A spatially explicit representation of conservation agriculture for application in global change studies

Prestele, Reinhard; Hirsch, Annette L.; Davin, Edouard L.; Seneviratne, Sonia I.; Verburg, Peter H.

doi:10.1111/gcb.14307

Cited by 75 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…To identify the global future potential for conservation agriculture, Prestele et al. () also provide a POTential estimate. This estimate assumes that all agricultural land that is generally suitable for management under the principles of conservation agriculture is converted in the future (1130 Mha globally).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For methodological details and additional information on the different estimates we refer to Prestele et al. ().…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, the adoption of these land management practices is seen as a potential climate mitigation and adaptation strategy that also has climate impacts beyond its impact on carbon sequestration (Davin et al., ; Lobell, Bala, & Duffy, ). Here, we take the first step towards resolving the representation of conservation agriculture within ESMs by implementing a simple parameterization within a state‐of‐the‐art ESM using a new spatially explicit dataset on conservation agriculture as input (Prestele, Hirsch, Davin, Seneviratne, & Verburg, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this study, we build upon previous research with ESMs to examine the climate implications of agricultural land management. Deviating from the idealized approach used in previous studies, we use a new global conservation agriculture dataset (Prestele et al., ) to constrain the application of albedo and evapotranspiration changes towards a more realistic distribution of this land management practice. We also limit albedo changes to the soil surface rather than the canopy albedo as in Wilhelm et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modelled biophysical impacts of conservation agriculture on local climates

Hirsch

Prestele

Davin

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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Including the parameterization of land management practices into Earth System Models has been shown to influence the simulation of regional climates, particularly for temperature extremes. However, recent model development has focused on implementing irrigation where other land management practices such as conservation agriculture (CA) has been limited due to the lack of global spatially explicit datasets describing where this form of management is practiced. Here, we implement a representation of CA into the Community Earth System Model and show that the quality of simulated surface energy fluxes improves when including more information on how agricultural land is managed. We also compare the climate response at the subgrid scale where CA is applied. We find that CA generally contributes to local cooling (~1°C) of hot temperature extremes in mid‐latitude regions where it is practiced, while over tropical locations CA contributes to local warming (~1°C) due to changes in evapotranspiration dominating the effects of enhanced surface albedo. In particular, changes in the partitioning of evapotranspiration between soil evaporation and transpiration are critical for the sign of the temperature change: a cooling occurs only when the soil moisture retention and associated enhanced transpiration is sufficient to offset the warming from reduced soil evaporation. Finally, we examine the climate change mitigation potential of CA by comparing a simulation with present‐day CA extent to a simulation where CA is expanded to all suitable crop areas. Here, our results indicate that while the local temperature response to CA is considerable cooling (>2°C), the grid‐scale changes in climate are counteractive due to negative atmospheric feedbacks. Overall, our results underline that CA has a nonnegligible impact on the local climate and that it should therefore be considered in future climate projections.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For methodological details and additional information on the different estimates we refer to Prestele et al. ().…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modelled biophysical impacts of conservation agriculture on local climates

Hirsch

Prestele

Davin

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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“…For initial SOC stocks (i.e., to be able to determine stock change factors for cropland from Table 5.5), we simplistically assume that all cropland has been continuously used for annual crops with medium input level. Different regional tillage practices are considered based on data by Prestele, Hirsch, Davin, Seneviratne, and Verburg () (see Table S3).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural climate solutions versus bioenergy: Can carbon benefits of natural succession compete with bioenergy from short rotation coppice?

et al. 2019

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Short rotation plantations are often considered as holding vast potentials for future global bioenergy supply. In contrast to raising biomass harvests in forests, purpose‐grown biomass does not interfere with forest carbon (C) stocks. Provided that agricultural land can be diverted from food and feed production without impairing food security, energy plantations on current agricultural land appear as a beneficial option in terms of renewable, climate‐friendly energy supply. However, instead of supporting energy plantations, land could also be devoted to natural succession. It then acts as a long‐term C sink which also results in C benefits. We here compare the sink strength of natural succession on arable land with the C saving effects of bioenergy from plantations. Using geographically explicit data on global cropland distribution among climate and ecological zones, regionally specific C accumulation rates are calculated with IPCC default methods and values. C savings from bioenergy are given for a range of displacement factors (DFs), acknowledging the varying efficiency of bioenergy routes and technologies in fossil fuel displacement. A uniform spatial pattern is assumed for succession and bioenergy plantations, and the considered timeframes range from 20 to 100 years. For many parameter settings—in particular, longer timeframes and high DFs—bioenergy yields higher cumulative C savings than natural succession. Still, if woody biomass displaces liquid transport fuels or natural gas‐based electricity generation, natural succession is competitive or even superior for timeframes of 20–50 years. This finding has strong implications with climate and environmental policies: Freeing land for natural succession is a worthwhile low‐cost natural climate solution that has many co‐benefits for biodiversity and other ecosystem services. A considerable risk, however, is C stock losses (i.e., emissions) due to disturbances or land conversion at a later time.

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