Tradeoffs Between Land-Management and Regional Climate in the Brazilian Cerrado
Abstract
Examining interactions between large-scale land use change and regional climate in areas undergoing dramatic agricultural transformations, like the Brazilian Cerrado, is crucial for understanding tradeoffs between human needs and ecosystem services. Previous work has demonstrated that clearing vegetation in the Cerrado and replacing it with large-scale mechanized agriculture (often soy, corn and sugarcane fields) affects regional water and energy balances. Moreover, farmers in the region depend on a stable, predictable rainy season to cultivate crops like soy and corn, but, clearing Cerrado for agriculture may disturb regional climate and affect precipitation: replacing the deep-rooted vegetation of the Cerrado with soy fields increases local temperatures and decreases evapotranspiration rates, particularly during the transition period between the dry and wet season. Here, we integrate accurate high-resolution land-cover maps into the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled to the Noah-Multiparameterization (Noah-MP) land surface model to run simulations over Brazil's agricultural heartland to determine 1) the extent to which changes in land-use and land-cover have affected regional climate focusing on the crucial dry-to-wet season transition months, and 2) which management regimes (single-cropped soybeans, double-cropped soy & corn rotations, sugarcane, irrigated systems, etc.) are more sustainable from a water and energy balance standpoint than others. Initial results suggest that crops irrigated through the dry season best maintain a water and energy balance similar to that of Cerrado vegetation, followed by double-cropped systems. This work is essential for understanding past and future changes in climatological seasonality in dynamic, human-modified regions and making informed land use decisions.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.A21L2893S
- Keywords:
-
- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3355 Regional modeling;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1637 Regional climate change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE