Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation Strategies On Maize And Rice Yield In Nan River Basin, Thailand

Climate change poses a significant threat to water resources, mostly in the field of agriculture. Since climate variables such as temperature and precipitation serve as direct inputs to agriculture, any change in these variables is bound to have a major impact on the yield and variability of crops. This study analyzes the future patterns of temperature and precipitation, investigates the impacts of climate change on yield for maize and rice, and evaluates the adaptation strategies to mitigate climate change impacts on study area of Nan River Basin, Thailand. Three GCMs, namely EC-Earth, EC-Earth_CC and Nor_ESM2_LM are used for future climate data and projections are made for SSP 245 and SSP 585 scenarios. The future climate from the GCMs can be predicted after bias correction. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Correlation Coefficient (R2) and percent biases help to show the agreement between both observed and raw data. AquaCrop model is used to simulate the maize and rice yield which is setup and validated using crop yield from field. Climatic variations such and temperature, precipitation, solar radiation, relative humidity, evapotranspiration are considered as main focus for this research. The findings of this study will contribute to further understanding of climate change impacts on crop yield and empower the local communities in increasing their produce by employing relevant measures. Keywords: climate change, adaptation, crop yield, aquacrop