Obiettivo
The aim of the project is to address area 1.1.4.2 of the Workprogramme by developing a new model for assessing the impact of environmental change on European wheat production. Although much work has been invested in testing and developing site-based wheat simulation models, the latest research has shown important areas of discrepancy between them, which have large consequences for predictions of environmental effects. Furthermore, they are not specifically designed for being up-scaled to predict the impact of climate change at the regional-scale, which places particular emphasis on the ability to predict across sites for diverse soils and climates, and to accurately take account of increasing CO2 concentration for these.
The project will consist of three stages:
(1) testing and developing algorithms for the responses identified as being most important for the aim
(2) testing and improving the capacity of these algorithms to predict for diverse field sites
(3) validating the models with independent data and assessing the performance at regional scale.
Stages (1) and (2) will involve new experimentation designed to specifically test alternative hypotheses in the existing models on
(a) effect of soil type on response of wheat to drought
(b) interaction between elevated CO2 and drought for differing soils (c) effect of temperature on biomass production.
These experiments will be conducted over two years by partners in Germany, Spain and UK. The output from stages (1) and (2) will be algorithms which have been optimised for representing these effects under field conditions. In stage (3), the algorithms will be combined into a complete model with other components being chosen on the basis of research being conducted in other EU-funded projects. The complete model will be validated with existing independent site data available from other projects. Finally, the model will be upscaled to produce yield predictions for larger areas. These will be compared with observed time-series data for the areas, and the predictive performance compared with other models. The end-product of the project will be a model specifically designed to assess the impact of climate change scenarios on wheat production for different areas of Europe, with good evidence on its predictive performance.
Campo scientifico
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Data not availableMeccanismo di finanziamento
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinatore
AL5 2JQ Harpenden, Herts
Regno Unito