PICO
Farmers are traditionally experts at navigating climate variability, but the increasing severity and frequency of hydroclimatic extremes demand new strategies to mitigate systemic risks. Agriculture plays a threefold role in this context: as a sector heavily affected by climate change, as a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, and as a key source to implement solutions and adaptation strategies. This interplay both amplifies uncertainties and opens opportunities for transformative adaptation. Understanding how individual farmers, farming communities, and agricultural governance actors evaluate risks and adjust practices under dynamic and uncertain conditions is central to clarifying how decisions at different spatial and temporal scales may trigger, accelerate, or prevent broader regime shifts.
This session invites contributions from across the natural and social sciences to explore the multifaceted interactions between hydroclimatic extremes and agriculture. We particularly welcome studies that:
• Provide observational evidence, case studies and methodological advancements on the interplay between climate extremes, agriculture and other land use systems.
• Advance theoretical and conceptual perspectives on connected, compound, and cascading risks and uncertainties.
• Apply nexus approaches, integrating environmental, socio-economic, and governance dimensions.
• Share participatory, co-production, or transdisciplinary approaches engaging farmers, local communities, and other stakeholders
• Examine decision-making processes and responses at the farm, community, and governance levels, including adaptation strategies and barriers across spatial and scales.
• Explore agricultural adaptability, transformation pathways, and potential regime shifts under climate extremes.
Hydroclimatic extremes, particularly increasingly frequent and severe droughts and heat waves, are intensifying pressures on agricultural systems even in historically overall water-abundant regions such as Germany. Irrigation is often promoted as an effective adaptation strategy to climate variability and extremes. However, irrigation expansion can create path-dependent lock-ins into high and potentially unsustainable water use, amplifying systemic risks across the food–water–energy (FWE) nexus.
This study examines how food, water and energy sector policies shape farmers’ adaptive land use and irrigation decisions under future hydroclimatic and socioeconomic change, and how these decisions propagate trade-offs across sectors. Using an innovative hybrid modeling framework that links hydrological and machine-learning models with a hydro-economic multi-agent system capturing adaptive farmer behavior, we assess the ex-ante impacts of six sectoral policies on land use, irrigation demand, and FWE nexus indicators for eight major field crops in Germany.
Our results reveal strongly divergent adaptation pathways. Water sector policies such as abstraction limits and pricing can substantially curb irrigation expansion under intensifying climatic extremes and socioeconomic change, while maintaining farm profitability if implemented early. In contrast, bioenergy subsidies further increase irrigation demand and energy use, while irrigation efficiency subsidies fail to deliver net water savings due to rebound effects, and drought compensation payments reinforce maladaptive land use choices.
Overall, uncoordinated policy responses risk triggering an “irrigation trap” that deepens cross-sector trade-offs and constrains future transformation pathways. We show that timely, coordinated governance across the FWE nexus is critical to avoid maladaptation and to steer agricultural systems toward more resilient and sustainable trajectories. By considering heterogeneous and adaptive farmer behavior, the study provides a starting point to assess how far agricultural land use adaptation can mitigate on-farm losses and systemic risks under intensifying hydroclimatic extremes.
How to cite: Heilemann, J., Klassert, C., Nagpal, M., Werner, S., Klauer, B., and Gawel, E.: Avoiding the irrigation trap: Policy-driven adaptation pathways and cross-sectoral trade-offs in Germany’s irrigated agriculture, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-10784, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-10784, 2026.
Agriculture plays an important role in the socioeconomic development of the Europe–Central Asia region (ECA). This area is highly diverse in terms of climate and geography, allowing countries to grow a wide range of crops for domestic consumption and exports, such as cereals, oil crops, and fruits. About 87 % of ECA’s cropland is rainfed, making crop production increasingly vulnerable to droughts and water scarcity.
