Keynote Presentations from the AVEC International Summer School, Peyresq, 14-27 September 2003

Speaker: Pete Smith
pete.smith<at>abdn.ac.uk
University of Aberdeen, Dep.of Plant & Soil Science, Cruickshank Building, St Machar Drive, AB24 3UU Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Title of the talk: Impacts of Climate Change on Agroecosystems (pdf)

Summary of the talk by a student: Students summary (pdf)

Abstract

Impacts of climate change on agroecosystems – productivity, soils and vulnerability

After reviewing the evidence for climate change and examining the likely changes in climate over the next 100 years, I will review and we will discuss some of the impacts of climate change and changes in CO2 and N deposition on agroecosystems. I will present for discussion examples of effects at the process, leaf, canopy and ecosystem level. I will show that impacts at the ecosystem level are hard to predict. We will then briefly discuss how climate change drivers might combine to deliver an overall impact on agroecosystems in Europe.

Having explored the impacts of climate change on agriculture, I will then describe how agriculture might contribute to climate change mitigation. I will then put this in the context of other methods for climate mitigation to discuss the overall potential of European agriculture in the global context. We will discuss the implication of these findings.

In the final section of the seminar, we will discuss some ideas of how we might move from impacts on biophysical parameters to examine impacts on ecosystem services, and how we might use these to assess the vulnerability of agroecosystems to global change.

Recommended background literature on this presentation:

• Janssens IA, Freibauer A., Ciais P, Smith P, Nabuurs G-J, Folberth G, Schlamadinger B, Hutjes RWA, Ceulemans R, Schulze E-D, Valentini R, Dolman H (2003) Carbon sinks and sources in the European terrestrial biosphere Science 300: 1538-1542, doi:10.1126/science.1083592


• Molina JAE and Smith P (1998) Modeling carbon and nitrogen processes in soil. Advances in Agronomy 62: 253-298


• Smith P, Powlson DS, Smith JU, Falloon PD and Coleman K (2000) Meeting Europe’s Climate Change Commitments: Quantitative Estimates of the Potential for Carbon Mitigation by agriculture Global Change Biology 6: 525-539, doi:10.1046/j.1365-2486.2000.00331.x
  
• Smith P, Goulding KW, Smith KA, Powlson DS, Smith JU, Falloon PD and Coleman K (2001) Enhancing the carbon sink in European agricultural soils: Including trace gas fluxes in estimates of carbon mitigation potential. Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems 60: 237-252, doi:10.1023/A:1012617517839


• Smith P and Powlson DS (2003) Sustainability of soil management practices – a global perspective. In: Soil Biological Fertility - A Key To Sustainable Land Use In Agriculture. (ed. L.K. Abbott & D.V. Murphy), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, Netherlands (in press)


• Falloon P, Smith P (2003) Accounting for changes in soil carbon under the Kyoto Protocol: need for improved long-term data sets to reduce uncertainty in model projections. Soil Use and Management, 19 (3) 265-269, doi:10.1079/SUM2003201


• Smith P (2004) Carbon sequestration in croplands: the potential in Europe and the global context. European Journal of Agronomy, 20 (3) 229-236, doi:10.1016/j.eja.2003.08.002

AVEC is a EU FP5 Concerted Action No. EVK2-2001-00074

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