Study: Salty soil drives changes in agriculture, migration.
Rising sea levels driven by climate change make for salty soil, and that is likely to force about 200,000 coastal farmers in Bangladesh inland as glaciers melt into the world’s oceans, according to estimates from a new study.
Frequent flooding with salt water is already pushing farmers in Bangladesh to shift from growing rice to raising shrimp and other seafood, but not all coastal residents will be able to stay put and maintain their agricultural livelihoods, said study co-lead author Joyce Chen of The Ohio State University.
“Unfortunately, this is likely to be most challenging for those farming families who have the fewest resources to begin with,” said Chen, an associate professor of agricultural, environmental and development economics. The study appears in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Chen and her co-author, Valerie Mueller of Arizona State University and the International Food Policy Research Institute, pulled together a variety of socioeconomic, population, geographic and climate change data to create models that allowed them to estimate population shifts based on rising water encroaching on coastal farmland and subsequent increases in soil salinity. Salty soil impedes growth of rice and most other crops. It’s the first study of its kind.
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