Here, we present a new World Bank study, which applies a gridded process-based crop model ACEA to assess the present (1992–2019) and future (under three SSP–RCP scenarios till 2100) exposures to i) green water scarcity (GWS), ii) blue water scarcity (BWS), and iii) the potential for irrigation development across all major crops in 21 ECA countries. Presently, this region has around 21 million ha of rainfed cropland experiencing GWS—restricted crop growth due to insufficient rainfall—mainly affecting Kazakhstan, Türkiye, and Ukraine. This exposure to GWS is projected to increase in the future, worsened by further increases in the frequency and extent of extreme droughts. On the other hand, most of these areas experience no BWS—unsustainable levels of blue water consumption considering environmental flow requirements—and thus, developing irrigation can serve as a vital adaptation strategy. We estimate that currently around 14.6 million ha under GWS can potentially transition to irrigation (increasing by 11.5–30.6 % by 2100), which would not only reduce GWS-related risks but also support the socioeconomic development in ECA. This transition, however, should be considered only as one of the several options on the “menu of solutions”. Other agricultural practices, such as changing cropping patterns and improved soil management, should be explored before investing in new irrigation systems.
This study demonstrates a novel application of gridded crop modelling and offers vital insights into the present and future water scarcity levels in the ECA region, while also demonstrating the potential of irrigation in addressing the associated risks.
How to cite: Mialyk, O., Su, H., Ragettli, S., Karimi, P., and Sinha, R.: Assessing water scarcity and potential for irrigation development in Europe and Central Asia, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1561, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1561, 2026.
Agricultural production across Europe is highly sensitive to temperature, yet most continental-scale assessments still provide limited insight into when cardinal temperature thresholds are exceeded during the growing season and where the resulting thermal stress is most pronounced. Here, we present a growing-stage-resolved assessment of thermal exposure across the European agricultural growing season using potato cardinal temperatures. over 1990–2020. Using daily ERA5 land 2-m air temperature, we defined three region-specific growing windows (Southern: February–June; Central: April–September; Northern: May–August) and divided each season into four phenological stages based on FAO recommendations. Within these windows, seven Thermal Threshold Classes (TTCs) were defined representing conditions ranging from drastic cold to drastic heat, including the optimal range for potato growth 18-20 °C. Long-term mean patterns reveal a clear spatial variation: cold categories dominate in Nordic and high-elevation regions, whereas heat-related categories are concentrated in Mediterranean areas and coastal lowlands. Trend analysis using the Mann–Kendall test indicates widespread declines in cold exposure across Northern and Central Europe, alongside increasing mild and severe heat exposure in Central and Eastern Europe. Stage-dominance maps further highlight that early-season cold exposure remains widespread in northern regions, while late-season heat expands across Mediterranean and eastern areas, raising the likelihood of heat stress during tuber initiation and bulking. Overall, the results show that European agriculture is undergoing a measurable redistribution of thermal risk, with reduced early-season cold constraints but increasing late-season heat pressure in key production regions. These stage-specific thermal metrics provide a practical basis for identifying emerging hotspots and supporting targeted adaptation strategies in European potato systems.
How to cite: Ghadimi, S., Gohari, A., and Torabi Haghighi, A.: Spatiotemporal patterns of cardinal thermal threshold exceedance in European agriculture , EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16622, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16622, 2026.
Agricultral lands are facing with severe challenges from droughts in the context of global warming. Flash drought, in particular, may cause more severe impacts on crop yields given its rapid intensification process which leaves less time for drought preparation and mitigation. Moveover, the associated impacts can also be different depending on the hit timing of flash drought in different stages of crop phenology. Based on the fifth-generation of reanalysis (ERA5) soil moisutre data, global crop yields and crop phenology data, the impacts of flash droughts by considering crop phenology were evaluated. The results show that flash droughts became more frequent in global agricultural lands during 1940-2022. Moreover, the development of flash droughts became more rapid given the shoterned days of drought onset. More than half of flash droughts occurred during the critical growth preiod of crops when the water requirements are high to gurantee crop growth and yields. The results highlight the necessity of taking crop phenology into consideration for accurately estimating flash drought risks in agricultural lands.
