Abstract:Climate change will create warmer temperatures, greater precipitation, and longer growing seasons in northern latitudes making agriculture increasingly possible in boreal regions. To assess the potential of any such expansion, this paper provides a first-order approximation of how much land could become suitable for four staple crops (corn, potato, soy, and wheat) in Canada by 2080. In addition, we estimate how the environmental trade-offs of northern agricultural expansion will impact critical ecosystem servi… Show more
“… Fig. 1 Hindu Kush Himalaya region showing the potential climate driven frontier by 2100 (Adapted from Hannah et al [ 9 ], KC et al [ 19 ], KC et al [ 20 ]) Identification of research questions: Guiding research questions were determined based on knowledge from previous research by Hannah et al [ 9 ] and KC et al [ 19 ] on Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers, with the intent of determining gaps in knowledge and implications for future research in these areas. Identification and screening of literature: First, both Web of Science [WoS] and PubMed was used to identify peer-reviewed literature.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Identification of research questions: Guiding research questions were determined based on knowledge from previous research by Hannah et al [ 9 ] and KC et al [ 19 ] on Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers, with the intent of determining gaps in knowledge and implications for future research in these areas.…”
Climate change, rising temperatures, snow melts and more frequent droughts and floods are disproportionately affecting food and water security, habitat health, and agricultural productivity in the Himalayan region. These climatic changes are negatively impacting productivity of staple crops including wheat, maize, and rice at lower altitudes, but may provide opportunities to utilize Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers [CCDAFs] at higher altitudes. Agricultural expansion into CCDAFs paired with behavioural shifts such as replacing traditional crop systems with commercial crops will predominantly affect forests, water resources, and soil health, which are already negatively affected by climate change unless adaptation options are directed to just and sustainable agroecological transitions. By trading regulating, supporting, and cultural services for food and water provisioning services, as are evident in land sparing strategy, the utilization of CCDAFs will have long-term implications for the sustainability of mountain farming systems. Climate change is affecting Himalayan agriculture, food security, and ecosystem services, and scientific literature predominantly focus on one of these topics in isolation, occasionally connecting results to another topic. By classifying literature as predominantly agriculture, food security, or ecosystem service themed, this scoping review identifies sources with multiple dominant themes and explores how the relationships between these topics are represented in literature to provide research based evidence to promote the future expansion of agriculture that is low-carbon, just and sustainable. Gaps in the literature reveal that research is needed on the extent of CCDAFs in the Himalayas and the potential trade-offs on utilizing the frontier areas.
“… Fig. 1 Hindu Kush Himalaya region showing the potential climate driven frontier by 2100 (Adapted from Hannah et al [ 9 ], KC et al [ 19 ], KC et al [ 20 ]) Identification of research questions: Guiding research questions were determined based on knowledge from previous research by Hannah et al [ 9 ] and KC et al [ 19 ] on Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers, with the intent of determining gaps in knowledge and implications for future research in these areas. Identification and screening of literature: First, both Web of Science [WoS] and PubMed was used to identify peer-reviewed literature.…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Identification of research questions: Guiding research questions were determined based on knowledge from previous research by Hannah et al [ 9 ] and KC et al [ 19 ] on Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers, with the intent of determining gaps in knowledge and implications for future research in these areas.…”
Climate change, rising temperatures, snow melts and more frequent droughts and floods are disproportionately affecting food and water security, habitat health, and agricultural productivity in the Himalayan region. These climatic changes are negatively impacting productivity of staple crops including wheat, maize, and rice at lower altitudes, but may provide opportunities to utilize Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers [CCDAFs] at higher altitudes. Agricultural expansion into CCDAFs paired with behavioural shifts such as replacing traditional crop systems with commercial crops will predominantly affect forests, water resources, and soil health, which are already negatively affected by climate change unless adaptation options are directed to just and sustainable agroecological transitions. By trading regulating, supporting, and cultural services for food and water provisioning services, as are evident in land sparing strategy, the utilization of CCDAFs will have long-term implications for the sustainability of mountain farming systems. Climate change is affecting Himalayan agriculture, food security, and ecosystem services, and scientific literature predominantly focus on one of these topics in isolation, occasionally connecting results to another topic. By classifying literature as predominantly agriculture, food security, or ecosystem service themed, this scoping review identifies sources with multiple dominant themes and explores how the relationships between these topics are represented in literature to provide research based evidence to promote the future expansion of agriculture that is low-carbon, just and sustainable. Gaps in the literature reveal that research is needed on the extent of CCDAFs in the Himalayas and the potential trade-offs on utilizing the frontier areas.
“…Land suitability prediction is particularly important to Canada because it is suspected that Canada will become more suitable for agriculture as climate change progresses. KC et al (2021) estimated that 1.85 million km 2 of land will become suitable for agriculture by 2080 using models that relied on expert opinions 2 . However, their qualitative analysis could not quantify the extent to which the land will be suitable.…”
This study presents an artificial neural network based model that can simultaneously estimate land suitability for barley, peas, spring wheat, canola, oats, and soy in Canada leading to more accurate predictions than single-crop models. The novelties in the modelling method include using an indicator function which allows for a multivariate model to be trained, and a semi-supervised learning approach which allows for training with unlabelled data. The model performs well on land not used in the training set, as demonstrated by both K-fold cross-validation and a visual comparison of crop inventory to predicted land suitability in northern Alberta. The predicted suitability of crops correspond with a region's growing season length; this is in line with literature. Northern Canada is almost completely unused for agriculture, but this may change in the coming decades due to the climate becoming more favorable for agriculture. The model presented in this work can allow for a precise cost benefit analysis regarding environmental damage and economic benefits of cultivating new lands in Canada.
“…Climate change is expected to expand the range of land suitable for agriculture by increasing average temperature and precipitation in high-elevation regions, creating new areas that may become suitable for agriculture known as Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers [CCDAFs] [1][2][3][4][5]. Globally, it is estimated that climate change will increase the enormous amount of potentially suitable cropland, predominantly in the Northern Hemisphere [4,6].…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In this context, this study builds on foundations set by Hannah et al 2020 [4] and K C et al 2021 [5], focusing in the Hindukush Himalaya [HKH]. The HKH is projected to experience climate change at a greater pace and magnitude than much of the rest of the world [22].…”
Theoretically, climate change will create warmer temperatures and greater precipitation in mountainous regions, making agriculture possible in areas that were once unsuitable for cropping. But the extent and the nature of these “agricultural frontiers” is as yet unknown. Building upon recent research on Climate Change Driven Agricultural Frontiers [CCDAFs], this paper assesses the potential of agricultural expansion in the Hindukush Himalaya [HKH]. Using FAO crop suitability data, we estimated the extent of CCDAFs under three Representative Concentration Pathways for 13 crops as well as the potential impacts of developing these frontiers on ecosystem services. We show that under climate change projected by the IPSL-CM5A-LR climate model, 34,507 km² of agricultural frontiers may emerge in the HKH by 2100 under RCP 6.0. Additionally, results suggest that there will be new opportunities for crop diversification as individual crops will gain frontier area. However, developing these CCDAFs will impact supportive and regulating ecosystem services including carbon storage and sequestration, soil quality, biodiversity, and hydrological processes – with implications for regional water security. These impacts must be considered alongside the benefits of additional food production when evaluating the net benefits of developing CCDAFS.
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