Why growing crops for food rather than energy in the Midwest can help mitigate climate change
To examine agricultural and land use practices and their climate mitigation potential in a 14-state portion of the U.S. Midwest, PNNL scientists at the Joint Global Change Research Institute nested a high-resolution agricultural model, EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate), within PNNL's flagship integrated assessment model, GCAM (Global Change Assessment Model). Then, they used the combined system to analyze three alternative futures: one with no policy about climate change and two with different levels of climate mitigation policies. The results show that the ability of different regions to contribute to global climate change mitigation depends, in part, on the distinct biophysical characteristics of the land in each region. Nesting EPIC in GCAM also helped to show how different land use practices—for example, growing bioenergy crops or using alternative crop management practices—might contribute to climate change mitigation in a specific and globally important agricultural production region: the U.S. Midwest. Even in the...
