Climate change is expected to make agricultural production more uncertain leaving producers and land managers to adapt to new and changing weather patterns and markets. Regionally significant research and data improve knowledge of the effects of climate change and provide sustainable solutions for producers and land managers.
Regional data and research are used to create decision-support resources (i.e. informational products and tools created to help producers adapt to the effects of a changing climate). These decision-making resources are built on research and data such as:
- Climate modeling and analysis
- Climate trends and variations
- Greenhouse gas monitoring
- Climate data scenarios
- Historical climate data and research
These decision-support resources assist producers, enabling them to establish economic opportunities, proactively manage risks, reduce impacts and costs over time, and sustain agricultural yields in a changing climate.
Responding to Climate Change
The challenges facing agriculture, natural resources, and conservation are great and can be addressed only through dynamic research programs. USDA, other federal agencies, and academia science help to protect, secure, and improve our food, agricultural and natural resources systems. The Climate Hubs facilitate the exchange of information and ensure regional relevance of decision-support resources via workshops that establish research priorities and distibute decision-support resources, acting as early warning systems (e.g. pest outbreaks, early spring dormancy breaks, etc.) for producers and researchers through well-established communication networks, and by functioning as hubs of climate information and resources within each region, utilized not only by producers, but other federal and USDA agencies.
NCAR's GIS Program Climate Change Scenarios GIS data portal.
An example of USDA Economic Research Service’s analysis on decision support tools can be found in The Value of Plant Disease Early-Warning Systems: A Case Study of USDA's Soybean Rust Coordinated Framework.
Find resources related to the impacts of climate change on the production and distribution of food here.