Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The Canadian Prairies are known by two names: The Breadbasket of Canada and the Prairie Pothole Region. The first recognizes the importance of agriculture to the region; the second indicates the numerous wetlands embedded in the agricultural landscape. These two ecosystems co-exist and jointly interact with the overlaying atmosphere. Agricultural production is inextricably linked to climate and hydrology. As temperatures rise, the warmer growing season is opening a path for cropland to expand northward. Concerned about drought, farmers have installed irrigation infrastructure to avoid production losses. At the same time, the removal of excessive water in planting areas has degraded wetlands and reduced ecosystem resilience. Key to understanding the feedback among crops, wetlands, and regional climate are models capable of simulating both the unique climatological and hydrological conditions and the phenological processes of crops. Although sophisticated climate models and numerous detailed crop growth models exist, these two model types are rarely used in a fully coupled manner that allows for dynamic feedback processes. Nor is there a dynamic wetland scheme in major regional climate models. Wetlands are usually prescribed as static open water fractions, which consider neither seasonal expansion and contraction nor their contributions to local climate. Due to these limitations, there is little quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of different adaptation strategies in improving climate resilience of the cropland-wetland complex. Here, we aim to develop a state-of-the-art modeling system that couples a high-resolution regional climate model with an advanced land-surface model, enabling explicit representation of dynamic crop growth, irrigation, and dynamic wetlands. The interactions between the models will permit us to explore the connectivity of the crop-wetland-climate system and provide a platform to address these questions: 1. What is the impact of climate change on crop production? To what extent can irrigation improve crop production? 2. What is the impact of climate change on the Prairie wetlands? How do wetlands feedback to the regional climate? 3. What are the potential risks and benefits of croplands' northward expansion under climate change? Should irrigation be widely adopted on the prairies? What are possible on-farm benefits of wetland retention and restoration? We aim to make a real impact in reducing climate change risk and improving ecosystem resilience. We will accomplish this goal by researching the physical sciences of climate change and the sustainability of Earth systems and linking scientific understanding of the coupled Earth system with advanced numerical modeling. By tackling how the coupled Earth system responds to critical changes in climate that impact decision-making, we will help solve sustainability and resilience issues with the best possible understanding of the system's physics.