How to cite: Liu, Y., Shi, R., Liu, Y., Zhang, L., Ni, Y., and Zhu, Y.: Underestimated flash drought risks in agrciulutral lands without consideration of crop phenology, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17505, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17505, 2026.
Variability is an inherent characteristic of the African Sahel climate, posing risks to the region's agriculture-based economy. Nevertheless, agricultural research on the region rarely integrates hydroclimatic extremes (i.e., droughts and floods). To address this gap at least in part, we raise the following research questions: Are there considerable differences between rainfall patterns and farmers' concerns under alternating hydroclimatic extremes? Which rainfall attribute(s) do farmers consider most concerning? What support do they need to navigate climate variability? To this end, we first identified 26 notorious drought and flood events from the literature for the analysis, spanning 1970-2020. In total, 16 of these events were droughts and the rest were floods. Second, we used stations' daily rainfall for the Sudanese Sahel (1.03 million square kilometres of arid and semi-arid environment) to calculate the number of rainy days (NURD) and dekadal indices of rainfall seasonality, concentration and intra-annual variability for the 26 events. The region was divided into two zones: Eastern Sudanese Sahel (EASS) and Western Sudanese Sahel (WESS). Third, we tested for significant differences in the means of these indices across the two zones, the two hazards, and the periods of the Sahel drought and recovery. Finally, we examined the responses of 307 and 499 farmers surveyed in the rainfed sector across EASS and WESS, respectively. The responses focused on their perception of rainfall change, adaptation measures against climate change, and barriers to implementing these adaptation strategies. Results showed significant differences in the means of indices between the two zones, between the drought and flood extremes for EASS, and only between the two extremes in the NURD for WESS. No significant change in the means of any of the indices occurred between the Sahel drought and recovery periods. The NURD plays a key role in shaping rainfall patterns, particularly in EASS. Conversely, this factor is unimportant both during the recovery period and during flood events in WESS. In general, higher NURD indicated less dekadal rainfall seasonality and variability across the year. In both zones, changes in the amount of rainfall overshadows the other perceived changes in detailed rainfall conditions. The majority of farmers are of the opinion that rainfall is decreasing. Surprisingly, the farmers in both zones seem to have little awareness of/concern about the recent frequent occurrence of both droughts and floods. Only 7.0% of WESS farmers mentioned lack of meteorological information as a barrier to adapting to climate change. Moreover, it is entirely missing from the suggested actions needed to cope. Although 44.0% of EASS respondents reported lacking meteorological information, only 15.7% of farmers reported that such information is crucial to coping with climate change. This study underscores the need for analyzing both hydroclimatic extremes integratively. However, without overlooking the farmers' socioeconomic characteristics, strengthening the weather forecast infrastructure emerges as one of the intrinsic pathways toward agricultural adaptability and transformation in Sahelian Sudan.
How to cite: Elagib, N. A., Basheer, M., Rahma, A. E., and Fink, A. H.: Understanding rainfall patterns and farmers' concerns in Eastern Sahel amid alternate hydroclimatic extremes, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2238, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2238, 2026.
Global food demand is projected to increase by 50-60% between 2019 and 2050, making it critical to understand how crop yield and soil health respond to increasing climate variability, particularly drought. In this study, we coupled a 40-year climate dataset (1981-2020) with the biogeochemical model DNDC (DeNitrification-DeComposition) to simulate corn yield and soil nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions under 20 precipitation treatments ranging from severe drought (-90% precipitation reduction) to extreme wet conditions (+100% precipitatino increase). We quantified interannual variability (IAV) and precipitation sensitivity of both responses. Corn yield and soil N2O emissions each exhibited substantial IAV but with contrasting patterns: yield variability peaked under moderate drought (-30% to -50%), whereas N2O variability intensified with increasing precipitation. Yield increased linearly from severe drought to ambient precipitation but plateaued when precipitation exceeded ambient levels, while N2O emissions rose steadily across nearly all precipitation treatments. Under most precipitation scenarios, corn yield responded linearly to precipitation, whereas N2O emissions were significantly sensitive to precipitation only under drought conditions (-30% to -70%). We also identified a precipitation threshold for maximum yield and an optimal precipitation range in which yield gains exceeded increases in N2O emissions. Overall, our results demonstrate nonlinear and asymmetric responses of crop productivity and soil N2O emissions to precipitation changes, highlighting the importance of adaptive agricultural management strategies under growing climate variability.
