scholarly journals Extreme Weather Events in Agriculture: A Systematic Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2547 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessia Cogato ◽  
Franco Meggio ◽  
Massimiliano De Antoni Migliorati ◽  
Francesco Marinello

Despite the increase of publications focusing on the consequences of extreme weather events (EWE) for the agricultural sector, a specific review of EWE related to agriculture is missing. This work aimed at assessing the interrelation between EWE and agriculture through a systematic quantitative review of current scientific literature. The review analysed 19 major cropping systems (cereals, legumes, viticulture, horticulture and pastures) across five continents. Documents were extracted from the Scopus database and examined with a text mining tool to appraise the trend of publications across the years, the specific EWE-related issues examined and the research gaps addressed. The results highlighted that food security and economic losses due to the EWE represent a major interest of the scientific community. Implementation of remote sensing and imagery techniques for monitoring and detecting the effects of EWE is still underdeveloped. Large research gaps still lie in the areas concerning the effects of EWE on major cash crops (grapevine and tomato) and the agronomic dynamics of EWE in developing countries. Current knowledge on the physiological dynamics regulating the responses of main crops to EWE appears to be well established, while more research is urgently needed in the fields of mitigation measures and governance systems.

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
KARL PAUW ◽  
JAMES THURLOW ◽  
MURTHY BACHU ◽  
DIRK ERNST VAN SEVENTER

ABSTRACTExtreme weather events such as droughts and floods have potentially damaging implications for developing countries. Previous studies have estimated economic losses during hypothetical or single historical events, and have relied on historical production data rather than explicitly modeling climate. However, effective mitigation strategies require knowledge of the full distribution of weather events and their isolated effects on economic outcomes. We combine stochastic hydrometeorological crop-loss models with a regionalized computable general equilibrium model to estimate losses for the full distribution of possible weather events in Malawi. Results indicate that, based on repeated sampling from historical events, at least 1.7 per cent of Malawi's gross domestic product (GDP) is lost each year due to the combined effects of droughts and floods. Smaller-scale farmers in the southern region of the country are worst affected. However, poverty among urban and nonfarm households also increases due to national food shortages and higher domestic prices.


Subject Prospects for agriculture in 2016. Significance The agricultural sector in 2016 will be influenced by extreme weather events, especially El Nino, as well as by domestic responses to geopolitical developments, especially in Russia, and rising food demand in major emerging economies such as China.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suvi Ruuskanen ◽  
Bin-Yan Hsu ◽  
Andreas Nord

The ability to maintain a (relatively) stable body temperature in a wide range of thermal environments is a unique feature of endotherms such as birds. Endothermy is acquired and regulated via various endocrine and molecular pathways, and ultimately allows wide aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial distribution in variable environments. However, due to our changing climate, birds are faced with potential new challenges for thermoregulation, such as more frequent extreme weather events, lower predictability of climate, and increasing mean temperature. We provide a compact overview on thermoregulation in birds and its endocrine and molecular mechanisms, pinpointing gaps in current knowledge and recent developments, focusing especially on non-model species to understand the generality of, and variation in, mechanisms. We highlight plasticity in thermoregulation and underlying endocrine regulation, because thorough understanding of plasticity is key to predicting responses to changing environmental conditions. To this end, we discuss how changing climate is likely to affect avian thermoregulation and associated endocrine traits, and how the interplay between these physiological processes may play a role in facilitating or constraining adaptation to a changing climate. We conclude that while the general patterns of endocrine regulation of thermogenesis are quite well understood, at least in poultry, the molecular and endocrine mechanisms that regulate e.g. mitochondria function and plasticity of thermoregulation over different time scales (from transgenerational to daily variation) need to be unveiled. Plasticity may ameliorate climate change effects on thermoregulation to some extent, but the increased frequency of extreme weather events, and associated in resource availability, may be beyond the scope and/or speed for plastic responses. This could lead to selection for more tolerant phenotypes, if the underlying physiological traits harbour genetic and individual variation for selection to act on – a key question for future research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (Special) ◽  
pp. 143-167
Author(s):  
Mohammad Shahid ◽  
Sushmita Munda ◽  
Rubina Khanam ◽  
Dibyendu Chatterjee ◽  
Upendra Kumar ◽  
...  

Climate change is widely recognized as one of the most pressing issues confronting humanity today. It is considered to be a direct threat to our food production system including rice. Climate change affects rice production in various ways. The variability in temperature and precipitation increases, predictability of seasonal weather patterns reduces and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and cyclones increases. In India, the effect of natural disasters on agriculture, including disasters caused by climate change has been gradually growing. It is believed that during the mid and end century India's future rice production is projected to reduced by 2.5 to 5% from the current level. As there is less scope for rice area to grow in the future, any growth in rice production will have to come only from productivity gains. Since climate change is a continuous process, the rice production system requires specific adaptation strategies to prevent rice yield losses and its variability. Therefore, it's critical to understand how climate change affects rice crop and to follow better production practises including crop establishment methods, water management, weed management, nutrient management and microbial resources utilization that make cropping systems more resilient to extreme weather events. The spread of climate resilient production technologies would benefit rice production systems' resilience.


