IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natsus/v3y2020i10d10.1038_s41893-020-0560-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Brazilian maize yields negatively affected by climate after land clearing

Author

Listed:
  • Stephanie A. Spera

    (University of Richmond
    Neukom Institute for Computational Science, Dartmouth College
    Dartmouth College)

  • Jonathan M. Winter

    (Dartmouth College
    Dartmouth College)

  • Trevor F. Partridge

    (Dartmouth College)

Abstract

Over 50% of the Brazilian Cerrado has been cleared, predominantly for agropastoral purposes. Here, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting model to run 15-year climate simulations across Brazil with six land-cover scenarios: (1) before extensive land clearing, (2) observed in 2016, (3) Cerrado replaced with single-cropped (soy) agriculture, (4) Cerrado replaced with double-cropped (soy–maize) agriculture, (5) eastern Amazon replaced with single-cropped agriculture and (6) eastern Amazon replaced with double-cropped agriculture. All land-clearing scenarios (2–6) contain significantly more growing season days with temperatures that exceed critical temperature thresholds for maize. Evaporative fraction significantly decreases across all land-clearing scenarios. Altered weather reduces maize yields between 6% and 8% compared with the before-extensive-land-clearing scenario; however, soy yields were not significantly affected. Our findings provide evidence that land clearing has degraded weather in the Brazilian Cerrado, undermining one of the main reasons for land clearing: rain-fed crop production.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephanie A. Spera & Jonathan M. Winter & Trevor F. Partridge, 2020. "Brazilian maize yields negatively affected by climate after land clearing," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 3(10), pages 845-852, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natsus:v:3:y:2020:i:10:d:10.1038_s41893-020-0560-3
    DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0560-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0560-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41893-020-0560-3?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. Batista, Fabiana de Souza & Duku, Confidence & Hein, Lars, 2023. "Deforestation-induced changes in rainfall decrease soybean-maize yields in Brazil," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 486(C).
    2. Dou, Yue & Silva, Ramon Felipe Bicudo da & Batistella, Mateus & Torres, Sara & Moran, Emilio & Liu, Jianguo, 2023. "Mapping crop producer perceptions: The role of global drivers on local agricultural land use in Brazil," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    3. Chaves, Michel E.D. & Sanches, Ieda D. & Adami, Marcos, 2023. "Brazil needs juridical security to recover agri-environmental epistemic sovereignty," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:nat:natsus:v:3:y:2020:i:10:d:10.1038_s41893-020-0560-3. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    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.