Closing yield gap is crucial to avoid potential surge in global carbon emissions

Abstract

Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions models generally project a downward trend in CO 2 emissions from land use change, assuming significant crop yield improvements. For some crops, however, significant yield gaps persist whilst demand continues to rise. Here we examine the land use change and GHG implications of meeting growing demand for maize. Integrating economic and biophysical models at an unprecedented spatial resolution, we show that CO 2 emissions from land conversion may rise sharply if future yield growth follows historical trends. Our results show that ~4.0 Gt of additional CO 2 would be emitted from ~23 Mha agricultural expansion from 2015 to 2026, under historical yield improvement trends. If yield gaps are closed expeditiously, however, GHG emissions can be reduced to ~1.1 Gt CO 2 during the period. Our results highlight the urgent need to close global yield gaps to minimize agricultural expansion and for continued efforts to constrain agricultural expansion in carbon-rich lands and forests.

Spatial frameworks for robust estimation of yield gaps

“…Yield potential and yield gaps are routinely used as inputs in studies dealing with global food security, biodiversity, land use and climate change 6,[15][16][17] . However, despite the existence of two very different approaches to estimate these two indicators, there has been no explicit attempt to evaluate the performance of top-down versus bottom-up spatial frameworks for estimating yield potential and yield gaps at a local to global scale.…”

Resilience of food sufficiency to future climate and societal changes

“…Future cropland projections were drawn from the Land-Use Harmonization 2 project 13 , which provides 15 arcminute resolution continuous data of aggregate land-use change. For each SSP, these were downscaled to the 10 arcsecond resolution of the ESA LULC map using a downscaling algorithm based on the spatial allocation approach 59 . This approach allocated the aggregate (coarse LUH2 grid-cell) level change to specific high resolution grid-cells based on adjacency to each other LULC class as well as physical suitability variables.…”

Present cum future of SARS-CoV-2 virus and its associated control of virus-laden air pollutants leading to potential environmental threat – A global review

“…As mentioned in brief, we have already discussed in detail all possible pathways in the previous section on basis of the indoor house and outdoor airborne pollution in several entities relating to coronavirus spread. A particular model development shows that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions including higher fractions of CO 2 release due to land conversion or agricultural expansion which could dramatically change the global environmental conditions [99] . It is being predicted that the CO 2 emissions will increase 5 times than the present times by 2100 [100] .…”