How to cite: Hui, D., Christian, J., Chauvin, A., Hayat, F., Ray, A., Thapa, R., Chen, Y., Girkin, N., Ricciuto, D., Mayes, M., and Tian, H.: Nonlinear and Divergent Responses of Crop Yield and Soil Nitrous Oxide Emissions to Precipitation Change, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-1478, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-1478, 2026.
Climate change has intensified the frequency and severity of droughts in arid and semi-arid regions, posing increasing challenges to agricultural sustainability. Iran, located within the global arid belt, is particularly vulnerable due to its strong dependence on both rainfed and irrigated cereal production. This study examines the relative impacts of drought severity and changes in total cultivated area on long-term wheat and barley yield dynamics in Iran from 1995 to 2022. We used crop yield data (from Iran’s Agricultural Ministry), the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), non-parametric trend tests, and boosted regression tree (BRT) modeling. Our results indicate that wheat and barley yields increased during the study period, with average rates of 0.26 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ and 0.075 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹, respectively, despite recurrent drought conditions. These increases were primarily driven by the expansion of cultivated area rather than by climatic improvement. Changes in cultivated area emerged as the dominant driver of yield variability, explaining approximately 71–87% of observed yield changes across crop types and production systems, whereas drought severity accounted for 12–29%. Rainfed agriculture exhibited greater sensitivity to drought severity than irrigated agriculture, particularly for wheat, highlighting the limited buffering capacity of rainfed systems against climatic stress.
How to cite: Torkaman Pary, A., Rastgoo, P., Zeuss, D., and Abera, T. A.: Crop yield variability driven more by cultivated area changes than climate extremes in Iran, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2825, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2825, 2026.
In recent decades, climate change has intensified hydrometeorological extremes and altered seasonal water availability, posing growing challenges to irrigated agriculture in subtropical river basins. Taiwan has experienced a sustained warming trend over the past century, and projected changes in precipitation seasonality under IPCC AR6 scenarios may further amplify uncertainty in irrigation supply and rice production.
This study develops and validates a basin-specific Water–Crop modeling framework for the first rice cropping season in the Zhuoshui River Basin, Taiwan. Historical meteorological data (precipitation and temperature) and hydrological observations (river discharge as a proxy for water availability) are integrated to quantify the coupled dynamics of water availability, irrigation demand, and paddy rice yield. The crop-yield component is implemented using a long short-term memory (LSTM) model to capture nonlinear responses, lag effects, and interactions among hydroclimatic drivers, while the water module represents basin-scale constraints that regulate irrigation supply.
Based on the validated model outputs, we further derive a basin-specific drought–yield indicator that uses yield anomalies as an integrated measure of agricultural drought impacts, complementing conventional indices based solely on precipitation or streamflow. Finally, AR6 climate projections (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) are used to force the modeling framework to assess future changes in water availability, irrigation demand, drought–yield risk, and yield outcomes under contrasting socio-economic pathways.
The proposed framework provides a physically and data-informed tool for diagnosing how climate-driven shifts in basin hydrology translate into irrigation constraints and rice yield risks. The results support decision-making for irrigation allocation, drought preparedness, fallow planning, and adaptation strategies in the Zhuoshui River Basin.
How to cite: Chu, P.-H., Chung, Y.-C., Wu, D.-H., and Chang, L.-C.: From Present-Day Validation to Future Projections: AR6 SSP Scenario Assessment of Water Availability, Irrigation Demand, and Paddy Rice Yield in the Zhuoshui River Basin Using a Water–Crop Model, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-16588, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-16588, 2026.
