Accessing Future Crop Yield and Crop Water Productivity Over the Heihe
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Liu et al. Geosci. Lett. (2021) 8:2 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40562-020-00172-6 RESEARCH LETTER Open Access Accessing future crop yield and crop water productivity over the Heihe River basin in northwest China under a changing climate Qi Liu1,2, Jun Niu1,2* , Bellie Sivakumar3, Risheng Ding1,2 and Sien Li1,2 Abstract Quantitative evaluation of the response of crop yield and crop water productivity (CWP) to future climate change is important to prevent or mitigate the adverse efects of climate change. This study made such an evaluation for the agricultural land over the Heihe River basin in northwest China. The ability of 31 climate models for simulating the precipitation, maximum temperature, and minimum temperature was evaluated for the studied area, and a multi- model ensemble was employed. Using the previously well-established Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), crop yield and crop water productivity of four major crops (corn, wheat, barley, and spring canola-Polish) in the Heihe River basin were simulated for three future time periods (2025–2049, 2050–2074, and 2075–2099) under two Representa- tive Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5). The results revealed that the impacts of future climate change on crop yield and CWP of wheat, barley, and canola would all be negative, whereas the impact on corn in the eastern part of the middle reaches of the Heihe River basin would be positive. On the whole, climate change under RCP8.5 scenario would be more harmful to crops, while the corn crops in the Minle and Shandan counties have better ability to cope with climate change. Keywords: Crop yield, Crop water productivity, Soil and water assessment tool, Representative concentration pathways, Heihe river basin Introduction greater magnitudes, will have a direct or indirect impact Te latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Cli- on food security, ecological and social security, and mate Change (IPCC) points out that the concentration of human health. greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will continue to rise According to the recent FAO (Food and Agricul- in the future under the combined efects of natural fac- ture Organization of the United Nations) report, cli- tors and human activity and that the continuous warm- mate change for high-emission climate scenarios by ing of the global climate system has been an indisputable 2100 may result in production reduction with a rate of fact (IPCC 2013). Global warming has caused signifcant 20–45% for maize, 5–50% for wheat, 20–30% for rice, changes to the climate in some parts of China (Ji and and 30–60% for soybean (FAO 2016). Climate change Kang 2013; Zou and Zhou 2013; Wu et al. 2014; Qin and poses an unprecedented challenge to agricultural devel- Xie 2016). Changes in the quantity, quality, and combi- opment and the security of agricultural production nation of climate variables, as well as the more frequent systems. Temperature, precipitation, and other cli- occurrence of extreme weather and natural disasters with matic factors will directly lead to changes in light, heat, and water resources required for the growth of crops, *Correspondence: [email protected] thus resulting in changes not only in crop physiology 1 Center for Agricultural Water Research in China, China Agricultural but also in yield and quality. Te degree of impact will University, Beijing 100083, China vary with diferent crop types, but all are anticipated Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. Liu et al. Geosci. Lett. (2021) 8:2 Page 2 of 16 to reach a signifcant level (Ambardekar et al. 2011; Crop yield and crop water productivity (CWP) are Zhao et al. 2007). As a result, agriculture is the indus- important indicators that can refect regional agricul- try that will be most directly and most severely afected tural production level and evaluate food sustainability. by climate change (Fisher et al. 2012). Global warming Te CWP is defned as the marketable crop yield over will advance the time of soil thawing in spring and the the water use by actual evapotranspiration (Kijne et al. sowing time of spring-sown crops (Yang et al. 2019; 2003). Increasing crop yields while also increasing crop Wang et al. 2004). Further, the rising temperature in water productivity to relieve pressure on water resources the growing period will accelerate the growth and and reduce conficts in water use is an important chal- development of some crops, shorten the phenological lenge faced by China. Sun et al. (2017) found, by com- stage, and reduce the time for photosynthesis and dry paring the efects of agricultural management measures matter accumulation (Eamus 1991; Polley et al. 1993). on crop water productivity of wheat, that CWP is more Nevertheless, the increase in CO2 concentration in the sensitive to irrigation efciency when compared to the atmosphere will stimulate the photosynthesis of crops, amount of fertilizer. Vaghef et al. (2017) used a coupled leading to improvement in photosynthesis efciency SWAT–MODSIM model to simulate the CWP of irri- and water use efciency (Schmidhuber and Tubiello gated wheat and maize in the Karkheh River Basin (KRB) 2007). Accumulating evidence suggests that the overall in the semi-arid region of Iran. Te results showed that impact of climate change on crop yields is positive in there was a close linear relationship between crop yield some agricultural areas and negative in others (Parry and CWP, which frst increased and then decreased with et al. 2004; Lobell et al. 2011; He et al. 2018). Terefore, the continuous rise of consumptive water use. Tese it is necessary to quantitatively assess the response of studies and their outcomes indicate that exploring crop crop yields to future climate on a regional scale and to water productivity helps understand the tradeof between use scientifc and technological developments to miti- food production and water consumption and helps fnd gate any adverse impacts. efective ways to improve CWP under climate change Te rapid development of crop growth models has conditions. led to their wide applications to simulate the biomass Te Heihe River basin is an important commercial and yield of diferent crops, especially in the study of grain base, located in an arid region in northwest China. climate change impacts (Challinor et al. 2010; Chen Te runof generation and crop production for the region et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2018). Marin et al. (2013) simu- were simulated in the study of Niu et al. (2018). Li et al. lated the sugarcane yield in southern Brazil using the (2016) applied AquaCrop model to quantify the impact calibrated DSSAT/CANEGRO model. Te results of climate change on water consumption and water use showed that sugarcane yield was sensitive to tempera- efciency of maize and spring wheat for a sub-region. ture, CO2 concentration, and rainfall; the sugarcane Han et al. (2017) analyzed the efect of climate change yield and water use efciency showed an increasing on phenological stages and water requirement of spring trend when all of temperature, CO 2 concentration, and wheat during growing season. However, to the best of our rainfall increased. knowledge, the previous studies did not systematically Te crop growth module of the Soil and Water Assess- evaluate the possible efects of climate change on the ment Tool (SWAT) was derived from the simplifed EPIC local major crops (four crop types) with the crop distri- module (Neitsch et al. 2011), which has successfully sim- bution data (Zhong et al. 2015) and GCM products for ulated crop growth processes under diferent crop types, the whole agricultural land in the middle reaches of the diverse management measures, and various climatic con- basin. Encouraged by the advances made by the above ditions (Shahvari et al. 2019; Wu et al. 2012; Sun and Ren, studies, the present study attempted to assess the impact 2014; Marek et al. 2017). Fu et al. (2019) adopted SWAT of climate change on crop yield and crop water produc- to simulate the efect of 16 kinds of irrigation schemes on tivity in the Heihe River basin in northwest China (Fig. 1). crop yield and water use efciency in the downstream of Te latest generation of coupled climate models the Songhua River Basin in China, and determined the included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Pro- optimum irrigation schemes of corn and soybean crops ject Phase 5 (CMIP5) have been widely used to assess the by means of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Gray impact of climate change on crop yield at the regional Interconnect Degree Analysis (GIDA). Uniyal et al. (2019) scales (Rowhani et al. 2011). Combined with future mete- calibrated SWAT in four catchments of diferent agro-cli- orological data, the present study aims to use SWAT matic zones/countries to simulate the crop growth under model to simulate the temporal and spatial changes in defcit irrigation, and found that defcit irrigation (25– crop yield and CWP of major crops in the upper-middle 48%) achieved substantial water savings with only a small Heihe River basin under future climate change condi- decrease in annual average crop yield in all climatic zones.