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方面发挥着核心作用，也是最容易受到气候多变性和变化影响的社会部门之一。自20世纪70年代以来，降雨量的显著增加导致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：连续种植已广泛取代生态良好的农业-牧场轮作。尽管如此，如果（这是完全可能的）气候恢复到更干燥的时期，部分为应对降雨量增加而发展的生产系统可能不再可行。由于对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范围（25-30年后），本项目将探讨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、不确定的十年气候轨迹、降低气候压力脆弱性的技术创新、人类决策以及几十年内土地使用和保有权变化之间联系的认识。为了实现这一目标，研究人员将建立年代际气候变化的情景;评估气候变化对当前和适应性农业生产系统的影响;模拟耐干旱胁迫的基因改良作物的生物和经济影响;研究这种技术创新的传播;（5）开发个人决策模式，并利用这些模式评估新出现的区域规模的土地使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决策，因此是了解复杂自然-人类系统中决策的有用测试平台。该项目将对农业决策过程提出新的见解，包括个人和群体学习，以及适应可能的气候变化。在更广泛的范围内，这项研究将采用各种工具来评估未来25-30年气候变化对区域的影响，这一规模与资源管理、基础设施和投资规划有关。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，促进和要求推广，并确保了气候信息所有者对这一进程的所有权。最后，潘帕斯草原与美国中西部在经历的气候波动、生产规模、技术和作物种植以及土地保有制度方面的相似性表明，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.