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Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

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03-01-2019 | Original Article

Representative agricultural pathways, climate change, and agricultural land uses: an application to the Pacific Northwest of the USA

Authors: Jianhong E. Mu, John M. Antle, John T. Abatzoglou

Published in: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change | Issue 5/2019

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Abstract

This paper investigates climate change adaptation through agricultural land uses under three regional representative agricultural pathways, using data from the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America. The three pathways are bottom-up projections of local biophysical and socioeconomic conditions, and they are consistent to downscaled regional climate scenarios. Results show that changes in agricultural land uses under future climate change and representative agricultural pathways are substantially different, compared with results not considering representative agricultural pathways. This finding suggests that climate change impacts and adaptation may be underestimated or overestimated if future biophysical and socioeconomic developments are not incorporated, particularly in regional agricultural assessments of climate change adaptation. One implication from this analysis for global adaptation strategies is the need for future infrastructure supports to maintain a climate-resilient agricultural production system due to changes in agricultural land uses.

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For more information of the econometric discussion of the fractional multinomial logit model, please refer to Papke and Wooldridge (1996, 2008).

Although climate variables have both time and space variation, they are assumed orthogonal to the unobservables, thus are not included in \( \overline{Z_i} \).

There is a 4-year gap between the 1978 and 1982 Census of Agriculture. After that, Census of Agriculture was released every 5 years. Before 1987, there was no land reported in conservation programs because the Conservation Reserve Program was implemented in 1987; thus, we set this variable zero for years before 1987.

Although previous literature defines growing season from April to September when estimating climate impacts on agricultural net returns, we define growing season as a year to include winter wheat, which is the major crop in this region. In addition, livestock production is less seasonal compared to crop production. We also consider the level beyond 32 °C as the harmful threshold for crop growth, but such temperatures are rare in this region and so this effect was not found to be empirically relevant.

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Title: Representative agricultural pathways, climate change, and agricultural land uses: an application to the Pacific Northwest of the USA
Authors: Jianhong E. Mu
John M. Antle
John T. Abatzoglou
Publication date: 03-01-2019
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change / Issue 5/2019
Print ISSN: 1381-2386
Electronic ISSN: 1573-1596
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-018-9834-8

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