Decision Support Tool for Vulnerability and Adaptation Options to Climate Change: Modeling the Case of Maize Growing Systems in Ethiopia

Abstract:

Countries in Africa and Ethiopia are dependent on rain-fed agriculture and are experiencing heavy pressure from food insecurity. In these countries, the current climate is severe, and adaptive capacity in terms of technology and information needed to avoid the impact of climate change are lacking. This paper aims to provide a decision support tool for policy-makers to identify foot-insecurity hotspot in agricultural systems and potential effective adaptation strategies.

We use high-resolution methods to generate daily weather data for a combination of baseline and climate change scenarios and generated climate models to drive maize simulation models. The differences in maize production between the baseline and the climate change scenarios allowed for estimating how the maize growing systems can be positively or negatively affected by climate change. Maize yields simulated with the current and doubling [CO2] concentration are then compared to analyze the effect of [CO2] fertilization. The incorporation of two adaptive strategies into crop modeling provided some insights on preferred types of adaptation in each area.

The results showed that maize production is highly vulnerable to simulated global warming. Such impacts differed with different weather conditions, since climate change has greater impacts on the relatively arid area. The direct fertilization effects of [CO2] vary across regions and cannot compensate for the maize yield decrease in general. The effectiveness of adaptive strategies is also region-specific, implying that adaptive strategies need to be tailored to the local and community level to buffer the yield reduction impacts of climate change effectively. This paper provides duplicated methods to facilitate such adaption options.

Keywords: Climate change impacts; Climate change adaptation; Food security; Crop modeling

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