Empirical modeling of the impact of climate change on altitudinal shift of major cereal crops in South Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Climate change is expected to alter the growing conditions of agricultural crops. With increasing surface temperature, future suitable areas for crop production will see an altitude shift. Such shift is an adaptation response of crops to climate change. However, in the study area there are a limited number of studies that have dealt with geographical shifts of crops caused by climate change. This study was conducted with the aim of assessing impacts of climate change on altitudinal migration of crops and length of growing period (LGP). The climate and crop modeling study were carried out using ArcGIS, Diva GIS and MaxEnt using 30 years of climate data for the period 1980 to 2009. Results showed that wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) would migrate upward along the altitudinal gradients in the coming 80 years. However, areas under these crops are expected to drop by 16–100%. Highly impacted areas are expected to increase, whereas low impacted and new suitable areas are expected to decline significantly. Suitable areas for sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and teff (Eragrostis tef Zucc.) production are expected to increase. While wheat and barley are projected to be highly affected by future climate change, sorghum and teff should be relatively stable. No significant difference was observed in LGP between the considered RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 climate scenarios. Therefore, this study concluded that upward movement of crops was one mechanism to adapt to climate change, and new varieties resilient to future climate change needs to be developed.