DISES:Integrating human and biophysical factors to project future cropscapes under climate change

Climate change is projected to alter the agricultural yields of many crops. Thus it is important to understand the potential for technological change, farmer adaptation and agricultural policy to mitigate the effect of climate change on agricultural economies, food security, international trade, rural societies, and ecological health. This project engages stakeholders in diverse agricultural systems to investigate the social and environmental factors that drive agricultural futures. The investigators integrate historical analyses, predictive modeling, expert insights, and farmer perceptions to identify emergent crops, technologies, policies, and on-farm realities that might alter probable futures in each region. The project culminates in a convergence event convening stakeholders from each agricultural region to envision relevant strategies to catalyze more desirable agricultural futures. Given the triple challenge of preventing biodiversity loss, mitigating the effects of climate change, and food insecurity, transformative adaptation of agricultural systems will be necessary and inevitable. This project co-produces knowledge with stakeholders to understand how historical conditions have affected the evolution of contemporary agricultural systems, draws on stakeholder knowledge to develop scenarios of probable socio-environmental system futures, and identifies transition pathways to move towards desirable future conditions. The research team assembles what is known about diverse agroecosystems to delineate the direction, bounds, and magnitude of probable future change in disparate regions. The project identifies emergent agricultural technologies, crops, management practices, and policies with the potential to transform regional cultivation regimes and investigates how current farm management influences social-ecological system dynamics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.