Cool Farm Tool Water: A global on-line tool to assess water use in crop production

The agricultural sector accounts for 70% of all water consumption and poses great pressure on ground water resources. Therefore, evaluating agricultural water consumption is highly important as it allows supply chain actors to identify practices which are associated with unsustainable water use, which risk depleting current water resources and impacting future production. However, these assessments are often not feasible for crop producers as data, models and experiments are required in order to conduct them. This work introduces a new on-line agricultural water use assessment tool that provides the water footprint and irrigation requirements at field scale based on an enhanced FAO56 approach combined with a global climate, crop and soil databases. This has been included in the Cool Farm Tool - an online tool which already provides metrics for greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity impacts and therefore allows for a more holistic assessment of environmental sustainability in farming and agricultural supply chains. The model is tested against field scale and state level water footprint data providing good results. The tool provides a practical, reliable way to assess agricultural water use, and offers a means to engage growers and stakeholders in identifying efficient water management practices.

Effects of climate extremes on the terrestrial carbon cycle: concepts, processes and potential future impacts

Extreme droughts, heat waves, frosts, precipitation, wind storms and other climate extremes may impact the structure, composition and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, and thus carbon cycling and its feedbacks to the climate system. Yet, the interconnected avenues through which climate extremes drive ecological and physiological processes and alter the carbon balance are poorly understood. Here, we review the literature on carbon cycle relevant responses of ecosystems to extreme climatic events. Given that impacts of climate extremes are considered disturbances, we assume the respective general disturbance-induced mechanisms and processes to also operate in an extreme context. The paucity of well-defined studies currently renders a quantitative meta-analysis impossible, but permits us to develop a deductive framework for identifying the main mechanisms (and coupling thereof) through which climate extremes may act on the carbon cycle. We find that ecosystem responses can exceed the duration of the climate impacts via lagged effects on the carbon cycle. The expected regional impacts of future climate extremes will depend on changes in the probability and severity of their occurrence, on the compound effects and timing of different climate extremes, and on the vulnerability of each land-cover type modulated by management. Although processes and sensitivities differ among biomes, based on expert opinion, we expect forests to exhibit the largest net effect of extremes due to their large carbon pools and fluxes, potentially large indirect and lagged impacts, and long recovery time to regain previous stocks. At the global scale, we presume that droughts have the strongest and most widespread effects on terrestrial carbon cycling. Comparing impacts of climate extremes identified via remote sensing vs. ground-based observational case studies reveals that many regions in the (sub-)tropics are understudied. Hence, regional investigations are needed to allow a global upscaling of the impacts of climate extremes on global carbon-climate feedbacks.

Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture

Agricultural lands occupy 37% of the earth's land surface. Agriculture accounts for 52 and 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Agricultural soils may also act as a sink or source for CO2, but the net flux is small. Many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the most prominent of which are improved cropland and grazing land management and restoration of degraded lands and cultivated organic soils. Lower, but still significant mitigation potential is provided by water and rice management, set-aside, land use change and agroforestry, livestock management and manure management. The global technical mitigation potential from agriculture (excluding fossil fuel offsets from biomass) by 2030, considering all gases, is estimated to be approximately 5500-6000Mt CO2-eq.yr-1, with economic potentials of approximately 1500-1600, 2500-2700 and 4000-4300Mt CO2-eq.yr-1 at carbon prices of up to 20, up to 50 and up to 100 US$ t CO2-eq.-1, respectively. In addition, GHG emissions could be reduced by substitution of fossil fuels for energy production by agricultural feedstocks (e.g. crop residues, dung and dedicated energy crops). The economic mitigation potential of biomass energy from agriculture is estimated to be 640, 2240 and 16 000Mt CO2-eq.yr-1 at 0-20, 0-50 and 0-100 US$ t CO2-eq.-1, respectively.

Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture

Agricultural lands occupy 37% of the earth's land surface. Agriculture accounts for 52 and 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Agricultural soils may also act as a sink or source for CO2, but the net flux is small. Many agricultural practices can potentially mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the most prominent of which are improved cropland and grazing land management and restoration of degraded lands and cultivated organic soils. Lower, but still significant mitigation potential is provided by water and rice management, set-aside, land use change and agroforestry, livestock management and manure management. The global technical mitigation potential from agriculture (excluding fossil fuel offsets from biomass) by 2030, considering all gases, is estimated to be approximately 5500-6000Mt CO2-eq.yr-1, with economic potentials of approximately 1500-1600, 2500-2700 and 4000-4300Mt CO2-eq.yr-1 at carbon prices of up to 20, up to 50 and up to 100 US$ t CO2-eq.-1, respectively. In addition, GHG emissions could be reduced by substitution of fossil fuels for energy production by agricultural feedstocks (e.g. crop residues, dung and dedicated energy crops). The economic mitigation potential of biomass energy from agriculture is estimated to be 640, 2240 and 16 000Mt CO2-eq.yr-1 at 0-20, 0-50 and 0-100 US$ t CO2-eq.-1, respectively.

Projected changes in mineral soil carbon of European croplands and grasslands, 1990-2080

We present the most comprehensive pan-European assessment of future changes in cropland and grassland soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks to date, using a dedicated process-based SOC model and state-of-the-art databases of soil, climate change, land-use change and technology change. Soil carbon change was calculated using the Rothamsted carbon model on a European 10 × 10' grid using climate data from four global climate models implementing four Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emissions scenarios (SRES). Changes in net primary production (NPP) were calculated by the Lund-Potsdam-Jena model. Land-use change scenarios, interpreted from the narratives of the IPCC SRES story lines, were used to project changes in cropland and grassland areas. Projections for 1990-2080 are presented for mineral soil only. Climate effects (soil temperature and moisture) will tend to speed decomposition and cause soil carbon stocks to decrease, whereas increases in carbon input because of increasing NPP will slow the loss. Technological improvement may further increase carbon inputs to the soil. Changes in cropland and grassland areas will further affect the total soil carbon stock of European croplands and grasslands. While climate change will be a key driver of change in soil carbon over the 21st Century, changes in technology and land-use change are estimated to have very significant effects. When incorporating all factors, cropland and grassland soils show a small increase in soil carbon on a per area basis under future climate (1-7 t C ha^-1 for cropland and 3-6 t C ha^-1 for grassland), but when the greatly decreasing area of cropland and grassland are accounted for, total European cropland stocks decline in all scenarios, and grassland stocks decline in all but one scenario. Different trends are seen in different regions. For Europe (the EU25 plus Norway and Switzerland), the cropland SOC stock decreases from 11 Pg in 1990 by 4-6 Pg (39-54%) by 2080, and the grassland SOC stock increases from 6 Pg in 1990 to 1.5 Pg (25%) under the B1 scenario, but decreases to 1-3 Pg (20-44%) under the other scenarios. Uncertainty associated with the land-use and technology scenarios remains unquantified, but worst-case quantified uncertainties are 22.5% for croplands and 16% for grasslands, equivalent to potential errors of 2.5 and 1 Pg SOC, respectively. This is equivalent to 42-63% of the predicted SOC stock change for croplands and 33-100% of the predicted SOC stock change for grasslands. Implications for accounting for SOC changes under the Kyoto Protocol are discussed.