The Yellow River Basin, often referred to as China’s “Mother River”, is simultaneously a major grain-producing region and an important energy supply base. Under China’s dual-carbon targets of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, understanding how alternative carbon-constraint scenarios influence land-use change and crop production is crucial for advancing agricultural low-carbon transition, improving land-use efficiency, and safeguarding food security in this strategically important basin. Such assessments are also essential for supporting the long-term objectives of ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin. This study integrates the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) with a coupling coordination degree model to examine the heterogeneous impacts of different carbon-constraint scenarios on land-use patterns and crop yields across the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin. Carbon constraints are represented through differentiated carbon tax scenarios, allowing for a systematic comparison of their effects on cropland allocation and the production of major crops, including maize, wheat, and rice, over the period 2007-2050. The results indicate several key findings. First, from the perspective of cropland dynamics, stricter carbon-constraint scenarios are generally more conducive to cropland expansion across the basin. By 2050, cropland area increases by approximately 2% in Gansu (upper basin), 2% in Inner Mongolia (middle basin), and 3% in Henan (lower basin) under the most stringent carbon constraint scenario, reflecting adjustments in land-use structure induced by carbon pricing. Second, total crop production exhibits an overall increasing trend under carbon constraints, but with pronounced crop- and region-specific heterogeneity. Stricter carbon constraints tend to favor maize production in the upper basin, while exerting relatively adverse effects on wheat production. Rice production shows notable spatial variation, with Gansu exhibiting the lowest rice output, and Sichuan’s rice production being the most sensitive to carbon constraints. Third, the temporal effects of carbon constraints differ across crops. Before 2030, carbon constraints generally promote maize production across the basin, whereas after 2030, higher carbon tax levels become increasingly favorable for rice and wheat yield growth in Shandong Province. Finally, analysis of the coupling coordination degree between cropland area and crop yields suggests that most regions in the Yellow River Basin exhibit an acceptable level of coordination and a generally balanced development state, although Inner Mongolia and Henan remain in a transitional coordination phase. Overall, this study highlights the differentiated and evolving impacts of carbon constraints on land-use and agricultural production systems, providing insights for designing region-specific and crop-specific low-carbon agricultural policies in the Yellow River Basin.
How to cite: Cui, Y., Lauri, P., and Havlik, P.: Impacts of carbon-constraint on land use change and crop production in the Yellow River Basin, China, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-11596, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-11596, 2026.
This study aims to quantify and explain the coupling coordination dynamics of the agricultural water–energy–food (WEF) nexus in 40 Yellow River–diverted irrigation districts located in the lower reaches of the Yellow River during 2000–2020. Based on the identification of key system elements, the coupling coordination degree of the WEF nexus was measured to characterize its integrated development level. Drawing on synergetics theory, a hybrid analytical framework combining geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) and the XGBoost-SHAP model was employed to reveal the internal synergistic evolution processes and external driving mechanisms while accounting for spatiotemporal heterogeneity and nonlinear effects.
The results show that the coupling coordination of the WEF nexus exhibited an overall steady upward trend, characterized by a spatiotemporal evolution pattern of continuous improvement, stage-specific fluctuations, and overall convergence. Temporally, the coordination degree transitioned from slow growth to rapid improvement, while spatial disparities among irrigation districts gradually narrowed, accompanied by increasingly pronounced spatial clustering effects. The nighttime light index and the proportion of cultivated land exerted long-term and stable positive impacts on coupling coordination, whereas average temperature and population density acted as primary constraints; precipitation, NDVI, grassland proportion, and water area proportion played secondary roles. Significant threshold effects were identified for all driving factors, indicating that moderate economic development, suitable climatic conditions, and a rational land-use structure are critical for maintaining high-level coordination, beyond which coordination declines rapidly.
