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Climate Change Impacts on US Agriculture and Forestry: Implications of Global Climate Stabilization
Citation:
Climate Change Impacts on US Agriculture and Forestry: Implications of Global Climate Stabilization. Environmental Research Letters. IOP Publishing LIMITED, Bristol, Uk.
Impact/Purpose:
To estimate the economic impacts of climate change on agriculture and forestry.
Description:
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and other climate change impacts have already begun to affect US agriculture and forestry, with impacts expected to become more substantial in the future. Although there have been numerous studies of climate change impacts on agriculture or forestry, there is relatively little research examining the long-term net impacts and interactions between these key sectors for a stabilization scenario relative to a case with no climate policy. We provide an analysis of the potential implications of climate change for US agriculture and forestry through 2100, accounting for landowner decisions regarding land use, crop mix, and production practices. The analytic approach involves a combination of a climate model (IGSM-CAM), a crop process model (EPIC), and a dynamic vegetation model (MC1) with an economic model of the US forestry and agricultural sector (FASOM-GHG). The scenarios compare a global greenhouse gas stabilization scenario (Policy) with a no climate policy scenario (Reference) to examine potential benefits (i.e., avoided impacts) of global mitigation for US agriculture and forestry. Future global emissions trajectories consistent with the stabilization scenario are exogenous to the agriculture and forestry models used here; this study does not include incentives for forestry and agricultural mitigation in FASOM-GHG. To reflect natural climate variability, we used climate projections with five different initializations of IGSM-CAM for both emission scenarios. In addition, the crop yield modelling (with EPIC) was done both with and without CO2 fertilization as a sensitivity analysis. We find substantial impacts on productivity, land use, commodity markets, greenhouse gas emissions, and consumer and producer welfare with considerable variability in those impacts across climate simulations.