Abstract
Climate change in recent years has been affecting agriculture and especially crop production worldwide. This study analyzes the effect of two different climate change scenarios on crop production of an experimental site in southern Québec, Canada. The DSSAT model, which was calibrated for years 2008 and 2009, was used to simulate corn growth with 30 years of synthetic data for climate scenarios baseline (1961–1990), A2 (2040–2069), and B1 (2040–2069). In comparison with the baseline scenario, the A2 and B1 scenarios projected a decrease in grain and biomass, an increase in crop ET and evaporation, and an early crop emergence and maturity dates. Reduction in grain yield of up to 40% for A2 and 24% for B1 scenarios was observed, which could be attributed to water-deficit conditions resulting from decreased rainfall and increase in temperature during the growing season. Because drought indices were found to be significantly correlated with grain yield and crop water stress, it could be used to define the variability of grain yield and water stress at the field scale. This study indicates that climate change might have a negative effect in terms of corn crop production under the given study area.
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Published In
Journal of Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 10 • October 2015
Copyright
© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 15, 2014
Accepted: Feb 2, 2015
Published online: Mar 19, 2015
Discussion open until: Aug 19, 2015
Published in print: Oct 1, 2015
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Agriculture
- Chemical compounds
- Chemical elements
- Chemicals
- Chemistry
- Climate change
- Climates
- Crops
- Design (by type)
- Droughts
- Engineering fundamentals
- Environmental engineering
- Hydrologic engineering
- Hydrologic properties
- Hydrology
- Irrigation engineering
- Load factors
- Nitrogen
- Nutrient pollution
- Pollution
- Structural design
- Water and water resources
- Water management
- Water pollution
- Water shortage
- Water supply
- Water yield
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