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，是最容易受到气候多变和变化影响的社会部门之一。20世纪70年代以来降雨量的显著增加导致阿根廷潘帕斯草原的土地利用发生了重大变化，这是本研究的重点：连作广泛取代了生态无害的农牧轮作。然而，如果(完全有可能的)气候回到一个更干燥的时代，部分因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不确定性，特别是在区域范围和短期范围内(25-30年后)，该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。这项研究的中心目标是更好地了解农业生态系统、不确定的十年气候轨迹、减少气候压力脆弱性的技术创新、人类决策以及几十年来土地使用和保有权变化之间的联系。为实现这一目标，研究人员将建立年代际气候多变性情景；评估气候多变性对现有和调整后的农业生产系统的影响；模拟耐干旱胁迫的转基因作物的生物和经济影响；研究这种技术创新的传播；(5)开发个人决策模型，并利用这些模型评估新出现的区域规模的土地利用和土地保有权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，因此是理解复杂自然-人类系统决策的有用试验台。该项目将发展对农业决策过程的新见解，包括个人和小组学习，以及适应可能的气候变化。在更广泛的范围内，这项研究将实施各种工具，以评估未来25-30年气候变化的区域影响，这一规模与资源管理、基础设施和投资规划有关。气候波动将在未来几十年可能塑造农业的重要技术变化的背景下进行探讨。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，以保证研究的相关性，促进和要求推广，并确保利益攸关方对这一进程的所有权。最后，潘帕斯草原经历的气候波动、生产规模、技术和作物种植以及土地保有权制度与美国中西部的相似之处表明，该项目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.