AQUASustainable agricultural water management

Mauro CentrittoCNR-DISBA

CNR-DISBAEXPO 2015: Lessons Learned

Milan, 24-25 November 2015

The “Grand Challenge” at planetary level: To double agriculturalproductions, halving the use of resources

The 2030 “Perfect Storm” Scenario: World’s rapidly growing demand for food, energy, water and land (Beddington 2009)

'Mega-heatwaves' such as the 2003 and 2010 events broke the 500-yr longseasonal temperature records over approximately 50% of Europe. According toregional multi-model experiments, the probability of a summer experiencing'megaheatwaves‘ will increase by a factor of 5 to 10 within the next 40 years(Barriopedro et al., Science 2011).

Lloyds Emerging Risk Report 2015: Food system shock

Lloyds Emerging Risk Report 2015: Food system shock

Sustainable Land and Water Resources Management (SLWRM)

The Prohibitive Costs of Inaction

Bio and Agri-Food Sciences DepartmentStreamlining research for the future:

The premium project «Sustainable use of water in agriculture»

Problem to be addressed: Example of flood irrigation (a, b) inPunjab and consequent salt buildup and waterlogging (c, d).

Multidisciplinary team work to enhance crop drought resistance: No magic bullets!

Serraj et al. 2009, Adv. Agron.; Serraj et al., 2010, Plant Prod Sci.

The world’s biosphere influence climate through three major categories of feedbacks:physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect planetary energetics, thehydrologic cycle, and atmospheric composition. Global and long-term biogeochemicalinfluences involve exchange of greenhouse gases between ecosystems and theatmosphere. Regional and shorter-term biogeophysical influences involve the balancebetween incoming solar radiation and reflection, and how absorbed radiation ispartitioned between latent and sensible heat.

Ecosystem influences on climate over space and timeHungate & Hampton (Nature Climate Change 2012)

Bonan (Science 2008)

Desertification over the past several decades contributed negative forcing atEarth’s surface equivalent to ~20% of the global anthropogenic CO2 effect overthe same period, moderating warming trends (Rotenberg & Yakir, Science2010).

Biogeochemical and biophysical climate services (relative to a bare-ground baseline) of 18 natural and agriculturalecoregions of the Americas (Anderson-Teixeira et al., Nature Climate Change 2012). a,b, Contributions from GHGs(a), including both the GHGs that would be released on land clearing and ongoing GHG exchange, and ∆Rn and∆LE (b), extrapolated to the global scale by dividing local effect by global surface area (indirect effects excluded).c, These are combined to yield an integrated measure of climate regulation value (CRV). Values are calculatedover a 50-year time frame.

Non-local biophysical effects ofchanges in atmospheric transportof water are not included in thisCRV metric:Planetary albedo?Biotic pump?

The hypothesis of the complementary relationship between ETa andETp in regional evapotranspiration (Bouchet, Proc. IASH GeneralAssembly 1963).

Schematic representation of the complementary relationship, where ETa isactual evapotranspiration, ETp is potential evapotranspiration, and Etw is wet-environment evapotranspiration (Hobbins et al., Water Resources Research2001; Ozdogan et al., Journal of Hydrometeorology 2006).

Thank you!

CNR-DISBAEXPO 2015: Lessons Learned

Milan, 24-25 November 2015