Soil quality both increases crop production and improves resilience to climate change

Qiao, Lei; Wang, Xuhui; Smith, Pete; Fan, Jinlong; Lu, Yuelai; Emmett, Bridget ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2713-4389; Li, Rong; Dorling, Stephen; Chen, Haiqing; Liu, Shaogui; Benton, Tim G.; Wang, Yaojun; Ma, Yuqing; Jiang, Rongfeng; Zhang, Fusuo; Piao, Shilong; Mϋller, Christoph; Yang, Huaqing; Hao, Yanan; Li, Wangmei; Fan, Mingsheng. 2022 Soil quality both increases crop production and improves resilience to climate change. Nature Climate Change, 12 (6). 574-580. 10.1038/s41558-022-01376-8

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01376-8

Abstract/Summary

Interactions between soil quality and climate change may influence the capacity of croplands to produce sufficient food. Here, we address this issue by using a new dataset of soil, climate and associated yield observations for 12,115 site-years representing 90% of total cereal production in China. Across crops and environmental conditions, we show that high-quality soils reduced the sensitivity of crop yield to climate variability leading to both higher mean crop yield (10.3 ± 6.7%) and higher yield stability (decreasing variability by 15.6 ± 14.4%). High-quality soils improve the outcome for yields under climate change by 1.7% (0.5–4.0%), compared to low-quality soils. Climate-driven yield change could result in reductions of national cereal production of 11.4 Mt annually under representative concentration pathway RCP 8.5 by 2080–2099. While this production reduction was exacerbated by 14% due to soil degradation, it can be reduced by 21% through soil improvement. This study emphasizes the vital role of soil quality in agriculture under climate change.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	10.1038/s41558-022-01376-8
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Soils and Land Use (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	1758-678X
Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:	Publisher link (see Related URLs) provides a read-only full-text copy of the published paper.
Additional Keywords:	agroecology, governance
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment Agriculture and Soil Science
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date made live:	30 Dec 2022 17:55 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/533779

Item Type:

Publication - Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

10.1038/s41558-022-01376-8

UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:

Soils and Land Use (Science Area 2017-)

ISSN:

1758-678X

Additional Information. Not used in RCUK Gateway to Research.:

Publisher link (see Related URLs) provides a read-only full-text copy of the published paper.

Additional Keywords:

agroecology, governance