Developing climate models in response to farmers' perspectives and practices

Keywords: climate modeling, climate change adaptation, agriculture, soil management
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Farmers are among those who feel the impacts of climate change most directly as their livelihoods are shaped by increasing droughts, floods, extreme heat events, and other climate-related changes. Recent research indicates that farmers' practices, such as tilling, cover cropping, and crop residue removal, shape the ability of soils to hold carbon, nitrogen, and moisture, thus contributing to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. In this study, we examine how access to and characteristics of climate data produced through earth system models may influence farmers' adaptive practices, recognizing that adaptive decision making is complex and multifaceted. We presented climate projections from the Community Earth System Model (CESM2) to farmers in the Willamette Valley, Oregon (n=31) and asked about their relevance to farmers' adaptive decision-making. Findings indicate that data generated from CESM2 can inform farmers' long-term decisions in significant ways, but that the data would be more usable if the outputs were interactive so farmers could select the thresholds and variables relevant to their needs and if the model accounted for changes caused by farmer practices such as residue removal, cover cropping, and tillage levels. Findings also indicate that although data from global earth system models like CESM2 are at a longer temporal and coarser spatial scale than that at which farmers make decisions, farmers are adept at applying knowledge across scales to the microclimates of their farms. Thus, downscaling regional models, while helpful, is not always necessary for adaptive decision making.