FACCE MACSUR Reports (Modelling European Agriculture with Climate Change for Food Security)
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Adaptation in Austrian cattle and milk production
No full textClimate change will pose considerable challenges to Austrian agriculture which will likely be affected by a higher frequency of extreme weather events and more volatile commodity prices. We want to analyse the spatial, economic and social dimension of this threat by exploring expected consequences for the most important agricultural activity in Austria, cattle and dairy farming. We will evaluate a broad bouquet of adaptation measures from both, the perspective of the single farm as well as from the agricultural policy perspective. By aligning scenarios on projections of climate conditions and socio-economic developments with those developed in the EU MACSUR project (www.macsur.eu), the results will be consistent with state of the art analyses on climate change in Europe. By integrating results from a well established life cycle analysis model that will be specified to the Austrian situation we will broaden the spectrum of existing knowledge substantially. The results will allow policy makers to base their decisions on evidence that is not limited to the Austrian situations but includes spillover effects to foreign countries as well. Farmers willbe able to benefit directly from results of this project because stakeholders from the farm sector are part of the analyses from the beginning. An additional benefit of the project is that it is closely integrated to the activities of the international network of researchers working on climate change and food security in Europe
Workshop on Regional Pilot Studies, 5-7 June 2013, Braunschweig
Get PDFThe workshop was called to define an overarching question to be answered by all Regional Pilot Studies and to select from the existing studies those that fit best to the aims of MACSUR. The question that evolved from the discussions is “What would be the different contributions of different European adaptation strategies to ensure global food security until 2050 at different scales (farm to EU) while keeping the GHG targets?” Workshop participants agreed to use the newest climate simulations related to Representative Concentration Pathways that were also used by the AgMIP and ISI-MIP projects. There was also agreement to use a subset of the AgMIP scenarios (S2-S6) for impact assessments, with AgMIP scenario S1 as the reference scenario, for details see Table 3 below. The selection of Regional Pilot Studies was discussed separately for European Grand Regions, but there was no concluding decision taken. The Project Steering Committee will finally decide on showcase studies at a meeting in the first week of July based on characterisations sent in by interested members. Questionnaires for characterising the Regional Pilot Studies will be sent by the Hub to the regional contact persons mentioned in Table 2 to fill in. The characterization list can be extended. The questionnaires should be filled in by the end of June. Stakeholder meetings are planned for October 2013 in each region where preliminary/sample outputs of the regional pilot studies should be presented. Results will be presented at the mid-term meeting in April 2014. The last year of MACSUR is then available to improve the studies.The geographic extent of the Regional Pilot Studies is approximately county level – representing the area of the studies they are based on. The Regional Pilot Studies will be linked within the grand regions (northern, central, southern Europe) by consistent regional and continental Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAP). These regional RAPs will feed into the RAP process underway at AgMIP. Through the common RAPs the Regional Pilot Studies will reflect the common challenges of the greater region and by having several Regional Pilot Studies the diversity of the environment, farming systems, and political systems is represented. The workshop was a first step into further planning and performing the Regional Pilot Studies that will fine-tune the results of the workshop
Identification of most important cropping systems and available models
Get PDFFor each region or agro-ecological zone in Europe the major cropping systems have been identified based on their cropping area. Next, for each of the selected cropping systems the most widely applied models that fulfil a number of criteria (including their documentation in peer reviewed publications; good user guides and documentation of code; source code available) have been identified. Some possible model comparisons have been hypothesized on the basis of cropping systems and model availability
Kickoff Workshop, Session on Final Products
No full textThe major final products will be a congress aimed at political stakeholders in May 2015 in Brussels with a provisional date of 6./7. May 2015, a scientific conference at the end of January 2015, and a book/special issue summarizing the research results. Most research results should be available by the end of November for the first draft of the book/special issue
A strategy for the dissemination outputs at the national, EU and global levels
Get PDFTo effectively communicate and disseminate the outputs of CropM and MACSUR per se at national, EU and global levels it is essential that we engage with the appropriate audiences and tailor the level and depth of the outputs accordingly. Consequently for the range of stakeholder outputs there will be a staged period of engagement with stakeholders in the policy and industry sectors (and where appropriate others). This will be driven by the strategies outlined in WP6.3-4 (Strategies for engagement on adaptation and mitigation with national and EU policy makers and with the agro-food chain sector). Once enacted and the feedback collated these response will facilitate the co-construction of an appropriate dissemination strategy. Aligned with this will be a series of standardised dissemination routes that will deliver globally but will then often be followed up by a more local (national) output/dissemination activity tailored for that region. The dissemination strategy will include but will not be limited to multiple and various methods of information distribution including Scientific papers and presentations. Agricultural sector/industry focused talks/presentations and workshops. A fully developed and interactive website (part of the larger project). Social Media Podcasts and WebTV with key actors in the crop and climate change arena including scientists, and stakeholders (policy, agriculturalists and industry representatives). Integration with the cognate EU platforms, e.g. EIP Agricultural and Sustainability, EIT-KIC Climate Change(ETP), the appropriate ETPs (http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/individual_en.html) and major EU projects such as SUSFOOD etc
