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Characterizing Agricultural Impacts of Recent Large-Scale US Droughts and Changing Technology and ManagementProcess-based agricultural models, applied in novel ways, can reproduce historical crop yield anomalies in the US, with median absolute deviation from observations of 6.7% at national-level and 11% at state-level. In seasons for which drought is the overriding factor, performance is further improved. Historical counterfactual scenarios for the 1988 and 2012 droughts show that changes in agricultural technologies and management have reduced system-level drought sensitivity in US maize production by about 25% in the intervening years. Finally, we estimate the economic costs of the two droughts in terms of insured and uninsured crop losses in each US county (for a total, adjusted for inflation, of $9 billion in 1988 and $21.6 billion in 2012). We compare these with cost estimates from the counterfactual scenarios and with crop indemnity data where available. Model based measures are capable of accurately reproducing the direct agro-economic losses associated with extreme drought and can be used to characterize and compare events that occurred under very different conditions. This work suggests new approaches to modeling, monitoring, forecasting, and evaluating drought impacts on agriculture, as well as evaluating technological changes to inform adaptation strategies for future climate change and extreme events.
Document ID
20180002169
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Elliott, Joshua
(Chicago Univ. Chicago, IL, United States)
Glotter, Michael
(Chicago Univ. Chicago, IL, United States)
Ruane, Alex C.
(NASA Goddard Inst. for Space Studies New York, NY, United States)
Boote, Kenneth J.
(Florida Univ. Gainesville, FL, United States)
Hatfield, Jerry L.
(Agricultural Research Service Ames, IA, United States)
Jones, James W.
(Florida Univ. Gainesville, FL, United States)
Rosenzweig, Cynthia
(NASA Goddard Inst. for Space Studies New York, NY, United States)
Smith, Leonard A.
(London Univ. United Kingdom)
Foster, Ian
(Chicago Univ. Chicago, IL, United States)
Date Acquired
April 4, 2018
Publication Date
July 24, 2017
Publication Information
Publication: Agricultural Systems
Publisher: Elsevier
Volume: 159
ISSN: 0308-521X
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN45351
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF SES-0951576
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF SEES-1215910
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF DGE-1133082
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF OCI-1148443
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
Climate extremes; Drought impacts; Agriculture; Seasonal prediction; Adaptation

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