Impacts of climate change on crop production and water use:
Food security and water scarcity are becoming two major concerns for future human's sustainable development. Despite doubling yield of major cereal crops since the 1950s, still 925 billion people are undernourished in 2010. Water scarcity in a growing number of areas in the world poses an increasing constraint to crop production. Climate change, in addition to population increase, economic growth and shifting diets, is one important driving force influencing earth's food and water ecosystems, and its impacts have become a topic of increasing research attention. With increasing scientific and political interest in prioritizing investment needs for climate change mitigation and adaptation, there is a strong impetus to identify climate impact hotspots on a global scale but with a high spatial resolution. Under-standing spatial patterns of climate change impacts on crop production and water use is necessary not only for identifying climate change hotspots but also for helping formulating adaptive and mitigating measures at local levels.
We plan to analyze the impacts of climate change on crop production and water use on a global scale with a spatial resolution of 30 arc-minutes (about 50 x 50 km2 nearby the equator) for the 2030s (short term) and the 2090s (long term), respectively. The grid-based simulation results are aggregated to national, continental and global levels to address broader implications.
Ecosystem Services of Wetland in China:
Wetlands are the "kidney of the earth". They play important ecological, economic, and cultural roles by providing such diverse ecosystem services as water supply, pollution control, nutrient recycling, groundwater recharge, soil formation, climate and flood regulation, and coastal protection. Wetlands also provide recreation and tourism opportunities, and supporting vast biodiversity. However, wetlands are also a vulnerable ecosystem, and have been more seriously degraded than any other ecosystem. During the last century, approximately 50% of the global wetlands area has been lost. There is an urgent need to investigate the historical trend of ecosystem services of wetland. We plan to select several typical wetlands in China, and assess the changing patterns of ecosystem services and possible future trend.
