CLIMATE-CHANGE-INDUCED TEMPORAL VARIATION IN PRECIPITATION INCREASES NITROGEN LOSSES FROM INTENSIVE CROPPING SYSTEMS: ANALYSIS WITH A TOY MODEL

Highlights

● A simple model was used to evaluate how increasing temporal variability in precipitation influences crop yields and nitrogen losses.

● Crop yields are reduced and nitrogen losses are increased at current levels of precipitation variability.

● Increasing temporal variability in precipitation, as is expected (and observed) to occur with anthropogenic climate change will reduce yields and increase nitrogen losses further.

Abstract

A simple ‘toy’ model of productivity and nitrogen and phosphorus cycling was used to evaluate how the increasing temporal variation in precipitation that is predicted (and observed) to occur as a consequence of greenhouse-gas-induced climate change will affect crop yields and losses of reactive N that can cause environmental damage and affect human health. The model predicted that as temporal variability in precipitation increased it progressively reduced yields and increased losses of reactive N by disrupting the synchrony between N supply and plant N uptake. Also, increases in the temporal variation of precipitation increased the frequency of floods and droughts. Predictions of this model indicate that climate-change-driven increases in temporal variation in precipitation in rainfed agricultural ecosystems will make it difficult to sustain cropping systems that are both high-yielding and have small environmental and human-health footprints.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

crop yield / fertilizer timing / nitrogen loss / precipitation variability / toy model

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Acknowledgements

We thank Pono von Holt and Ponoholo Ranch for providing information on precipitation and its variability along a rainfall gradient. Model development and manuscript preparation were supported by a US National Science Foundation grant (2027290) awarded to Stanford University.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Peter M. Vitousek, Xinping Chen, Zhenling Cui, Xuejun Liu, Pamela A. Matson, Ivan Ortiz-Monasterio, G. Philip Robertson, and Fusuo ZHANG declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2022. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)