Representative agricultural pathways, climate change, and agricultural land uses: an application to the Pacific Northwest of the USA

Abstract

This paper investigates climate change adaptation through agricultural land uses under three regional representative agricultural pathways, using data from the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America. The three pathways are bottom-up projections of local biophysical and socioeconomic conditions, and they are consistent to downscaled regional climate scenarios. Results show that changes in agricultural land uses under future climate change and representative agricultural pathways are substantially different, compared with results not considering representative agricultural pathways. This finding suggests that climate change impacts and adaptation may be underestimated or overestimated if future biophysical and socioeconomic developments are not incorporated, particularly in regional agricultural assessments of climate change adaptation. One implication from this analysis for global adaptation strategies is the need for future infrastructure supports to maintain a climate-resilient agricultural production system due to changes in agricultural land uses.