Location: Sustainable Agricultural Water Systems Research
Project Number: 2032-12610-002-016-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2024
End Date: Oct 30, 2026
Objective:
The objectives of the proposed cooperative agreement are to (1) conduct a detailed investigation around the effects of climate change on select economically important specialty crops in CA, AZ, and NM with a focus on exposure to crop-specific changes in agroclimate metrics and implications for groundwater resources; (2) in partnership with the USDA International Climate Hub develop a winegrape adaptation menu as a compliment to the adaptation resources workbook for specialty crops that the USDA California Climate Hub produced; and (3) develop a climate framed reforestation exposure model for select forested systems in CA.
Approach:
For the first objective we will quantify crop-specific exposure to climate change through assessing changes in crop-specific agriculturally important climate indicators at the scale of groundwater management areas across CA, AZ, and NM, focusing on 5 high-value crops (alfalfa, almonds, cotton, pecans, and tomatoes). The results of this work will provide site-specific information to aid in the understanding of where and how the impacts of climate change may be most acute, allowing for tailored interventions.
For the second objective around developing an internationally applicable winegrape adaptation menu, we will convene experts from the USA as well as from important winegrape growing regions globally with a similar climate to CA and solicit feedback on the current adaptation menu and also input to other adaptation approaches or actions deemed critical to ensure desirable levels of yield and quality are maintained. These convenings will led to the development of a USDA Climate Hub official report and potentially a peer reviewed publication. Finally for the last objective, to determine climate exposure for reforestation applications we will develop climate projections and niche models relative to physiologically important thresholds for seedling and sapling conifer species which will be spatially projected to develop 'heat maps' for suitability that relate species to spatially explicit climate scores.
