Climate Change Vulnerability of Agro-Ecosystems: Does socio-economic factors matters?

Climate variability and change has direct impacts on agriculture. Despite continual adaptation to climate as well as gains in technology innovation and adoption, agriculture is still vulnerable to changes in temperature and precipitation expected in coming decades. Generally, researchers use two major methodologies to understand the vulnerability of agro-ecosystems to climate change: process-based crop models and empirical models. However, these models are not yet designed to capture the influence of socioeconomic systems on agro-ecosystem processes and outcomes.. However, socioeconomic processes are an important factor driving agro-ecological responses to biophysical processes (climate, topography and soil), because of the role of human agency in mediating the response of agro-ecosystems to climate. We have developed a framework that integrates socioeconomic and biophysical characteristics of agro-ecosystems using cluster analysis and GIS tools. This framework has been applied to the U.S. Southeast to define unique socio-ecological domains for agriculture. The results demonstrate that socioeconomic characteristics are an important factor influencing agriculture production. These results suggest that the lack of attention to socioeconomic conditions and human agency in agro-ecological modeling creates a potential bias with respect to the representation of climate change impacts.