Climate ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rawshan Ali ◽  
Alban Kuriqi ◽  
Ozgur Kisi

This study aimed to assess the interrelationship among extreme natural events and their impacts on environments and humans through a systematic and quantitative review based on the up-to-date scientific literature. Namely, the main goal was to add additional knowledge to the existing evidence of the impacts related to floods, droughts, and landslides on humans and the environment in China; this in order to identify knowledge gaps in research and practice to aid in improving the adaptation and mitigation measures against extreme natural events in China. In this study, 110 documents were analyzed in the evaluation of several impacts triggered by extreme events. Records were obtained from Scopus and Web of Science and examined with a text mining instrument to assess the pattern of publications over the years; the problems linked to extreme weather events were investigated, and the study gaps were discussed. This paper extends work by systematically reviewing recent evidence related to floods, droughts, and landslides in China. We listed the critical studies that focused on the impact of extreme events on both humans and the environment described in current reviews. The findings revealed that goods safety, social safety, and financial losses are of significant concern to the scientific community due to extreme natural events, which from our analysis resulted in being more frequent and intense. It is still underdeveloped to implement distant sensing and imaging methods to monitor and detect the impact of severe weather occurrences. There are still significant study gaps in the fields of the effects of extreme weather events. The analysis result shows that extreme events are increased during the time, so more in-depth investigation and efforts on adaptation, mitigation measures, and strategical governance plans are desperately required.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Lekakis ◽  
Ana Maria Tarquis ◽  
Stylianos Kotsopoulos ◽  
Gregory Mygdakos ◽  
Agathoklis Dimitrakos ◽  
...  

<p>Agricultural Insurance (AgI) sector is expanding on a global scale and is projected to grow by €50 B, by 2020. This rapid growth is driven by a set of fundamental structural changes directly affecting the agricultural sector like more frequent and severe extreme weather events, growing global population and intensification of production systems. Insurance solutions are set to grow in importance for agricultural management, given that agriculture will continue to be increasingly dependent on risk financing support. However, the development and provision of insurance services/products in the agricultural sector is generally low as compared to other sectors of the economy, and in their majority, suffer from low market penetration.</p><p>In that frame, the BEACON toolbox was born, that aims to provide insurance companies with a robust and cost-efficient set of services that will allow them i) to alleviate the effect of weather uncertainty when estimating risk of AgI products; ii) to reduce the number of on-site visits for claim verification; iii) to reduce operational and administrative costs for monitoring of insured indices and contract handling; and iv) to design more accurate and personalized contracts. Specifically, BEACON scales-up on EO data and Weather Intelligence components, couples them with blockchain, to deliver the required functions for Weather Prediction and Assessment and Smart Contracts and offer the required services:</p><ul><li>Crop Monitoring, which provides contract profiling and crop monitoring data together with yield estimations.</li> <li>Damage Assessment Calculator, which supports AgI companies in better assess and calculate damage to proceed with indemnity pay-outs of claims.</li> <li>Anti-fraud Inspector, which allows AgI to automatically check the legitimacy of a claim submitted.</li> <li>Weather Risk Probability, which provides probabilities maps of extreme weather events that may occur in the upcoming season.</li> <li>Damage Prevention/ Prognosis – Early Warning System, which provides extreme weather alerts to AgI providers and their customers.</li> </ul><p>This work focuses on the Damage Assessment Calculator component. It provides an approach using different types of EO data, implemented in the operational workflow of BEACON that can be used by AgI companies to improve the prediction and crop loss assessment due to drought and hailstorms.</p><p> </p><p>Acknowledgements</p><p>This  project  has  received  funding  from  the  European  Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No 821964 (BEACON).</p>


Author(s):  
Abhijit R. Kulkarni ◽  
Behrouz Shafei

Iowa’s roadway network is an important part of the state’s transportation infrastructure and plays a critical role in the functionality and economic development of the entire state. This network primarily consists of three interstate highways that pass through Iowa, connecting it to the neighboring states and eventually Canada. Various businesses are located near this roadway network and rely on it for everyday operation. In recent years, however, the growth of agricultural and biofuel industries has intensified the demand on the roads and bridges in Iowa. The state’s roads and bridges have also witnessed a number of flooding events, which have caused extensive traffic disruptions and economic losses. Thus, it is imperative to develop a fundamental approach to evaluate the impact of extreme events on the transportation infrastructure of Iowa and other similar states. Towards this goal, the current study investigates the existing condition of Iowa’s transportation infrastructure, possibility of occurrence of extreme weather events, and scenarios that may lead to the failure of transportation infrastructure components. For this purpose, the capabilities of Bayesian belief networks are utilized to quantify the effects of extreme precipitation and extreme temperature on the performance of transportation infrastructure and then predict the probability of damage to roads and bridges. This will be achieved through the identification of the most influential factors using a set of sensitivity analyses, assessment of overall vulnerability with evidence-based propagation analyses, and quantification of response to extreme weather events, taking into consideration climate projections.


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