Rangeland Ecology & Management

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The Impact of Climate and Global Change on Crop Production
Author
Dixon, Geoffrey R
Publisher
Elsevier B.V.
Publication Year
2009
Body

Changing climate adds a very significant dimension to the complex problem of ensuring that agriculture worldwide can feed the burgeoning human population. Ensuring food security must reduce environmental damage, not add to it. Population growth, the loss of fertile land through degradation and its use for housing and industry, reduced water supplies, and aspirations for an increasingly protein-based diet are integral parts of this problem. Supplying adequate and appropriate food against a background of changing climate is the paramount problem that scientists of all disciplines and politicians must solve collectively. Historical analyses for maize yield over the period 1474–2001 demonstrate the close link between food supply and climatic change. The implications of changing climate have been recognized scientifically for well over a century. Change may be beneficial, at least in the short term, as demonstrated recently Argentinian yields of wheat, maize, sunflower, and soybean have benefited from increased precipitation, decreased maximum, and increased minimum temperatures. The first formal scientifically validated link between observed global changes in physical and biological systems and human-induced climate change predominantly from increasing concentrations of greenhouse. In biological systems, 90% of the data sets showed that plants and animals are responding consistently to temperature change. This is mostly illustrated by phenological change with earlier blooming, leaf unfolding, and spring arrivals. The Earth's resources are in imminent danger of exhaustion and its environment is changing in a manner that enhances the process.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Book
Book Title
Climate Change
Keywords
climate change
plant production
southern Africa