Agricultural Land Use and Feedbacks
in a Changing Climate

Final Conference of the DFG Research Unit 1695 Regional Climate Change

University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart/Germany, 24 - 26 April 2019

 

 


Session 1: Land Atmosphere Feedback

Session Chair: Kirsten Warrach-Sagi

This session invites presentations focusing on the sensitivity of weather and climate on the land atmosphere interaction on regional to local scales. This includes studies on the atmospheric boundary layer in dependence of the land surface and land use change effects on the atmosphere. We look forward to studies on observations using sensor synergies and model simulations as well as new metrics to quantify the feedback.

Session 2: Crop Response and Modeling

Session Chairs: Andreas Fangmeier & Tobias Weber

Climate change will affect crops due to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, temperature, and variability of weather conditions. This session elucidates the most recent findings on crop performance, yield and yield quality under a changing climate, and how crop responses and feedbacks in soil-crop-atmosphere systems can be considered in integrated modeling.

Session 3: Soil Carbon Turnover under Climate Change

Session Chair: Sergey Blagodatskiy

The session will focus on modeling and experimental studies addressing the effect of changing climate (e.g. temperature and precipitation regime) on soil organic C dynamics. New model approaches designed for better representation of complex nature of soil organic matter (SOM), its stabilization mechanisms and accessibility to decomposition are welcome. Studies describing application and development of methods allowing quantification of conceptual model pools, i.e. following the slogan: model the measurable, are of special interest. Interdisciplinary research, showing how interactions between climate, landscape properties and topography modifies the response of SOM properties and plant growth will be accepted as well.

Session 4: Climate Change Impact on Ecosystem Services

Session Chair: Christian Poll

Ecosystems provide a suite of important services to human societies, such as primary production or carbon sequestration. Climate change and associated changes in ecosystem processes threatens the delivery of these services. This session invites studies addressing this issue as well as methods for monitoring changing ecosystem services and possible adaptation strategies.

Session 5: The Future of Agricultural Land Use

Session Chair: Christian Troost

Addressing the grand challenge of sustainably feeding a growing world population under conditions of climatic change requires thorough consideration of the heterogeneity and diversity of agricultural production systems and their local and global feedbacks with biophysical and socioeconomic environments. For this session, we invite novel contributions that focus on the comprehensive analysis of climate-plant-farm-economy-society feedbacks related to land use decisions as well as those that take a closer look on the decisive role of local heterogeneity in shaping future land use adaptation.