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The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is a major international effort linking the climate, crop, and economic modeling communities with cutting-edge information technology to produce improved crop and economic models and the next generation of climate impact projections for the agricultural sector. The goals of AgMIP are to improve substantially the characterization of world food security due to climate change and to enhance adaptation capacity in both developing and developed countries. Analyses of the agricultural impacts of climate variability and change require a transdisciplinary effort to consistently link state-of-the-art climate scenarios to crop and economic models. Crop model outputs are aggregated as inputs to regional and global economic models to determine regional vulnerabilities, changes in comparative advantage, price effects, and potential adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. Climate, Crop Modeling, Economics, and Information Technology Team Protocols are presented to guide coordinated climate, crop modeling, economics, and information technology research activities around the world, along with AgMIP Cross-Cutting Themes that address uncertainty, aggregation and scaling, and the development of Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs) to enable testing of climate change adaptations in the context of other regional and global trends. The organization of research activities by geographic region and specific crops is described, along with project milestones. Pilot results demonstrate AgMIP's role in assessing climate impacts with explicit representation of uncertainties in climate scenarios and simulations using crop and economic models. An intercomparison of wheat model simulations near Obregón, Mexico reveals inter-model differences in yield sensitivity to [CO2] with model uncertainty holding approximately steady as concentrations rise, while uncertainty related to choice of crop model increases with rising temperatures. Wheat model simulations with mid-century climate scenarios project a slight decline in absolute yields that is more sensitive to selection of crop model than to global climate model, emissions scenario, or climate scenario downscaling method. A comparison of regional and national-scale economic simulations finds a large sensitivity of projected yield changes to the simulations’ resolved scales. Finally, a global economic model intercomparison example demonstrates that improvements in the understanding of agriculture futures arise from integration of the range of uncertainty in crop, climate, and economic modeling results in multi-model assessments.

Purpose In Italy, composting olive mill waste has become a common practice, since it mitigates the environmental problems associated with spreading the waste on land. Compost can be used to prepare growth media for plant nursery cultivation as a substitute for peat, a non-renewable resource whose extraction has long raised environmental concerns. Here, we investigate two common composting procedures--open windrow and static-pile in gas-permeable bags--and compare them to evaluate their environmental impact. Methods We perform a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) in accordance with ISO 14040 and 14044. The LCA considers carbon storage in the soil after 100 years, fugitive greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the impacts avoided by substituting for peat. We use cumulative energy demand, global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential, and eutrophication potential indicators in a contribution analysis and explore how the re-use of olive pits for energy production and reduction of commercial fertilizers improves the environmental balance. We also present a scenario analysis that indicates how parameter fluctuations affect the results. Results and discussion Our study shows that peat's impacts can be significantly reduced from 1162.3 to 96.3 kg CO2-eq/Mg for open windrow compost or 43.1 kg CO2-eq/Mg for static-pile compost in gas-permeable bags. For static-pile composting, the lack of volatile organic compound and ammonia emissions and the detection of oxygen concentrations above 12% vol. suggest fully aerobic conditions. Fugitive greenhouse gas emissions were the most important contributions to the GWP. In the contribution analysis for static-pile composting, the avoidance of compost spreading and the carbon storage effect (due to compost usage) contributed 54% of the overall impacts to GWP and between 21 and 45% to the other indicators. Conclusions This LCA study illustrates how horticulturists can improve their resource management practices by recycling olive mill waste materials. Proper management of composting unit aeration can reduce fugitive GHG emissions.

