The vulnerabilities of agricultural land and food production to future water scarcity

Journal Article · Fri Jul 19 00:00:00 EDT 2019 · Global Environmental Change

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.101944· OSTI ID:1557674

Fitton, N.  ^[1]; Alexander, P.  ^[2]; Arnell, N. ^[3]; Bajzelj, B. ^[4]; Calvin, K.  ^[5]; Doelman, J.  ^[6]; Gerber, J. S. ^[7]; Havlik, P. ^[8]; Hasegawa, T. ^[9]; Herrero, M. ^[10]; Krisztin, T. ^[8]; van Meijl, H. ^[11]; Powell, T. ^[12]; Sands, R. ^[13]; Stehfest, E. ^[6]; West, P. C.  ^[7]; Smith, P. ^[1]

---

1. Univ. of Aberdeen, Scotland (United Kingdom)
2. Univ. of Edinburgh, Edinburgh (United Kingdom); Univ. of Edinburgh, Midlothian (United Kingdom)
3. Univ. of Reading, Reading (United Kingdom)
4. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
5. Pacific Northwest National Lab., College Park, MD (United States)
6. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (The Netherlands)
7. Univ. of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN (United States)
8. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg (Austria)
9. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba (Japan)
10. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, St. Lucia, QLD (Australia)
11. Wageningen Univ. and Research Centre, The Hague (The Netherlands)
12. Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
13. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D.C. (United States)

With a rapidly expanding population and climate change having an impact, pressures on food production systems are expected to increase in coming decades. To meet current demand, it is estimated that over one third of the earth’s land surface is used as cropland or pastures (FAO, 2016b). Although management intensification, such as increasing fertiliser application rates (FAO, 2014b), has led to more productive systems, much of this has been at the expense of the environment, including increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as nitrous oxide (Alexandratos and Buinsma, 2012). Management strategies that aim to achieve high N use efficiencies (Wang et al., 2017) and closing of crop yield gaps have been proposed as ways of alleviating pressures on food production systems (Foley et al., 2011; Mueller et al., 2012). However the net benefits these strategies is predicated on environments that are not resource limited. The aim of this study, therefore, is to combine the projections of changes in water scarcity with the projected areas of future agricultural land, to identify the potential regional vulnerabilities of agricultural land and food production to water scarcity. By combining global maps of projected cropland and pasture area with an ensemble of water scarcity projections, we aim to quantify the risks that water scarcity could pose to land-based food production in 2050. An in-depth analysis is also undertaken for specific food commodities: maize, rice, wheat, vegetables, fruit and pulses on croplands, and cattle production systems t on grasslands.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: NE/M021327/1; AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1557674
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1561114
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-134809
• Journal Information: Global Environmental Change, Vol. 58, Issue C; ISSN 0959-3780
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Land use
Food security
Water availability
Shared socio-economic pathways