Location: Soil, Water & Air Resources Research
2023 Annual Report
Objectives
Objective 1. Enable climate-smart decision-making by developing science-based, region-specific information, tools and technologies for agricultural and natural resource managers, and provide assistance where possible to enhance adoption and implementation of the same. The work will be conducted as the Midwest USDA Climate Change Hub and will be coordinated with NRCS, FS, and other USDA and non-USDA organizations in accordance with guidance found in the USDA Climate Change Hubs Charter, and Terms of Reference.
Objective 2. Expand and enhance each Hub’s research and communication capacity and ensure integration of ARS research outcomes from across the region into Hub outreach assets.
Objective 3: Provide capacity to expand and enhance the hub’s climate-science, social-science, and economic-science resources and tools via enhanced collaboration with ARS research teams and other research partners to ensure impactful integration of ARS research outcomes from across the region into Hub outreach assets.
Approach
To fulfill the objectives of supporting climate-smart agriculture and agricultural adaptation to a changing climate, the Midwest Climate Hub (MCH) will work in three main areas:
1) Development and delivery of current condition/monitoring products and services to guide improved management and agricultural decision-making under climate change and extremes.
2) Development of new products and information i.e. a system-of-systems to describe and understand the changing climate and impacts to agriculture.
3) Creating and sharing new adaptation/mitigation strategies for climate-smart agriculture and agricultural intensification under climate change in various agricultural systems including, row crop, livestock and specialty crop systems.
The MCH will work with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and other federal and state partners to monitor and share information about potential climate risk issues across the range of agricultural production systems in the Midwest. These issues will include extreme issues such as drought, extreme rains, freezes and others to mitigate potential damages. The information will be shared via webinars, email lists, various social media, web sites and traditional media as necessary. We will also work with USDA-internal partners to create and share information appropriate to internal partners.
The MCH will work with federal and state partners to create and develop new climate products for tracking changes in climate and agricultural issues and developing new climate summary information for different geographical regions and various specific agricultural issues. The new data climatologies could include information such as evapotranspiration and soil temperature/moisture climatologies to provide context and changes over time. The goal of publications will be to inform land managers about climate change issues in agriculture and potential impacts to their production systems.
The MCH will work with partners to create and share additional information on new strategies for climate-smart farming to help producers adapt and mitigate issues related to climate changes. The work will include reviewing current management systems and developing work with changing or new management systems to adapt to changing conditions or mitigate greenhouse gas issues. Partners would include current ARS projects, other partners in USDA, land grants/extension, and others to develop alternatives and share possible management/cropping changes coupled with USDA policies.
The MCH will help facilitate collaboration and communication among ARS projects, the Climate Hubs and among the Fellows through the ARS Liaison. The Liaison will expand connections on research and use of appropriate information from ARS project research to support Climate Smart Agriculture practice development and use of information.
Various projects will be tracked to determine impacts including usage of information, changes in practices and possible implementation on landscapes across the region.
Progress Report
Climate Outreach: In response to drought (and wetness) conditions in the Midwest and Northern Plains, ARS scientists at the Midwest Climate Hub (MCH) participated in and partnered in developing alert information for stakeholders about conditions and potential agricultural issues. Climate change issues are a common topic. The outputs included over 80 webinars/presentations (over 8,000 direct attendees), nine Drought Status Updates (with the National Integrated Drought Information System – over 10,000 views) and other updates sharing current information and potential additional hazards via email and other social media. With the hiring of the MCH coordinator, the hub restarted creation and sharing of 19 Midwest Ag Outlooks via email and social media. These numbers are the totals since mid-2021.
National Climate Assessment: The Midwest Climate Hub is supporting work on the 5th National Climate Assessment as a co-author on the Midwest Chapter. Agency review of the near-final draft has been submitted and in review. Release of the full Climate Assessment is expected in late calendar year 2023.
Evapo-transpiration/Drought: Drought can have a major impact on crop production in the Midwest/Northern Plains. Tracking drought impacts in practice often focuses only on precipitation deficits. Frequently ignored is the effect of evapo-transpiration (ET) on crops and subsequently on drought impact. Also, the ET change over time with climate change is poorly defined. As initial steps to address these questions in the Midwest, the MCH helped guide two National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developed projects to find data and develop regional climatologies of actual ET and reference (or potential ET) in partnership with NASA and National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). These two efforts have set a baseline for additional ET work among the Midwest Climate Hub and partners.
