Agricultural Land use changes have been influenced by both the natural variability in the climate, water and soil changes; socio-economic factors like markets; and the cropping practices. Of this the influence of the anthropogenic causes have been the most significant in the last few decades, moving towards intensive irrigated cropping practices. In addition, it is anticipated that the climate changes in the near and mid-term can cause further impact on these cropping systems. In this project, we have simulated the crop yields of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India and Hefei, Anhui Province in China for the period of 1990 to 2025 for the changed climatic scenario. Future climatic input was from the MIHR climate model for the SRES B1 scenario. The Mod-EPIC model should that the winter (Rabi) season crops will show no change or increasing yields, while the impact on summer/rainy (Kharif) season, mainly on rice will be marginally lower yields. Also, the research identified the gaps in the data and how it limits the utility of the models. Also, there is a need to improve the modelling framework to incorporate feedbacks between crop yields and land use changes.
Project • APN2005-21-NMY, ARCP2006-04-CMY