Author Archives: AgClimate Admin

OneNOAA CSSR series

Beginning Thursday, July 12 at 9:00 am Pacific Standard Time – and occurring weekly at that time through Tuesday, August 28 – the OneNOAA seminar series will be hosting an 8-part suite of talks on different aspects of the National Climate Assessment 4 Volume I – the Climate Science Special Report.  This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the latest climate science from some of the nation’s most eminent scientists!

  • Thurs, July 12: Climate Science: What’s New? – Katharine Hayhoe (Texas Tech University)
  • Thurs, July 19: Detection and Attribution of Climate Change from the CSSR – U.S. Perspective – Tom Knutson (NOAA-GFDL)
  • Thurs, July 26: Droughts, Floods, and Wildfire – Michael Wehner (DOE-LBNL)
  • Thurs, Aug 2: Climate Potential Surprises – Compound Extremes and Tipping Elements – Radley Horton (Columbia University / Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory)
  • Thurs, Aug 9: Climate Long-Term Climate Mitigation Perspectives and the 2°C Objective – Ben DeAngelo (NOAA)
  • Thurs, Aug 16: The Causes and Consequences of a Rapidly Changing Arctic – Patrick Taylor (NASA-Langley Research Center)
  • Thurs, Aug 23: Climate Tidings of the Tides – Billy Sweet (NOAA)
  • Tues, Aug 28: The Fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment: An Overview of Volume 1 – Don Wuebbles (University of Illinois)

Webinar Announcement June 1st: Building Rangeland Resilience Case Studies

Matt Reeves USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station and Georgine Yorgey Washington State University will present Case Studies to Build Rangeland Resilience

Cow-calf operators, the primary users of rangeland resources throughout the Pacific Northwest, will need to adapt to a range of future stressors, including those that are climate-related. A critical aspect of preparing for the future is understanding past vegetation performance and management responses. Learning from successful techniques for dealing with extended drought or reduced forage conditions can add insight to the future. Thus, as part of this project, we use case studies to quantify decadal trends and inter-annual variability for rangelands to aid managers and producers in planning for the future. We also profile forward-thinking grazers to provide stakeholder-centered and science-driven insights into their management practices to enhance resilience.

Friday, June 1, 2018  1 pm Eastern/12 pm Central/ 11 am Mountain/ 10 am Pacific
The presentation will follow an update on USDA Forest Service and Climate Hub activities

To join the webinar:
Step 1: For audio, dial: 1-888-844-9904 and use access code: 3847359
Step 2: Web Login: https://usfs.adobeconnect.com/sfmr-500/

 

 

New Ideas for Improving the Resilience of Semi-Arid Systems

By Georgine Yorgey and Karen Hills,

Swathed cover crop that will be fed to cattle in the field, Nez Perce, ID. By Darrell Kilgore

Across the dryland areas of the inland Pacific Northwest, soil erosion and the use of near monocultures of wheat have long been serious sustainability challenges, ones that we have been working on for decades, including over the last seven years through regional collaborations. Reducing or eliminating tillage has been one important strategy for reducing erosion across the region in recent decades.  Improving diversity by including crops such as canola, peas, chickpea and quinoa in rotations is another approach, but across the inland Pacific Northwest from 2007-2014, 53% of dryland crop acreage was used for winter or spring wheat, while an additional 31% was fallow (meaning that to preserve moisture for the following crop, no crop was grown) (Kirby, E. et al., 2017). Continue reading

New perennial crops may be possible in the future

By: Lauren Parker

Could Northwest growers have an opportunity to cultivate potentially displaced California almonds in the future? Photo: Flickr user Nicholas D under CC BY-NC 2.0.

California cultivates roughly two-thirds of the nation’s fruit and nut crops, including virtually 100% of the US almond supply. Growing demand and high profit-per-acre have driven a doubling in almond acreage in the Golden State since 1995, including a nearly 100,000-acre increase in almond plantations between 2011 and 2015, despite that period coinciding with the most severe drought in the state in a millennium.

Continue reading

Crop residue–Help or hindrance?

By Karen Hill

Figure 1. Wheat residue on field near Ritzville, Washington, which is part of the drier grain-fallow cropping system. (Photo credit: Darrell Kilgore)

The production of crop residue varies dramatically across the Inland Pacific Northwest, with estimated residue production for winter wheat ranging from roughly 0.9 ton/acre in the drier grain-fallow cropping system (Figure 1) to 8.5 ton/acre in the wetter annual crop system, which has enough precipitation to support cropping every year. Crop residues are often seen as simply something to “manage” so that they don’t impede future plantings or as a byproduct that can be sold to help improve the bottom line. However, while editing chapters for the recently released publication Advances in Dryland Farming in the Inland Pacific Northwest, I was introduced to another way to think about these residues in the chapter in that publication titled “Crop Residue Management.” Continue reading

Real-life agricultural innovation: implications for future preparedness

By: Sonia A. Hall

Both John Aeschliman (left) and Douglas Poole (right) practice no-till, though they farm with very different precipitation regimes. Photo: Alex Garland.

Extension has traditionally involved getting results from researchers to decision-makers in agriculture. Partly because I work on climate change and agriculture, and partly because of the approach my team and the researchers we work with take, extension is, for us, a two-way street. In this article I want to highlight the “other” side of that street: how innovations that producers test out in real life complement research and supports future preparedness.

In preparation for a new project I reviewed case studies and profiles others I work with published as part of the Regional Approaches to Climate Change – Pacific Northwest Agriculture (REACCH-PNA) project, which focused on dryland cereal production in a changing climate. These case studies tell the stories of producers who are implementing practices that break some mold, and that is leading to both interesting results and to benefits that will help them be prepared for future climates. Continue reading

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays from the AgClimate.net team!  Catch up on all our posts from 2017 and join us again for an exciting new year in 2018!  Don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter.

Best Wishes from all of us!!

REACCH Seminar Series: Wheat Focused Presentations

By Amy Pendegraft

Articles contained within this post:

  1. The Where and When of Earthworms in Wheat
  2. Research on the Ground: A Survey of Wheat Growers
  3. Climate Change and Winter Wheat Systems: A Case Study from the Pacific Northwest
  4. Pulling Weeds: Timing downy brome control in a changing climate

Continue reading