Furthermore, scenario-based simulations incorporating climate change and technological progress were conducted using random forest models to explore future evolution trajectories. The coupling coordination degree under the SSP245 baseline scenario consistently outperformed that under SSP585, suggesting that climate stress associated with high-emission pathways negatively affects system coordination. Among individual technological measures, water-saving practices were identified as the most effective single intervention.These findings provide a quantitative basis for scenario regulation, zonal management, and the optimization of sustainable development pathways in Yellow River–diverted irrigation districts.
How to cite: Liu, C., li, L., and Jiang, E.: Coupling Coordination and Driving Mechanisms of the Agricultural Water–Energy–Food System in the Lower Yellow River Basin, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-4599, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-4599, 2026.
Climate change is altering snow accumulation and ablation dynamics in snow-dependent regions worldwide, reshaping runoff timing and water availability for people, ecosystems, and agriculture. As the world’s largest consumer of freshwater, irrigated agriculture is particularly exposed, and these hydrologic changes impose substantial economic costs. Here, we demonstrate how hydrology and economics can be combined to assign costs to snow-driven hydrologic change, using irrigated agriculture in the western United States as a large, snow-dependent test case. By integrating reduced-form economic models with climate model projections spanning approximately 2–5 °C of warming, we estimate that irrigated cropland could decline by 27–46% by the end of the century, while agricultural profitability—proxied using land rental rates—declines by 11–26%, corresponding to annual losses of approximately $8.2–$14.7 billion. Against this economic backdrop, scientists have an opportunity to leverage expanding data and modeling capabilities to provide actionable information about adaptation strategies that can reduce damages.
However, there remains a persistent gap between the scales at which snow loss research is conducted and the scales at which land and water management decisions are made. To address this challenge, we propose that archetypes—drawn from social-ecological systems research—could help accelerate matching adaptation strategies to specific decision-making contexts by explicitly accounting for governance capacity and behavioral dynamics. This approach has not been widely explored in agricultural adaptation to snow hydrology but could enable rapid, locally-relevant guidance.
Yet rapid adaptation without integration across hazards risks unintended consequences. Through analysis of four decades of fire perimeter data (1984-present) and aerial imagery, we show that cropland is 2x less likely to be on the inside of a fire perimeter than any other land-cover type, suggesting an important landscape-scale buffering effect. Using drought and wildfire as an example, this finding demonstrates how cropland abandonment—a strategy that may enhance drought resilience—could amplify fire risk if poorly coordinated, illustrating how rational responses to one hazard can inadvertently increase exposure to others. Results underscore the complexity of adaptation under compounding climate risks and the importance of working in partnership with decision-makers to leverage ever expanding data and modeling capabilities for locally-relevant solutions.
How to cite: Gordon, B., Blumberg, J., Carroll, R., Manning, D., Leonard, B., Boisrame, G., Lorenz, A., Harpold, A., Berkey, J., Cough, C., and Albano, C.: Snow Loss, Economic Cost, and Potential (Mal)Adaptation in Irrigated Agriculture: Case Studies from the Western US, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15921, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15921, 2026.
Water scarcity is a growing global challenge that threatens agricultural sustainability, food security, and the livelihoods of rural communities. Agriculture accounts for approximately 70–80% of global freshwater withdrawals, making it particularly vulnerable to declining water availability driven by climate change, population growth, and competing demand.
Perennial crops face specific challenges under water scarcity due to their long investment horizons, high establishment costs, and limited flexibility in land reallocation. Unlike annual crops, perennial orchards are dynamic systems that are influenced by both short-term and cumulative conditions, which impact both production yields and overall tree performance. As a result, farmers’ behavioral responses to water scarcity differ markedly between perennial and annual systems, where most of the literature has focused.
