BE/CNH: Climate Information and Forecasts in Agricultural Production Systems of the Argentine Pampas: Planning for Their Effective Use in Decision Making

农业生产是一个复杂的自然-人类系统，涉及多重价值目标和各种风险来源。 农业的主要风险来源之一是气候多变性。 在世界许多地方，厄尔尼诺-南方涛动现象是季节至年际尺度气候变率的主要单一来源。 在许多区域，包括阿根廷的潘帕斯草原，与厄尔尼诺/南方涛动有关的气候变化与农业生产之间的联系已经确定，潘帕斯草原是一个主要生产区，也是拟议努力的地理重点。 最近的科学和技术进步使人们能够以适当的技巧预测厄尔尼诺/南方涛动事件，提前几个月。在农业部门，与厄尔尼诺/南方涛动有关的气候预测可能有助于减少不利条件的风险或利用有利条件。 然而，仅仅记录气候变化的影响和提供更好的气候预测还不足以从新出现的预测能力中获益。 使许多农民不愿对气候信息作出反应的因素需要科学的关注，以便从气候预测中获得重大利益。 美国和阿根廷研究人员之间的这一合作项目旨在加强对概率气候信息的使用的理解，以支持农业生产系统的决策;预测并可能防止气候预测的意外负面社会后果，并为未来业务系统的设计提供信息，以传播与农业决策和政策制定相关和有用的气候信息。 该项目将包括规划讲习班和初步研究，为规划工作提供信息。 两个规划讲习班将有助于确定规划过程中要解决的问题，确定主要的研究需要，并为今后的工作设计详细的计划。 规划研讨会期间要解决的主要问题包括建模方法每个组成部分的主要不确定性来源，以及确定和解释与所使用的所有模型相关的假设和限制。 将开展的初步研究活动包括与阿根廷潘帕斯草原的农民和技术顾问进行个别访谈和重点小组讨论。 初步工作还将包括对制作和传播气候信息或农业咨询意见的机构进行调查，并说明可加以调整以包括气候预测信息的现有决策支持工具。对农业和其他部门使用气候信息和预报的系统的组成部分进行最终探索，将有助于组建一个有效的多学科研究小组，自然科学和社会科学。 这一项目应促进更多地了解新获得的气候信息如何影响人类和自然系统之间复杂的相互作用，如阿根廷潘帕斯草原的农业生产可能对气候变化作出的反应。 该项目还应有助于为今后关于有效利用气候信息造福社会的制约因素和激励措施的工作奠定基础。 该项目是2001财政年度环境中生物复杂性特别竞赛的一个奖项，重点是耦合自然和人类系统的动力学。

Agricultural production is a complex natural-human system that involves multiple value-laden objectives and various sources of risk. One of the major risk sources to agriculture is climate variability. In many parts of the world, the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is the major single source of climate variability on seasonal-to-interannual scales. Links between ENSO-related climate variability and agricultural production have been established for many regions, including the Pampas of Argentina, a major production region and the geographic focus of the proposed effort. Recent scientific and technological advances have made it possible to forecast, with moderate skill, ENSO events with a lead time of months. In the agricultural sector, ENSO-related climate forecasts may help to reduce risks of adverse conditions or to take advantage of favorable conditions. Simply documenting the effects of climate variability and providing better climate forecasts is not sufficient to derive benefits from the emerging predictive capability, however. The factors that make many farmers reluctant to respond to climate information requires scientific attention in order to derive significant benefits from to the climate predictions. This collaborative project between U.S. and Argentine researchers seeks to enhance understandings of the use of probabilistic climate information to support decision making in agricultural production systems; to anticipate and possibly prevent unintended negative societal consequences of climate prediction, and to inform the design of a future operational system to disseminate climate information relevant and useful to decision and policy making in agriculture. The project will involve planning workshops and preliminary research to inform the planning effort. Two planning workshops will help to frame the problems to be addressed during the planning process, identify major research needs, and design a detailed plan for future work. Major issues to be addressed during planning workshops include the major sources of uncertainty in each component of the modeling approach and the identification and explication of the assumptions and limitations associated with all models that are used. Preliminary research activities to be undertaken include individual interviews and focus groups with farmers and technical advisors in the Argentine Pampas. The preliminary work also will include a survey of institutions that produce and disseminate climate information or agricultural advice and a description of existing decision-support tools that could be adapted to include climate forecast information.This end-to-end exploration of components of a system for the use of climate information and forecasts in agriculture and other sectors will help assemble an effective multidisciplinary team of researchers drawn from the natural and social sciences. This project should foster greater knowledge about the ways through which newly available climate information can influence the complex interactions among human and natural systems like agricultural production in the Argentine Pampas may respond to the. The project should also help to lay the foundation for future work on the constraints and incentives for the effective use of climate information in benefit of society. This project is an award emanating from the FY 2001 special competition in Biocomplexity in the Environment focusing on the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems.