Collaborative Research: GCR: Scaling-Up Transformative Adaptation through Socio-Agroclimatology

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This project addresses the grand societal challenge of achieving large-scale, transformative climate change adaptations in agriculture while mitigating further climate impacts and supporting sustainable rural livelihoods. This project will investigate the social processes that influence farmers’ choices to adopt (or not) climate smart agriculture (CSA) practices and the effects of those choices on land-atmosphere interactions and changing regional climate. This approach has the potential to identify leverage points to mitigate anticipated climate change impacts on small to medium U.S. farmers and generate spillover benefits to local rural economies.The goal of this project is to develop the new, convergence research approach of socio-agroclimatology linking social processes that influence farm management choices with land-atmosphere feedbacks. This will be accomplished through the identification of leverage points for systemic change, integration with coupled atmosphere-land surface and cropping system models, and Participatory Action Research (PAR) experimental co-design with community partners. PAR experiments will explore the effectiveness of intentionally bridging farmer networks as a deep leverage point for scaling-up adoption of CSA practices. Potential thresholds in CSA adoption leading to beneficial climate feedbacks will be analyzed by advancing the understanding and modeling of land-atmosphere interactions and crop productivity. Integration of these project elements will support development of a CSA decision-support tool, implementation of a convergence assessment of current and proposed policy options, and production of actionable recommendations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.