This study examines farmers’ dynamic decisions in perennial crop systems and the factors influencing changes in cultivated areas and crop abandonment in drought-prone contexts. Our case study is situated in a semi-arid region of Central Chile, where a three-decade decline in precipitation and a persistent megadrought since 2010 have resulted in reduced river flows, declining groundwater levels, intensified water competition, and significant land-use changes. In parallel, early in the decade, the region saw a shift toward permanent, high-value, and export-oriented crops—such as avocados, walnuts, and citrus—displacing annual production and livestock, reshaping the agricultural landscape, and the demand for water.
To analyze farmers' decisions, we use data from a novel survey of 200 farmers from the Ligua-Petorca basins, which incorporates retrospective recall of past production outcomes to address dynamic decision-making processes. This approach allows the reconstruction of farmers’ past responses to water scarcity. Following various econometric approaches, which combine panel data models and limited dependent variable regressions, we find substantial heterogeneity in adaptation responses across farmers. Changes in cultivated areas are systematically associated with farm size, access to surface water, crop type, and the characteristics of farmers. Also, expected climatic conditions, proxied by recent trends, are found to influence crop area changes and abandonment.
This research sheds light on the understanding of how farmers adapt to prolonged droughts in perennial production systems, an understudied topic in the literature but evermore relevant in the context of a changing climate. The proposed methodology enables addressing this issue in contexts where recurrent surveys are uncommon, such as in many semi-arid regions of lower-income countries. While recall-based data cannot replace true longitudinal panels, their use provides a feasible alternative for examining adaptation and abandonment processes in such environments, thereby expanding the empirical tools available for studying long-term agricultural responses to drought. Ignoring the differences between permanent crops and annuals implies overlooking the dynamic nature of perennial systems, misdiagnosing farmers’ constraints, and overestimating their flexibility. Observed reductions in cultivated area under prolonged water deficits are consistent with crop abandonment becoming a relevant outcome when adaptation pathways are limited in perennial systems. Recognizing these differences is essential for advancing research on agricultural adaptation and for informing the design of effective water and agricultural policies tailored to perennial systems under drought conditions.
How to cite: Melo, O., Strappa, V., Vicuña, S., Gil, P., and Bustos, E.: Dynamic Adaptation and Crop Abandonment under Prolonged Drought in Semi-Arid Regions, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-15709, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-15709, 2026.
Farmers are increasingly exposed to climate change-induced stressors, including rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns, and the growing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Understanding farmers’ actions and the factors that drive their responses to climate extremes is therefore essential for developing forward-looking, potentially transformative strategies that enhance climate resilience. The literature highlights three critical stages in addressing climate change: (i) recognizing observed environmental changes; (ii) evaluating whether these changes necessitate transformative behavioural responses to ensure resilience; and (iii) implementing effective adaptation measures to reduce vulnerability. In the pursuit of understanding ‘realistic’ farmers behaviour, researchers have increasingly acknowledged the range of factors and interactions that motivate climate behaviours, emphasizing the importance of cognitive processes beyond purely rational decision-making.
Adopting a bottom-up approach, this contribution examines farmers’ climate change behaviour through a triple-loop analytical framework encompassing awareness, perception, and adaptation. We conducted a survey of a random sample of 922 farmers in California to address three primary research questions: 1) to what extent do farmers perceive and respond to climate change, and what barriers constrain their capacity to reduce climate vulnerability? 2) whether risk adaptation pathways differ across farmers and, if so, which drivers shape their preferences and decision-making; and 3) how narratives and ‘wicked problems’ –such as climate scepticism, maladaptation, techno-optimism, and eco-anxiety– influence climate change initiatives and farmers’ tactical (short-term) and strategic (long-term) responses to evolving climate risks. To address these questions, we employ descriptive statistics, econometric analysis, clustering techniques, and structural equation modelling to capture farmer heterogeneity, identify cognitive and behavioural drivers of transformative responses, and disentangle the relative importance of factors shaping adaptive capacity.
