Simulating long-term impacts of cover crops and climate change on crop production and environmental outcomes in the Midwestern United States

Abstract

It is critical to evaluate conservation practices that protect soil and water resources from climate change in the Midwestern United States, a region that produces one-quarter of the world's soybeans and one-third of the world's maize. An over-winter cover crop in a maize-soybean rotation offers multiple potential benefits that can reduce the impacts of higher temperatures and more variable rainfall; some of the anticipated changes for the Midwest. In this experiment we used the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) to understand how winter rye cover crops impact crop production and environmental outcomes, given future climate change. We first tested APSIM with data from a long-term maize-soybean rotation with and without winter rye cover crop field site. Our modeling work predicted that the winter rye cover crop has a neutral effect on maize and soybean yields over the 45 year simulation period but increases in minimum and maximum temperatures were associated with reduced yields of 1.6%-2.7% by decade. Soil carbon decreased in both the cover crop and no cover crop simulations, although the cover crop is able to significantly offset (3% less loss over 45 years) this decline compared to the no cover crop simulation. Our predictions showed that the cover crop led to an 11-29% reduction in erosion and up to a 34% decrease in nitrous oxide emissions (N 2 O). However, the cover crop is unable to offset future predicted yield declines and does not increase the overall carbon balance relative to current soil conditions.

Assessing the Impacts of Future Climate Conditions on the Effectiveness of Winter Cover Crops in Reducing Nitrate Loads into the Chesapeake Bay Watersheds Using the SWAT Model

“…The warmer winter temperatures also accelerated heat unit accumulation and curbed temperature stress. Basche et al (2016) found that warmer temperatures contributed to increasing biomass of future rye cover crops in Iowa, compared to current conditions. Relative to the baseline, the biomass of wheat, barley, and rye increased by 24% (B1) and 58% (A2), by 12% (B1) and 43% (A2), and by 7% (B1) and 37% (A2), respectively.…”

Sustainable and technological strategies for basic cereal crops in the face of climate change: A literature review

“…In other regions of North America and the Caribbean, declining yields are expected according to Pérez and Omar (2015), in North Africa declining wheat, according to Chourghal et al (2016), corn in the United States (from 1.6 to 2.7% per decade) according to Basche et al (2016), as well as in some regions of Europe where there will be an increase in the frequency of extreme events and population of the continent (Trnka et al, 2015).…”

“…The WOFOST model of quantitative analysis of annual crop production based on physio-ecological processes considers phenology, transpiration, respiration, CO 2 absorption, water simulation and daily growth. Basche et al (2016) analyzes the Simulator model of Agricultural Production Systems (APSIM), simulate the behavior of the production of corn in winter for a period of 45 years, associating temperature variability to decreased performance per decade. The deterministic mathematical model AquaCrop simulates the development of corn cultivation for various regions of the world, considers total and deficit irrigation, determines optimal planting dates, and simulates biomass and yield according to water availability (Bernal et al, 2013).…”

How does inclusion of weather forecasting impact in-season crop model predictions?

“…Over the past years the APSIM model has been successfully applied in this region to simulate production (Hammer et al, 2009;Archontoulis et al, 2014a, b;Dietzel et al, 2016;Puntel et al, 2016;Jin et al, 2017) and environmental aspects of US Midwestern corn and soybean cropping systems (Malone et al, 2007;Archontoulis et al, 2016a, b;Basche et al, 2016;Martinez-Feria et al, 2016).…”