How can biodiversity serve a role in agricultural resilience to climate change, both in supporting ecosystem services, and for adaptability of livelihoods?

Biodiversity has formed the basis for human food production systems and human livelihoods for millennia. Due to agricultural intensification, land use change, and global warming, agricultural biodiversity is at high risk. The in situ genetic resources of crops and livestock are threatened, and also, many stress-adapted landraces are being replaced by modern high-input varieties. These losses create important problems for generating the genetics and breeding programs to adapt to climate change. Resilience can also be potentially accomplished with greater reliance on complex multispecies systems, including microbes, soil fauna, and beneficial insects. To increase adaptive capacity, appropriate social, cultural and economic contexts are needed for research programs that involve the participation of those who are intended to benefit from research. This will require adaptive management and long-term alliances between diverse stakeholders that increase the coping ability during unpredictable periods of resource limitation, e.g., drought. In a wider context, at the landscape scale, biodiversity serves important functions that enhance the environmental resource base upon which agriculture depends, e.g., water purification in nearby wildland waterways, and regional effects on microclimate and water availability due to forest cover. There is still much to be learned about how decision-makers at various scales can work together to support research and coping strategies to manage the mosaic of ecosystems in a landscape in ways that support sustainability and high productivity as the climate changes, and to enhance diversification that will permit adaptive responses in response to extreme events.

How much change in distribution of demography and agricultural crop types will take place in temperate and tropical regions due to climate change considering present rate of consumption of resources? What are those safer regions which will be the most favorite destinations of migrants affected by global warming, vulnerable events and ground water depletion?

The increasing consumption of earth resources like fossil fuel, mining, pumping out ground water etc. is creating disturbances inside earth and in earth’s atmosphere. These disturbances in earth systems will attract vulnerable events like earthquakes, tsunami, cyclones etc. Regions prone to these vulnerable events will be devastated which will force people to migrate to safer places.

On the other hand, due to global warming and melting of ice, regions like Scandinavia and Russia will get more agricultural land and greenery. This will attract migration of people towards northern parts of these countries. Even people from other parts of Europe, Africa and Asia may shift towards these areas in due course of time. Another factor affecting migration will be sinking of islands due to sea level rise.

Depletion of ground water will also be major factor affecting migration to other places within region or in some cases out of the region (if severity increases). In tropical region like south Asia, glaciers are melting; rivers are not having enough water to recharge the ground water. The uncertainty of monsoon rains is increasing. The rain water is not properly trapped to recharge the ground water, most of it goes as run off. Very soon in these regions, conditions will be so that people will be forced to leave agriculture and migrate to some other places. This will also affect the agricultural patterns and population distribution.

I believe that during next decade, we must focus our research to search the answers of these questions in order to prepare future generation ready against natural and man made disasters. One of the steps of action may be to develop multidisciplinary programs and teams of scientists and modelers including social scientists, political scientists, geophysicists, ecologists and atmospheric and agricultural scientists etc.

How much does loss of organic matter in soil (due to land degradation) contribute to national CO2 emissions; how much fixation will result from intensification of agriculture and conservation?

Land degradation is a widespread phenomenon in which large quantities of C are involved. Its contribution to national C-balances has not been quantified.
Explicit knowledge of this aspect of land degradation may stimulate government interest in the value of land, which is often one of the main assets of poor farmers.

What is the interannual variability in the hydrological cycle over rainfed agriculture areas?

Most of our food is produced from the rainfed areas. Disturbing the existing system could cause great frustrations to the growers, and possible food deficiencies in the future.

What are the consequences of land cover and land use change for human societies and the sustainability of ecosystems?

The environment of the Earth has many close connections and relationships with human activity. It is also now more widely recognized that a profound transformation of the Earth’s environment is taking place and that many of these changes are the result of human action. Growing world population and increasing wealth are driving demands for more food production. Croplands and pastures occupies today roughly 40% of the land surface and global land cover and is according to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) the main modification humanity makes to land cover, and therefore a main driver of ecological change, and biodiversity loss at the global scale.

Current trends in land use allow humans to appropriate an ever-larger fraction of the biosphere’s goods and services while simultaneously diminishing the capacity of global ecosystems to sustain food production, maintain freshwater and forest resources, regulate climate and air quality, and mediate infectious diseases…
Modern landuse practices, while increasing the short-term supplies of material goods, may undermine many ecosystem services in the long run, even on regional and global scales. Confronting the global environmental challenges of land use will require assessing and managing inherent trade-offs between meeting immediate human needs and maintaining the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and services in the future. Assessments of trade-offs must recognize that land use provides crucial social and economic benefits, even while leading to possible long-term declines in human welfare through altered ecosystem functioning.
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How will agricultural biodiversity losses predicted by climate change impact agriculture, rural development and food security?

Agricultural biodiversity (agrobiodiversity) as an important component of biodiversity provides a number of benefits associated with production and productivity, agro-ecosystem function, and human well-being. At the same time it is well known that the climate change will be the main driver of loss of biodiversity in general and of agrobiodiversity in particular. This impact will be different for the different components of agricultural biodiversity. Thus the undertaking predictive modelling of impact of possible losses and distribution of agricultural biodiversity most important to food security on agriculture and rural development will significantly contribute to address food security needs in face of global warming.

What are the consequences of ground water reduction on agriculture?

I asked this question and I am concerned that population is growing therefor its food demand and more agriculture productivity means somehow losing soil strength and soil water (soil productivity). This may affect climate regionally. How to address such problem in next decade. If human want to survive than we have to address such question in next decade first rather than discussing water cycle and global warming as they are seems to be periodic.

what is the linkage between agricultural activities, biodiversity loss and sediment and nutrient fluxes into water systems and the overall impact of environmental degradation on the survival of humankind?

Agricultural production is a predominant activity of the majority of the rural poor in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, due to land degradation as a result of inappropriate farming techniques, there is continued loss of Biodiversity and soil fertility through soil and water erosion and these eroded materials (sediments and nutrient fluxes) end up choking water systems, this is evident in the network of rivers that feed into lake Victoria in East Africa.

How can semi-arid agrosystems adapt to expected changes in climate and anthropogenic forcing?

Due to growths in water scarcities and population needs, agrosystems in semi-arid region have to increase their agronomic performances in terms of water use efficiencies and yields, where both can be regarded at the scale of regional watersheds that include several compartments (shallow and deep aquifers, crop mosaics, hydro-agricultural constructions) in relation with distribution of blue and green water. Decision support systems for the benefit of stakeholders have to be strengthened by relying on biophysically based modeling platform that encompass the aforementioned compartments and the related water flows. This requires first parameterizing and calibrating the modeling platform components, where the use of remote sensing if of prime interest for constraining models in a spatially distributed manner, and then setting up realistic scenarios from the calibrated modeling platforms. In this context, special efforts have to be made over relief areas, where hilly structures allow water harvesting for irrigation purposes, and therefore the maintaining of agricultural populations along with their economical activities.

To what extent does agriculturally based activities affect carbon dioxide emissions nationally, regionally, and globally?

The question is aimed at offering solutions to the major issues of deforestation, use of agrochemicals and other agro-based activities associated with CO2 emissions. Although the rural poor developing countries may pose a threat since they do more of deforestation, while producers of agrochemicals may also promote their use.