Cornell researchers have weighed in on a high-stakes debate between crop experts and scientists: Which of climate change’s challenges – higher temperature or stress from drought – poses the greater threat to U.S. rain-fed agriculture?
Cornell researchers have weighed in on a high-stakes debate between crop experts and scientists: Which of climate change’s challenges – higher temperature or stress from drought – poses the greater threat to U.S. rain-fed agriculture?
The finding suggests that using prescribed burns, also called controlled burns, to reduce fuel levels in forests may protect the health of people who live nearby.
“There is a big divide in this field, and we thought there must be some way to resolve this puzzle,” said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, assistant professor of applied economics and management and CoBank/Farm Credit East Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellow in Production Economics and Sustainability.
Using decades’ worth of data from government and other sources, the researchers predict that climate change-induced heat stress will play a larger role than drought stress in reducing the yields of several major U.S. crops later this century. That has major implications for crop management as well as plant breeding.
The researchers’ findings are reported in “Unpacking the Climatic Drivers of U.S. Agricultural Yields,” published May 24 in Environmental Research Letters. Contributors included Toby Ault, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences; postdoctoral associate Carlos Carrillo; and Haoying Wang, assistant professor of management at New Mexico Tech.
Read more at: Cornell University
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