USDA Climate Change Indicators for Agriculture: A New Framework for Understanding Climate Risks and Impacts to U.S. Agriculture.
Abstract
The USDA Climate Change Indicators for Agriculture technical report provides national, regional, and local information to support decision-making by U.S. farmers, livestock producers, resource managers, policy-makers, and other agricultural stakeholders.
This USDA technical report was released in July 2020 and identifies twenty different indicators that track how climate change is, and will be, affecting a range of important agricultural production systems in the United States. These twenty indicators were chosen from a much larger candidate set because they have clear relationships to climate are relevant to agricultural production, food systems, and/or food security have a historical context are available and well documented as a group represent multiple production types and aspects The collection of indicators provide sustained and consistent information regarding: - Physical climate elements that directly affect agricultural production and food systems that are currently being monitored; - Indirect measures of climate impacts, such as the range and infestation intensity of weeds, pests, disease and disease vectors, and the timing of seasonal agricultural activities that affect crop production and animal agriculture; and - Crop, animal, and socioeconomic indicators, such as heat stress in livestock, crop-growing region migration, and insurance payouts for extreme events that influence overall farming productivity. In a variety of different ways, these indicators reveal how the climate context is changing for U.S. agriculture, both directly, e.g. precipitation and temperature extremes, and indirectly, e.g. increased pest pressure, how crops and animals are responding, and the consequences for economic and human costs. Together, the indicators represent an overall view of how climate change is influencing American agriculture systems. Individually, they provide useful information for supporting specific management decisions.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMSY044..03B
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4330 Vulnerability;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 6349 General or miscellaneous;
- POLICY SCIENCES