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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Beltsville, Maryland (BARC) » Beltsville Agricultural Research Center » Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #370134
Research Project: Experimentally Assessing and Modeling the Impact of Climate and Management on the Resiliency of Crop-Weed-Soil Agro-Ecosystems

Location: Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory

Title: Climate change and global food security: challenges and opportunities

Author
item Reddy, Vangimalla
item MURA, JYOSTNA - Orise Fellow

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/17/2019
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Climate change and global food security: role of crop modeling Vangimalla R. Reddy1, Mura Jyostna Devi1,2 1USDA-ARS-NEA, Adaptive Cropping Systems Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA 2Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA The carbon-based products, such as food, fiber, fuel, carbon-based chemicals, and fresh water supply, come from the thin living skin covering the earth’s land surface called the terrestrial ecosystem. The earth’s thin mantel of soil captures, stores, and releases the water to vegetation, aquifers, streams, and lakes and provides the major portion of the world’s fresh water supply. Within the next fifty years, human population is projected to double, and economic buying power for carbon-based products could triple. As there are no more unexplored frontiers, this increased demand from our terrestrial ecosystem will have to be met with the existing natural resource base. Added to this is the uncertainty introduced by the future global environmental changes. Potential global environmental changes include atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, temperature, rainfall, and ultraviolet radiation intensity. Extreme weather events such as floods, drought, and heat waves are expected to be more common in the changed global climate of the future. In addition, regional increases in soil erosion and atmospheric pollution could also have negative impacts on crop productivity and the natural resource base of the planet. With existing scientific knowledge it is impossible to predict how these changes in the global climate may change the productivity of various crops worldwide and overall productivity of the terrestrial ecosystem. One way to deal with the complexity of the system, and its impact on crop productivity, is to develop and use mechanistic, process level computer simulation models, both at the field level and at the ecosystem level. This presentation outlines some examples of the development and use of the crop models for various applications to increase crop productivity and to mitigate the harmful effects of adverse environmental variables on natural resources, both in the current and in the future changing environment.