MACSUR TradeM Workshop Exploring new ideas for trade and agriculture model integration for assessing the impacts of climate change on food security
Get PDFThe first TradeM workshop was held at Haifa University (Israel), 3-5 March 2013. It was a state-of-the-art Workshop ‘Economic Modelling on Agriculture with Climate Change for Food Security’. Sixteen papers are presented, following a call for abstracts submitted in December 2012. Presented, reviewed and discussed models, their inputs, outputs and main results of case-study analyses let indicate of how the model can be used to analyze the impacts of climate change on food security, how the model can contribute to, and benefit from other economic and/or crop and livestock models and what input is needed from CropM and LiveM . There were explored ideas for closer integration and linkage between agriculture and economic models and between economic models at different levels, addressing issues of model structure, scale and data processing. Focus was on model comparison, gap analysis, scientific advancements and improvements. We also addressed the key challenges of the economic models (macro- versus micro-economics; uncertainty versus risks; variability and distribution), and identified ways to cope with scaling, uncertainty, risks. The workshop let identify the requirements from CropM and LiveM, find policy questions that MACSUR is going to address, start with the content of the case studies and plan for publication of scientific papers. The sessions were broadcast live via the internet. Twenty-four registered participants and about 65 local visitors attended the workshop.This work was co-financed by NCBiR, Contract no. FACCE JPI/04/2012 - P100 PARTNE
Strategy for the dissemination of outputs at national, EU, and global levels
Get PDFDissemination of FACCE MACSUR will operate in a tiered manner to the scientific community, funding agencies, decision makers in policy and agri-food businesses, and the general public. Efforts by the MACSUR hub level are targeted at the supra-national level, while individual institutions target regional and national stakeholders.The dissemination approaches will include multiple and various methods of information distribution including• scientific papers and presentations,• conferences, congresses, workshops, and courses targeted to specific stakeholders,• a fully developed and interactive website,• regular newsletters,• flyers,• alignment of methodologies and protocols with other research networks or projects. Dissemination is both passive (web site, publications) and active (flyers, presentations, workshops held jointly with other projects or organizations, Twitter)
Review of Cloud Computing Opportunities
Get PDFThis paper will begin by defining some of the challenges that we face on the MACSUR project in terms of evaluating model uncertainty and carrying out model integration. I will briefly review what cloud technologies are available, followed with some suggestions about how those cloud technologies can be used in order to contribute to meeting the challenges set out in the first part of the paper.'Month 12' deliverable for WP1 is a review of the opportunities for using cloud computing to develop the potential for model inter-comparison and interlinking in MACSUR. A challenging aspect of compiling this review is that before an 'opportunity' for any kind of model linking/comparison can be identified, a lot of information about the specifics of extant models and workflows must be gathered from each of the three themes (TradeM, CropM, and LiveM).This deliverable must, however, be more than just saying ‘these are the computing tools that we can use to ...’. There are a number of different challenges at different levels; a hierarchy of challenges, if you like. For example, in order to get models ‘talking’ to one another, adequate protocols for the transference of data and scaleability will need to be established, and then things like uncertainty analysis for these integrated models will need to be addressed. Further issues exist relating to human behaviour and logistics (e.g. MACSUR is a large project with many members from all over Europe, with substantial distances between many of it’s members).The term “Cloud” is very ambiguous, and Cloud Computing covers a huge range of services, and a number of innovative tools exist which can make international collaborative research more effective. Two examples (already implemented on the MACSUR website) are: a discussion forum (where project members can create topics, make or reply to posts, and upload documents) and a complete surveying platform (to provide an un-restricted and fully featured survey platform for MACSUR members' information gathering needs.
Most relevant aspects of climate change in hot-spot analysis
Get PDFWP3 develops the tools for assessing the productive and economic impact of climate change and the potential of mitigation and adaptation strategies. This is achieved by focussing, along with CropM and LiveM, on significant crossing issues in specific geographical areas, natural and human resources, and farming systems. Following, the steps for identifying the hot-spots and the basic elements of climate change are shortly described. Next, the main economic and structural characteristics of each hot-spot are described followed by a presentation of the most relevant aspects of climate change, and of their main impacts on farm sector.