IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v284y2023ics0378377423002081.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessment of agricultural adaptations to climate change from a water-energy-food nexus perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Wu, Lina
  • Elshorbagy, Amin
  • Helgason, Warren

Abstract

Adapting agriculture to climate change without deteriorating natural resources (e.g., water and energy) is critical to sustainable development. In this paper, we first comprehensively evaluate six agricultural adaptations in response to climate change (2021–2050) through the lens of the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in Saskatchewan, Canada, using a previously developed nexus model—WEF-Sask. The adaptations involve agronomic measures (early planting date, reducing soil evaporation, irrigation expansion), genetic improvement (cultivars with larger growing degree days (GDD) requirement), and combinations of individual adaptations. The results show that the selected adaptations compensate for crop yield losses (wheat, canola, pea), caused by climate change, to various extents. However, from a nexus perspective, there are mixed effects on water productivity (WP), total agricultural water (green and blue) use, energy consumption for irrigation, and hydropower generation. Individual adaptations such as early planting date and increased GDD requirement compensate for yield losses in both rainfed (0–60 %) and irrigated (18–100 %) conditions with extra use of green water (5–7 %), blue water (2–14 %), and energy for irrigation (2–14 %). Reducing soil water evaporation benefits the overall WEF nexus by compensating for rainfed yield losses (25–82 %) with less use of blue water and energy consumption for irrigation. The combination of the above three adaptations has the potential to sustain agricultural production in water-scarce regions. If irrigation expansion is also included, the combined adaptation almost fully offsets agricultural production losses from climate change but significantly increases blue water use (143–174 %) and energy consumption for irrigation while reducing hydropower production (3 %). This study provides an approach to comprehensively evaluating agricultural adaptation strategies, in response to climate change, and insights to inform decision-makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Wu, Lina & Elshorbagy, Amin & Helgason, Warren, 2023. "Assessment of agricultural adaptations to climate change from a water-energy-food nexus perspective," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:284:y:2023:i:c:s0378377423002081
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2023.108343
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377423002081
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2023.108343?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Somayeh Rezaei Kalvani & Fulvio Celico, 2024. "Analysis of Pros and Cons in Using the Water–Energy–Food Nexus Approach to Assess Resource Security: A Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Hassan El-Ramady & József Prokisch & Mohammed E. El-Mahrouk & Yousry A. Bayoumi & Tarek A. Shalaby & Eric C. Brevik & Svein Ø. Solberg, 2024. "Nano-Food Farming Approaches to Mitigate Heat Stress under Ongoing Climate Change: A Review," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-25, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:284:y:2023:i:c:s0378377423002081. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.