Soil Temperature Climatology: Many long-term data sets, exist for atmospheric data that allow for comparison of current conditions to some longer-term averages (often 30 years). Such region-wide data sets do not exist for many agriculturally related environmental data. One of these is soil temperature. Given the importance of soil temperature to agricultural decision-making and impact on adoption of conservation practices (i.e. cover crop seeding, nitrogen management), this is a critical deficiency. To fill this information gap, the Midwest Climate Hub is cooperating with the Midwestern Regional Climate Center at Purdue University to develop climatologies of soil temperature and display capability for common soil depths in the North Central United States. A method for calculating the climatologies has been developed using a national gridded dataset. A draft display capability will be available before the end of FY23.
Local Freeze Date Trend Tool: Various measures of climate changes exist regionally and nationally, including temperature, precipitation, and humidity data. Missing among these were local determinations of changes in freeze dates (last spring and first fall). Previous maps from the 4th National Climate Assessment showed only season-length changes by multi-state regions. Specialty and row crop production are being severely affected by changing freeze dates and growing season length. ARS Scientists at the Midwest Climate Hub cooperated with the Midwest Regional Climate Center (Purdue University–West Lafayette, Indiana) to address this problem. The partnership created a county-level freeze/frost date tool using gridded temperature data since 1950 to calculate and display trends in first/last spring/fall dates and growing season length. The web site also provides some background statistics and climatologies. Specialty and row crop producers can use this information to improve crop management decisions in a changing climate. The web site is available at https://mrcc.purdue.edu/freeze/freezedatetool.html.
Specialty Crop Management Decision Calendars: The impact of climate extremes can differ greatly by crop, time of year, and antecedent conditions. Many specialty (food) crops are grown in various areas of the Midwest Climate Hub region and have specific timing impacts that are not widely known outside of those grower communities. To provide a better understanding of specific crop impact times to the growers and to people who provide information to the growers, ARS scientists at the Midwest Climate Hub, in collaboration with the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) developed crop calendars showing important decision times for apple, cranberry, grapes, and potato and the impact of drought during those times. The calendars combined management decisions such as pruning and spraying and impacts such as fruit quality or yield loss into a single image for each crop. The partnership conducted meetings with specific groups, asking various questions about timing and management decisions in an annual cycle, which guided the development of crop calendars. These calendars have been published at the National Drought Mitigation Center. The crop calendars summarize decision timing information for producers and note critical times that better information can improve decision-making for producers.
Drought and Climate Change: Climate change is adding another layer of complexity to drought in agriculture and across a range of sectors. In addition to the physical climate changes (precipitation, temperature) leading to changes in drought, the rapidly changing climate makes assessing drought more difficult from a climatological and impact perspective. For example, in rapidly drying areas, is “drought” more frequent or does the assessment of “drought” have to change. To introduce and discuss this topic in-depth, the National Integrated Drought Information System and the Midwest and other Climate Hubs co-sponsored an international workshop in Boulder, Colorado, in February 2023. This workshop called together experts on drought and climate to address the topic of drought and climate change. The workshop discussed how drought is addressed currently, which gaps exist in knowledge and recommendations for next steps, data needs, assessments, and forecasting. A final white paper with recommendations for research and implementation is being finalized. A peer-reviewed paper is in preparation.
Accomplishments
1. State climate assessments to inform agriculture decision making. Improved understanding of climate change impacts to help guide stakeholders’ decision-making is a major goal of the USDA Climate Hubs nationally. Knowledge of climate change is generally understood; however, details about the actual regional impacts on agriculture are less well known. ARS scientists at the Midwest Climate Hub in Ames, Iowa, are cooperating with partners in developing more detailed climate change and agriculture assessments for states. Together with partners, the Great Lakes Regional Integrated Science Assessment (GLISA), Northern Forests Climate Hub staff, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) staff and Ohio State University, ARS scientists with the Climate Hub have developed a template and sets of data for state agricultural climate change assessment for the eight-state MCH region. The Illinois version has been completed and published on the Climate Hub web site. These publications translate the best current science to be useful for local stakeholders. The publications provide stakeholders in each state with more detailed information that is important for agriculture and climate change in each state.
