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CGD :: Climate & Global Dynamics
Sponsored by NSF

THESIS | Agricultural yield tool

This tool combines the results of a series of idealized crop model simulations with a scenario time series of crop distributions to generate regional and global analyses of crop production, area, yield, fertilizer application, and irrigation, along with spatial maps of these same variables. Currently the tool is set up to work on the output of crop model simulations from CLM4.5 Crop and ISAM for historical climate (1900–2005) and the two future Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) climates of RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 (2006–2100). The tool is generically flexible, however, and can be configured to work with other crop models and climate period outputs if those outputs are arranged in the format of the agricultural yield tool.

The tool's input data is a database of climate model output data for these variations of climate, CO2, and management:

    • Model: CLM ISAM
    • Period: historical, RCP 4.5, RCP 8.5
    • Climate: constant, transient
    • CO2: constant, transient
    • Irrigation: rainfed, all irrigated
    • Fertilizer: no fertilizer, U.S. level fertilizer.

For the various climate simulations, the tool processes data for the following crops:

    • Cotton
    • Maize
    • Rice
    • Soy
    • Sugar cane
    • Wheat.

Related publications

Levis, S., Badger, A., Drewniak, B., Nevison, C., Ren, X., 2016. CLMcrop yields and water requirements: avoided impacts by choosing RCP 4.5 over 8.5. Climatic Change 1–15. DOI:10.1007/s10584-016-1654-9.

Meiyappan, P., Dalton, M., O'Neill, B.C., Jain, A.K., 2014. Spatial modeling of agricultural land use change at global scale. Ecological Modelling, 291, 152-174, DOI:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2014.07.027.

Ren, X., Weitzel, M., O’Neill, B.C., Lawrence, P., Meiyappan, P., Levis, S., Balistreri, E.J., Dalton, M., 2016. Avoided economic impacts of climate change on agriculture: Integrating a land surface model (CLM) with a global economic model (iPETS), Climatic Change, 1-15. DOI:10.1007/s10584-016-1791-1.

Released code

Source code for the second component of this tool (in Fortran) can be downloaded here.
A user name and password is required to access this repository, register here.

Citation for Model Code

Lawrence P. (2016, December 13) “Agricultural Yield Tool (Version 1)” NCAR THESIS Tools Library. Retrieved from: https://svn-iam-thesis-release.cgd.ucar.edu/agriculture_yield/. DOI: 10.5065/D6JH3JMW.

Documentation

Download documentation (PDF) for the agricultural spatial tool.

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