AbstractRelatively little is known about how plant–soil feedbacks (PSFs) may affect plant growth in field conditions where factors such as herbivory may be important. Using a potted experiment in a grassland, we measured PSFs with and without aboveground insect herbivory for 20 plant species. We then compared PSF values to plant landscape abundance. Aboveground herbivory had a large negative effect on PSF values. For 15 of 20 species, PSFs were more negative with herbivory than without. This occurred because plant biomass on “home” soils was smaller with herbivory than without. PSF values with herbivory were correlated with plant landscape abundance, whereas PSF values without herbivory were not. Shoot nitrogen concentrations suggested that plants create soils that increase nitrogen uptake, but that greater shoot nitrogen values increase herbivory and that the net effect of positive PSF and greater aboveground herbivory is less aboveground biomass. Results provided clear evidence that PSFs alone have limited power in explaining species abundances and that herbivory has stronger effects on plant biomass and growth on the landscape. Our results provide a potential explanation for observed differences between greenhouse and field PSF experiments and suggest that PSF experiments need to consider important biotic interactions, like aboveground herbivory, particularly when the goal of PSF research is to understand plant growth in field conditions.

AbstractSoil micronutrients are capital for the delivery of ecosystem functioning and food provision worldwide. Yet, despite their importance, the global biogeography and ecological drivers of soil micronutrients remain virtually unknown, limiting our capacity to anticipate abrupt unexpected changes in soil micronutrients in the face of climate change. Here, we analyzed >1300 topsoil samples to examine the global distribution of six metallic micronutrients (Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn, Co and Ni) across all continents, climates and vegetation types. We found that warmer arid and tropical ecosystems, present in the least developed countries, sustain the lowest contents of multiple soil micronutrients. We further provide evidence that temperature increases may potentially result in abrupt and simultaneous reductions in the content of multiple soil micronutrients when a temperature threshold of 12–14°C is crossed, which may be occurring on 3% of the planet over the next century. Altogether, our findings provide fundamental understanding of the global distribution of soil micronutrients, with direct implications for the maintenance of ecosystem functioning, rangeland management and food production in the warmest and poorest regions of the planet.

AbstractClimate change strongly affects the health of sub-Saharan African populations. Effective adaptation strategies are required in order to enhance their limited adaptive capacities. The DFG-funded Research Unit (RU) “Climate change and health in sub-Saharan Africa” unites nine research institutions from Burkina Faso, Kenya, Germany, and Switzerland that will design, implement, and evaluate four different adaptation projects in these two African countries from 2020 until 2022.First, the effectiveness of an agro-biodiversification and nutrition program will be established for the reduction of child undernutrition of climate-sensitive nutrients in rural Burkina Faso and Kenya. Two respective cluster-randomized controlled trials (cRCT) will be conducted, each consisting of 2 × 600 children. Second, another cRCT will be conducted among 2 × 300 households in rural Burkina Faso to investigate how sunlight-reflecting cool-roof coatings affect human health outcomes, including cardiovascular and heat-related outcomes. Further outcomes comprise indoor temperature, carbon footprint, and productivity. Third, an index-based weather insurance (IBWI) will be introduced in rural Burkina Faso. The effects of IBWI on childhood nutritional status, dietary behavior, and healthcare seeking will be determined in 2 × 20 villages. Fourth, microbial larviciding has been evaluated as a promising environmental control for malaria vectors in Burkina Faso. Here, the interactions between climatic factors and the effectiveness of the intervention will be tested using spatiotemporal models.

Plants as sessile organisms cannot escape their environment and have to adapt to any changes in the availability of sunlight and nutrients. The quantification of synthesis costs of metabolites, in terms of consumed energy, is a prerequisite to understand trade-offs arising from energetic limitations. Here, we examine the energy consumption of amino acid synthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana. To quantify these costs in terms of the energy equivalent ATP, we introduce an improved cost measure based on flux balance analysis and apply it to three state-of-the-art metabolic reconstructions to ensure robust results. We present the first systematic in silico analysis of the effect of nitrogen supply (nitrate/ammonium) on individual amino acid synthesis costs as well as of the effect of photoautotrophic and heterotrophic growth conditions, integrating day/night-specific regulation. Our results identify nitrogen supply as a key determinant of amino acid costs, in agreement with experimental evidence. In addition, the association of the determined costs with experimentally observed growth patterns suggests that metabolite synthesis costs are involved in shaping regulation of plant growth. Finally, we find that simultaneous uptake of both nitrogen sources can lead to efficient utilization of energy source, which may be the result of evolutionary optimization.