The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Workshop

Lead PI: Jonathan Winter

Unit Affiliation: Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR)

September 2012 - September 2013
Inactive
Global ; New York
Project Type: Research

DESCRIPTION: On April 30-May 1, the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) and USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) brought together over 35 leading scientists in climate, hydrology, water resources management, agronomy, and economics in a workshop to develop strategies for improving the representation of water supply and demand in agricultural assessments. Understanding evolving water resources, such as changing precipitation patterns, decreasing groundwater supplies, and growing water use, is a key component of determining climate impacts on agriculture.

OUTCOMES: Specific objectives included surveying key existing climate, hydrologic, water resources management, agricultural; and economic modeling efforts, identifying and prioritize critical areas of uncertainty within and cascading across climate, hydrologic, water resources management, crop, and agricultural economic models; leveraging expertise in the fields of climate, hydrology, water resources management, agronomy, and economics to improve integrated assessment studies; and establishing a research community to develop an AgMIP project exploring the impacts of water supply and demand on future agriculture. The two-day workshop of presentations, discussions, and breakout sessions yielded a plan for ongoing collaborations and several potential projects exploring water and agriculture. Over the course of the workshop participants were tasked with creating frameworks to evaluate the impacts of water on agriculture using linked models and integrated assessment models across low- and high-information regions. To accomplish this goal, the workshop began with a series of plenary presentations and discussions introducing AgMIP and reviewing the state of the science across various facets of water-agriculture interactions and modeling. These plenary sessions were followed by a series of breakouts, which culminated in the presentation of several potential projects exploring the interface of water and agriculture that are currently being developed by subsets of participants. To ensure continued discussions and collaborations from the workshop, notes and presentations were compiled and will be distilled into a publicly available report, several informal gatherings concurrent with scientific conferences were planned, and a proposal for additional workshop funding is being prepared.