Title: Empirical estimation of weather-driven yield shocks using biophysical characteristics for U.S. rainfed and irrigated maize, soybeans, and winter wheat

Abstract

Agricultural yields are highly susceptible to changes in weather system patterns, including both annual and sub-annual changes in temperature and precipitation. Understanding the impacts of future changes in meteorological variables on crop yields have been widely studied in both empirical and process-based models. This work presents a structural econometric approach that combines historical weather data with information about the biophysical growth cycles of maize, winter wheat, and soy to predict the year-to-year yield responses for rainfed crops. Modeled soil moisture and temperature are taken as key predictors, which allows testing the fitted rainfed model’s ability to predict irrigated yields by assuming irrigation produces the numerically optimal level of soil moisture. This approach is grounded in known biophysical processes, which improves confidence in the model predictions. It produces estimates of interannual variability in yields, which enable study of the effects of extreme events on agricultural productivity. Finally, it enables prediction of the potential impacts of changing weather patterns on irrigated crops in areas that are currently primarily rainfed. We present the results of the empirical model, fitted with rainfed data; out-of-sample validation on irrigated crops; and projections of yield shocks under multiple future climate scenarios. Under a bias-corrected GFDL RCP8.5 scenario,more » this approach predicts average yield change, relative to 2006-2020 average yields, across U.S. counties in the 2040-2060 period of -16.9% and -13.4% for rainfed and irrigated maize, of -19.1% and -18.4% for rainfed and irrigated soy, and of -4.0% and -2.0% for rainfed and irrigated winter wheat. And in the 2070-2090 period of -30.3% and -28.8 % for rainfed and irrigated maize, of -33.1% and -32.8% for rainfed and irrigated soy, and of -6.5% and -5.2%for rainfed and irrigated winter wheat.« less

Authors:

Snyder, Abigail C.  ^[1];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Snyder, Abigail C."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-9034-9948"

Waldhoff, Stephanie T.  ^[1];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Waldhoff, Stephanie T."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-8073-0868"

Ollenberger, Mary ^[2]; Zhang, Ying ^[1]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
2. University of Maryland, Frostburg, MD (United States). Center for Environmental Science

Publication Date:

Thu Aug 12 00:00:00 EDT 2021

Research Org.:

Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE Office of Science (SC)

OSTI Identifier:

1821863

Report Number(s):

PNNL-SA-155872
Journal ID: ISSN 1748-9326

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC05-76RL01830

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Environmental Research Letters

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Volume: 16; Journal Issue: 9; Journal ID: ISSN 1748-9326

Publisher:

IOP Publishing

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; agricultural impacts; agricultural responses; structural econometric modeling; biophysical growth stages