“Vulnerability hotspots”: Integrating socio-economic and hydrological models to identify where cereal production may decline in the future due to climate change induced drought

By Evan D. G. Fraser, E. Simelton, Mette Termansen, Simon N. Gosling, Andrew J. South. 2013

127 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to identify which of the world's cereal producing regions are likely to become vulnerable to climate change over the 21st century by identifying those regions that will be (1) exposed to climatic stress and (2) have a limited capacity to adapt. First, we use a global hydrological model to identify regions likely to be exposed to drought, defined here as a location where the available soil moisture is projected to decline by the 2050s and 2080s relative to the mean soil moisture observed between 1990 and 2005. Second, we use agricultural, meteorological and socio-economic data to develop models of adaptive capacity and run these models to show where adaptive capacity is likely to decline by the 2050s and 2080s relative to the baseline period of 1990–2005. Third, we contrast the hydrological and adaptive capacity model outputs to identify “vulnerability hotspots” for wheat and maize. Here, a vulnerability hotspot is defined as a region that the models project as likely to experience both a decline in adaptive capacity and in available soil moisture. Results from the hydrological model project significant drying in many parts of the world overt the 21st century. Results from the adaptive capacity models show that regions with the lowest overall adaptive capacity for wheat include much of western Russia, northern India, southeastern South America, and southeastern Africa. In terms of maize, regions with the lowest adaptive capacity include the northeastern USA, southeastern South America, southeastern Africa, and central/northern India. When taken together, this study identifies five wheat and three maize growing regions likely to be both exposed to worse droughts and a reduced capacity to adapt. For wheat, these are: southeastern USA, southeastern South America, the northeastern Mediterranean, and parts of central Asia. For maize, our analysis suggests that vulnerability hotspots are: southeastern South America, parts of southern Africa, and the northeastern Mediterranean.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/804a7be4c41c589a702bc1b03063fdd633a58a49

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. L. Wenz
2. Matthias Kalkuhl

In Global and Planetary Change

1. L. Wenz
2. Felix Creutzig
3. Matthias Kalkuhl

In Soil Science

1. L. Wenz
2. Matthias Kalkuhl

Citations in the corpus

• Teleconnected food supply shocks (2016, background): “There is a broad range of literature on the concept of vulnerability (see e.g. Adger 2006 for a review and Fraser et al 2013 for an exemplarily application).”