CNH: Collaborative Research: Interactions Between Changing Climate and Technological Innovations in Agricultural Decision Making: Implications for Land Use and Sustainability

农业在全球粮食生产和粮食安全中发挥着核心作用，也是最容易受到气候变率和变化影响的社会部门之一。自20世纪70年代以来，降雨量的显著增加促成了阿根廷潘帕斯草原土地利用的重大变化，这是本研究的重点：连作已广泛取代生态无害的农业-牧场轮作。然而，如果气候回到更干燥的时期（这是完全有可能的），部分为了应对降雨增加而进化的生产系统可能就不可行了。由于未来气候的预测路径存在很大的不确定性，特别是在区域尺度和短期（25-30年后），本项目将探索各种可能的气候情景，以预测对农业系统的潜在影响，以及可能影响生产力和气候脆弱性的农业技术进步。本研究的中心目标是提高对农业生态系统、不确定的年代际气候轨迹、降低气候压力脆弱性的技术创新、人类决策以及几十年期间土地利用和权系变化之间联系的理解。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将建立年代际气候变化情景；评估气候变率对当前和适应的农业生产系统的影响；模拟抗旱基因改良作物的生物学和经济效应；研究这种技术创新的扩散；(5)建立个人决策模型，并利用这些模型评估新出现的区域尺度土地利用和土地保有模式及其对生产系统可持续性的影响。农业生产涉及具有重要经济后果的现实世界决策，因此是理解复杂的自然-人类系统决策的有用测试平台。该项目将开发有关农业决策过程的新见解，包括个人和小组学习，以及适应合理的气候变化。在更广泛的范围内，该研究将实施工具来评估未来25-30年气候变化的区域影响，这是一个与资源管理、基础设施和投资规划相关的范围。气候波动将在可能影响未来几十年农业的重要技术变革的背景下进行探讨。该项目的一个亮点是农民和气候信息业务生产者（阿根廷气象局）的积极参与，这保证了研究的相关性，促进和要求外联，并确保利益相关者对这一过程的所有权。最后，潘帕斯草原在经历过的气候波动、生产规模、技术和作物种植以及土地权属制度方面与美国中西部的相似之处表明，该项目的结果具有更广泛的相关性。

Agriculture plays a central role in global food production and food security, and is among the societal sectors most vulnerable to climate variability and change. A marked increase in rainfall since the 1970s has contributed to major changes in land use in the Pampas of Argentina, the focus of this study: continuous cropping has widely replaced ecologically-sound agriculture-pasture rotations. Nevertheless, production systems that evolved partly in response to increased rainfall may not be viable if (as is entirely possible) climate reverts to a drier epoch. As there is much uncertainty about projected paths of future climate, particularly on regional scales and short time horizons (25-30 years hence), this project will explore various plausible climate scenarios to anticipate potential impacts on agricultural systems together with advances in agricultural technology that may affect productivity and vulnerability to climate. The central goal of this study is to improve understanding of linkages between agricultural ecosystems, uncertain decadal climate trajectories, technological innovations that decrease vulnerability to climate stresses, human decision-making, and land use and tenure changes over periods of a few decades. To achieve this goal, the investigators will build scenarios of inter-decadal climate variability; assess the impacts of climate variability on current and adapted agricultural production systems; simulate biological and economic effects of genetically-improved crops tolerant to drought stress; study the diffusion of this technological innovation; (5) develop models of individual decision-making and use these models to assess emerging regional-scale patterns of land use and land tenure and their implications for sustainability of production systems. Agricultural production involves real-world decisions with important economic consequences, and thus is a useful test bed to understand decision-making in complex natural-human systems. This project will develop new insights on decision-making processes in agriculture, including individual and group learning, and adaptation to plausible climate changes. On a broader scale, the research will implement tools to assess the regional implications of climate change in the next 25-30 years, a scale relevant to resource management, and infrastructure and investment planning. Climate fluctuations will be explored in the context of important technological changes that may shape agriculture over the next decades. One highlight of the project is the active involvement of farmers and operational producers of climate information (the Argentine Met Service) that guarantee the relevance of the research, facilitate and demand outreach, and ensures stakeholders'' ownership of the process. Finally, similarity in experienced climate fluctuations, production scale, technology and crops grown, and land tenure regimes of the Pampas to those in the US Midwest suggest a broader relevance of the project''s results.