SP 13: Model-based crop growth and yield assessment for agricultural crop rotations and grassland systems emanating from tropical rain forest conversion

Project description

The framework conditions for the use of land resources in southern Amazonia are changing, driven by both economic and climatic factors. Favourable soybean prices and governmental energy supply strategies continuously support deforestation and land conversion. Global climate change alters the conditions for agricultural crop production. Biomass growth and crop yield are key factors in the considered conversion system as they determine farm level profits and connected socio-economic structures as well as the overall balance of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Within the carbiocial project, process-based simulations of biomass growth and yields in grassland and agricultural soil-plant-atmosphere systems under given climatic, economic and land-use change scenarios will be prepared as a basis for further evaluations of GHG emissions, carbon (C) sequestration potentials and sector-based economics in partner projects. The intended research includes the adjustment and calibration of the simulation model, performance tests against historical data sets, model application under defined economic and climatic scenarios along a land-use change gradient and simulations of different crop management strategies for their sustainability and their potential to sequester carbon and to mitigate GHG emissions.

Please see also the Poster of SP 13 presented at the Kick-Off Workshop in Cuiabá, Brazil, 6-9 July 2011

Project Members:
Prof. Dr. Karl-Otto Wenkel
Dr. Claas Nendel
Leibniz-Center for Agricultural Landscape Research