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Now available in PDF format: Abstract Book [7.4 Mb] (posted 10 November 2005)

Abstracts for Posters

Food Production (P-FP)

Sub-Theme 4: Decision Support Projects & Programs

P-FP4.1

Applications of Climate Information to Agriculture in the Southeast USA:
A Perspective from Agricultural Extension Services

Joan Dusky, The University of Florida

The Land Grant University System (LGSU) has a three-fold mission—teaching, research, and extension. Through Federal legislation, Agricultural Experiment Stations were established in 1887 and the Cooperative Extension Service was established in 1914 specifically to disseminate information produced by research at the experiment stations.

Thus, the LGSU has a long history of linking research with technology users through the extension system.

Extension has two principal components—faculty level Specialists and County Agents. The Extension Specialists are generally co-located with research faculty and in most cases themselves have a partial appointment in research. The County Agents are based in county offices and are often paid in part or full by the county or counties they serve. County Agents have close links with stakeholders and decision makers and the Extension Specialists work with the County Agents to make sure that they have the latest information in their area of specialization.

The Extension Services of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama have been working with the Southeast Climate Consortium (SECC), one of the Regional Integrated Science Assessment centers funded by NOAA, in order to develop information and communication means to deliver climate information to farmers to assist them in making on-farm decisions. The SECC includes both land grant and non-land grant universities, which allows them to
combine specialists in climate sciences with those in agriculture and extension. Moreover, SECC researchers from both land grant and non-land grant universities have worked closely with the Extension Services from the beginning of their efforts in order to better understand the needs of agriculture and natural resource sectors for climate-related information. The SECC launched AgClimate, a prototype interactive web site to help County Agents and farmers better evaluate the vulnerability of agriculture to climate variability. County agents and other Extension Specialists have provided inputs and feedback along all stages of AgClimate development.

To date, the Extension Services of these states have not had Extension Specialists for climate, so the SECC hired three Climate Extension Specialists to work with other researchers, Extension Specialists, County Agents, and farmers. In recognition of the great potential value of climate information to the management of climate related risks in agriculture, the Extension Services of Florida have requested a state-funded position for climate. Ultimately, the Extension Services plans to house and manage AgClimate as an operational component of its program. Implications of climate information and management of on-farm risks will be discussed.

[Poster PDF]

P-FP4.2

The Pileus Project: Climate Science in Support of Decision Making

J. Roy Black, Michigan State University, blackj@msu.edu

Julie A. Winkler, Michigan State University

Jeffrey A. Andresen, Michigan State University

Jeanne Bisanz, Michigan State University, bisanz@msu.edu

Costanza Zavalloni, Michigan State University

The Pileus Project at Michigan State University is developing Web-based information and decision support tools for the agricultural and tourism sectors in Michigan. These tools explicitly incorporate historical climate variability and potential future climate change. The agricultural applications are directed primarily at the tart cherry and grain quality industries, but spin-offs to other industries are possible. Both applications cover several stages in the supply/ value chain beginning with the farm. The tart cherry application also considers globalization issues that are potentially impacted by climate change.

A key contribution of this project is to identify, in appropriate detail, the information needed in decision making that is influenced by climate and then to work through the implications for the tool development. To accomplish this, the Pileus Project team has interacted closely with potential users and groups that may be impacted by climate variability and change. The decision support models for agricultural applications required building and adapting biological models with daily time steps that capture the impact of weather on plant growth, including susceptibility to weather-based losses such as frost and to conditions that induce plant diseases. Many of the impacts of weather on biological processes are very dependent upon weather sequences (e.g., several unusually warm days in late winter/early spring followed by frost which kills emerging cherry buds or drought conditions which increase susceptibility to stressors in the following year). Therefore, specific time-based information is needed to analyze the impact of changing climate on biological processes. The biological model output, in turn, is an input into economics models.

The tart cherry sector has been conditioned to think carefully about climate variability change and about managing risk because of the sensitivity of their industry to weather and climate. A key focus is on decisions that have impacts 10 to 40 years into the future such as orchard replant decisions, schemes for longer-term financial risk management, and greater flexibility and finding ways to put an economic value on that flexibility.

[Poster PDF]

P-FP4.3

Farmer Climate Risk Management: Insights into Climate Change Adaptation Capacity

Jennifer Phillips, Bard Center for Environmental Policy, phillips@bard.edu

David Krantz, Center for Research in Environmental Decisions

Brad Lyon, International Research Institute for Climate Prediction

Consensus is emerging in the scientific community that climate change is likely to result in an increase in weather extremes. Farmers, who are highly sensitive to climate extremes, present an opportunity to investigate decision making related to managing climate risk, providing insights into managing uncertainty associated with future climate change. Through surveys, interviews and focus groups with farmers in Eastern New York State, we are studying climate risk management with two aims: first to "map" mental models of frequency distributions of important extreme events of Northeast farmers, and second, to assess farming system resilience to climate extremes among this set of farmers, which includes small dairy, fruit, and vegetable growers. Products of this work will include improved decision support materials in the context of climate risk associated with climate extremes.

[Poster PDF]