7. Climate Variability Impacts on Agricultural Land Use Dynamics in the Madhupur Tract in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is a small country, but it has different land types in different areas. According to the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, in 2014 about 80% of people in Bangladesh were directly or indirectly involved with agriculture. Climatic variation is the most pressing issue for agriculture now all over the world. Weather is the day-to-day condition of the atmosphere at a specific place and includes changes taking place over a matter of seconds, minutes, or hours, and their effects upon life and human activities. Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or a time variation in longer-term (30- to 40-year) average weather conditions. Generally, the impacts of climate change are progressively familiar as a substantial aspect disturbing life. Several studies have indicated that the climate in Bangladesh is changing and becoming more unpredictable every year. The climate is changing rapidly, resulting in a rise in the earth’s average temperature. Global climate change and its consequences are having a bad impact on developing countries, which face natural calamities and poverty. Climatic variation impacts include temperature rise; erratic rainfall; greenhouse and CO₂ gas emissions; salinity intrusion; increases in floods, cyclones, storm surges, and drought; and melting of ice sheets. These impacts will seriously affect agriculture and livelihood, especially for the poor. Bangladesh, because of its geographical location, is likely to be one of the most seriously affected countries.

Climate change can influence agricultural land use patterns and cause farmers to fall into poverty. The study described in this chapter shows that climatic variation and its impact, especially variability in temperature and rainfall, are highly responsible for changes in agricultural land use patterns in the Madhupur Tract agro ecological zone (AEZ) of Bangladesh. An AEZ is an area of nearly the same ecological and soil characteristics for agricultural crop production, so cropping patterns in a definite AEZ are mostly the same. The homogeneity of an AEZ is more prominent in a sub region and most prominent at a unit level. The AEZs of Bangladesh have been determined on the basis of some definite characteristics of physiography, hydrology, cropping patterns, seasons, soil types, and tidal activity. In fact, an AEZ indicates an area characterized by homogeneous agricultural and ecological characteristics. Bangladesh has tentatively been divided into 30 AEZs. These 30 zones have been subdivided into 88 agro ecological sub regions, which have been further subdivided into 535 agro ecological units.