Study reveals impact of climate change on long-term agricultural experiments

A study conducted by an international team led by the Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) has comprehensively investigated the impact of climate change on productivity at long-term field experiment (LTE) sites in Germany. The study, published in the European Journal of Agronomy, analyzed net primary productivity (NPP) - a key indicator of vegetation productivity and carbon dynamics - at 271 LTE sites and projected significant spatial shifts in productivity under different climate scenarios across Germany by the end of the 21st century

The results show that NPP is expected to increase in the southern regions of Germany, indicating an increase in agricultural productivity. In contrast, NPP is expected to decrease in the central regions of Germany, underlining the need for adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. Increasing water scarcity in particular is considered the greatest risk factor for productivity.

The extensive LTE (meta-)dataset can be explored interactively on the freely accessible LTE overview map (https://tools.bonares.de/ltfe/) currently supported by the BonaRes and SoilWise projects.

"The study highlights the importance of understanding and predicting the impacts of climate change on our agricultural systems. Its framework prominently showcases the pivotal role of repositories, such as the BonaRes Repository, in facilitating access to data for modeling and catalyzing research in the fields of soil science and agriculture. The results once again underline the importance of agricultural field studies in living labs and long-term experiments at sites with different environmental factors," said Prof. Cenk Donmez, lead author of the study.