The results indicate that farmers are generally aware of climate change and perceive increasing climate variability and impacts, particularly reporting rising temperatures, more frequent heatwaves and droughts, and declining rainfall and snowpack. Farmers employ a combination of coping strategies (e.g., weather and climate information services, insurance) and preventive measures (e.g., reduced fertilization, more efficient irrigation systems, and soil conservation practices). Nevertheless, several significant barriers to adaptation emerge, including high investment costs, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and insufficient financial support for climate adaptation initiatives (e.g., water trading programs). The findings also reveal substantial heterogeneity in farmers’ attitudes and preferences regarding adaptation strategies. Accordingly, farmers can be classified into three behavioural profiles: Negationists (low-concern, unconvinced adapters), Optimisers (cautious, pragmatic adapters), and Proactives (well-informed, motivated adapters), highlighting pronounced behavioural diversity. The structural equation model confirmed that climate change awareness significantly predicts variability in farmers’ behavioural responses through perceived impacts; however, the causal linkage between risk perception and risk adaptation appears weaker and less robust. Overall, these insights support the integration of bottom-up behavioural evidence into climate behaviour modelling and inform the design of more targeted, flexible, and effective adaptation policies and instruments.
How to cite: Ricart, S., Escriva-Bou, A., and Castelletti, A.: Unlocking Transformative Climate Adaptation: A Behavioural Lens on Californian Farmers’ Preferences, Drivers, and Narratives, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2536, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2536, 2026.
Over the preceding decades the Western French basins of the Sèvre-Niortaise, and the lower Vienne rivers have seen a decrease of summer precipitation and an increase in drought frequency and severity. The region's land use regime is dominated by intensive agricultural production, with a significant number of farmers relying on irrigation to compensate for prolonged periods of summer drought and to reduce economic uncertainty. Due to the complex repercussions of intensifying droughts for all sectors in the region, the uncertainty of the future scale of the problem, and on-going debates revealing ambiguities about the exact nature of the problem, the concept of systemic risk can be applied to understand the issue facing the region.
In such a context, it has yet to be investigated if and how systems thinking is integrated in expert knowledge and how these lessons can help to guide risk governance for emerging hydroclimatic extremes, both in agricultural contexts and beyond. This contribution seeks to fill this gap in understanding by exploring experts’ perceptions and elucidating the different narratives and conceptualizations that exist between sectors and individuals working in expert roles. To gain these insights in the region of interest, participatory modelling and 26 qualitative interviews were leveraged across stakeholder domains. Contributing experts constitute a comprehensive sample from relevant regional actors and institutions, representing agricultural institutions, river management syndicates, environmental protection, as well as water governance actors.
Results indicate that while experts overall identify growing water scarcity as a problem, differences between domains emerge when it comes to possible solutions. The solution of newly-constructed water reservoirs, favored by the dominant agricultural interests, is seen by members from three out of four expert domains as only one strategy among others. Most advocate for a combination of tools as well as strong conditions for future agricultural water use to ensure transformative momentum to achieve a more water-resilient land management across sectors and land uses, safeguard water quality, and to limit over-reliance on irrigation. Others promote irrigation as the single most effective tool to ensure future agricultural production in the region with water storage as the biggest limiting factor, reducing the larger problem to one of agricultural water management. Furthermore, experts expressed different levels of systems thinking regarding problem diagnosis as well as potential adaptation strategies, pointing to competing narratives about the regional hydrological and land systems, despite access to and use of similar sources of information. This can be explained by a selective, conscious or unconscious, use of information, reinforcing the legitimacy of suggested solutions and thus ultimately shaping the trajectory of policy.
The diverging perceptions and conceptualizations of drought risk found between individual experts and sectors in Western France thus demonstrate the central role of ambiguity and provides lessons how to incorporate expert knowledge to guide adaptation and transformation in contexts of emerging risks with complex, and uncertain characteristics.
How to cite: Frandsen, P. C. and Viallon, F.-X.: Ambiguous expert knowledge under increasing hydroclimatic extremes: Lessons from risk perception in an agricultural region in transition, EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-17920, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-17920, 2026.
