Production risks associated with land use change and climate change in East Africa

Abstract:

Assessing the impacts of climate change on future food security risks is of critical importance in vulnerable human systems such as those of East Africa. Several studies have recently demonstrated anthropogenic influences on earth's climate impacting food security in East Africa. In assessing such impacts, we test to determine if the influences of human induced land use changes rival or exceed those exerted by the increased green house gas (GHG) emissions.

Our objectives are (1) to demonstrate that projections of  future food production in East Africa are sensitive to climate change resulting from both GHG and human- induced Land Cover Land Use Change (LCLUC), and (2) to show that coarse spatial scale analytical approaches mask a great deal of variability in heterogeneous systems. We present results from a Climate-Land Interaction Project in East Africa, using the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), a state-of-the-art limited-area atmosphere model, coupled to a dynamic and process-based CERES Maize  crop simulation model.

The LCLUC is modeled using an artificial neural net-based land use model with regional data on roads, elevation, soils, rainfall, surface water, and existing urban boundaries. We use maize yield as an indicator of food production risk, one of the elements of food security. Our results show that LCLUCinfluenced and GHG -influenced maize yields are highly variable depending on the regional characteristics of precipitation, temperature, and other factors.