The outcomes of this project will enable a more detailed understanding of climate change impacts on crop development, and the results inform climate change mitigation and adaptation policies.
Expected products and services
- Improved version of the CLM model including the effect of heat stress effects on crops, which will be part of upcoming CESM source code releases. Next-generation CESM climate projections for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) will incorporate heats tress effects on crops, thereby better informing upcoming IPCC reports.
- A prototype crop monitoring system, using optical and microwave data from past and new missions in combination with AquaCrop, distributed open source within NASA's Land Information System (LIS).
- Next-generation crop yield projections with CLM and AquaCrop under a range of clmate and socioeconomic scenarios.
- All data produced in this project will become publicly available.
- Policy briefs and press releases disseminating the crop climate projection results to policy makers and the public;
Potential users
The products and data that will come out of this project can be of interest for other researchers, either working with AquaCrop or CESM or with a focus on crop development, to industry, and to policy makers interested in food security and agricultural management.
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| Website: | https://hydr.vub.be/projects/cropwaves | |