A (mis)alignment of farmer experience and perceptions of climate change in the U.S. inland Pacific Northwest
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A (mis)alignment of farmer experience and perceptions of climate change in the U.S. inland Pacific Northwest Alexander Maas 1 & Chloe Wardropper 2 & Gabrielle Roesch-McNally 3 & John Abatzoglou 4 Received: 12 June 2019 / Accepted: 31 March 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Climate change is expected to have heterogeneous effects on agriculture across the USA, where temperature and precipitation regimes are already changing. While the overall effect of climate change on agriculture is uncertain, farmers’ perceptions of current and future climate and weather conditions will be a key factor in how they adapt. This paper analyzes data from paired surveys (N = 817) and natural variation from baseline weather across the inland Pacific Northwest (iPNW), to determine if long-term, gradual changes in precipitation, and temperature distributions affect farmers’ weather perceptions and intentions to adapt. We note that some areas in the iPNW have experienced significant changes in weather, while others have remained relatively constant. However, we find no relationship between changes in temperature and precipitation distributions and individuals’ perceptions and intentions to adapt. Our findings provide evidence that gradual, long-term changes in weather are temporally incongruous with human perception, which can impede support for climate action policy and adaptation strategies. Keywords Climate change . Perceptions . Experience . Agricultural adaptation . Wheat . Weather
1 Introduction Climate change is expected to have heterogeneous effects on agriculture across the United States of America (USA), where temperature and precipitation regimes are already changing (Asseng et al. 2013; Reidmiller et al. 2017). Some research suggests climate change may improve agricultural production and increase yields through mechanistic crop responses to
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-02002713-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Alexander Maas [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
carbon and/or on-farm decisions (Leakey et al. 2009; Asseng et al. 2013; Stöckle et al. 2018) or by increasing the amount of land suitable for cultivating high-value crops (Parker and Abatzoglou 2018). Other studies suggest climate change will negatively impact USA and global agricultural yields and profits, primarily through drought and harmful growing degree days1 (Lobell et al. 2008; Fisher et al. 2012; Deschênes and Greenstone 2012). However, the crop losses due to more frequent and severe temperatures and droughts may be largely mitigated through adaptive behavior, which suggests that future agricultural profitability could have little relation to climate, and depends largely on management, trade, and consumption (Nelson et al. 2014; Manning et al. 2017; Maas et al. 2016). In part, these mixed expectations for future agricultural production are related to heterogene
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