the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Can adaptations of crop and soil management prevent yield losses during water scarcity? – A modelling study
Abstract. With climate change, the increasingly limited availability of irrigation water resources poses a major threat to agricultural production systems world-wide. This study explores climate adaptation options in soil and crop management to reduce yield losses due to water scarcity and irrigation restrictions during the 2022 summer drought. The focus is on potato production in the Broye catchment in Switzerland, which is representative of many mid-sized lowland catchments in Central Europe facing reduced irrigation water availability. We employed the field-scale agro-hydrological model SWAP in a distributed manner to simulate regional irrigation demand, yields and deficits under drought stress. Results suggest that irrigation bans and drought in 2022 led to a 16.4 % reduction in potato yield due to a 59 % deficit in irrigation water. Our findings suggest that adding 1 % soil organic carbon (SOC) down to a depth of 60 cm could have reduced the yield loss to only 7 %. Planting earlier maturing potato varieties in less favorable pedoclimatic conditions further improves irrigation water productivity (IWP) and reduces irrigation water demand by 26 %. In this case, however, there is a trade-off in yield, the reduction of which can only be reduced to -14.8 %. Overall, our findings highlight the great value of soil organic carbon for preventing productivity losses during droughts at the example of a recently experienced drought year. Furthermore, we show that irrigation water use efficiency can be optimized by location-specific combinations of adaptation choices. In the face of future droughts exacerbated by climate change, the measures studied here represent a valuable adaptation to mitigate yield losses and reduce dependence on irrigation.
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Status: open (until 06 Aug 2024)
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2024-1201', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Jun 2024
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General comments:
The authors conducted an interesting modelling based scenario anlaysis for soybean grown in Broye catchment in Switzerland to investigate the potentials of preventing yield lossess facing irrigation supply deficits with increasing soil organic carbon or/and earlier maturing under specific (extreme) drought condition for 2022. The topic is of significance for food security under extreme climates, for sure. However, I feel some text is repetitive across methods, results and discussion sections. Please refer to my following suggestions.
Specific comments:
-In the INTRODUCTION, at least four times mentioning about "shortcomings" in previous studies (Lines 69, 83,104, 112), makes me unclear with the certain paragraph (Line 114) totally sumarize the overall innovative aspects of the study. Please reconsider whehter all the pointed innovative points valid and the flow of the text to clarify the logic. Given that in the discussion, you mentioned also some other studies also did similar analysis
- For section 3, why not combine the 3.2 and 3.4? Data can be in the last part. Actually, three major steps, which are model set-up, model calibration and validation, scenario settings, followed by the data sources.
-In the method, it should be clear which grids you tested. What is the meaning of Figure 1? I feel just figure 4 is enough to show the real modeling objectives.
-Table 1 is confusing, what is the differences between the first two scenarios ( like 1 vs. 2; 5 vs. 6) and last two scenarios ( like 3vs. 4; 7vs. 8)in each sub group?
-For the first limitations you pointed, why not to do some sensitivity analysis to show the robustness of the study facing different levels of drought?
-Lines 521-523, I think it would be nice if at least some examples of certain types of management adaptations towards higher SOC can be listed.
-In section 5.2 and 5.3, please delete some repetative content from results.
-Can different models generate different results?
Technical corrections:
-Line 159, typo.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1201-RC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Malve Heinz, 28 Jun 2024
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Reply to comments by anonymous referee #1
Dear Reviewer,
We thank you for taking the time to read our manuscript and providing valuable feedback. In the following, we will address each comment and explain how we plan to adapt the manuscript:
Comment 1:
In the INTRODUCTION, at least four times mentioning about "shortcomings" in previous studies (Lines 69, 83,104, 112), makes me unclear with the certain paragraph (Line 114) totally sumarize the overall innovative aspects of the study. Please reconsider whehter all the pointed innovative points valid and the flow of the text to clarify the logic. Given that in the discussion, you mentioned also some other studies also did similar analysis
Thank you for the remark, we will make sure that the introduction reads well and that we discuss all relevant studies already in the introduction. We checked the four research gaps / “shortcomings” mentioned.
- The research gap in l. 69 (“Quantification of irrigation demand and supply deficits on a larger scale”), is being addressed in our objectives (l. 114-115) and results (l. 435-436).
- In l. 104 we specify the research gap of accounting for water supply deficits with water restrictions, which we specifically address in our study (l. 240-242).
- The same holds for l. 112, where we point to the impact of water availability on crop yield, which is mentioned as a shortcoming in l. 99.
For these three points we do not discuss results of similar studies in the discussion. Where we place our results in the context of other publications, we primarily discuss the effects of management, which in the studies cited were examined exclusively on a field scale. The “shortcoming” we mention in l. 83 (including the water source in the simulation) is indeed not a subject of this study and will therefore be excluded in the revised version of the manuscript.
Comment 2:
For section 3, why not combine the 3.2 and 3.4? Data can be in the last part. Actually, three major steps, which are model set-up, model calibration and validation, scenario settings, followed by the data sources.
Thank you for the helpful suggestion, which we will realize in the revised version of the manuscript.
Comment 3:
In the method, it should be clear which grids you tested. What is the meaning of Figure 1? I feel just figure 4 is enough to show the real modeling objectives.
That is a valid point, we will merge Figure 1 and 4 and revise it to make the actual modeling perimeter clearer.
Comment 4:
Table 1 is confusing, what is the differences between the first two scenarios ( like 1 vs. 2; 5 vs. 6) and last two scenarios ( like 3vs. 4; 7vs. 8)in each sub group?
Thank you for pointing that out; there is indeed an error in Table 1, which we will correct in the revised manuscript.
Comment 5:
For the first limitations you pointed, why not to do some sensitivity analysis to show the robustness of the study facing different levels of drought?
We realize, that starting the discussion section with this first limitation is somewhat misleading as it shifts the focus from the actual objective of the study. It is not within the scope of this study to investigate the impacts under different drought patterns and levels. The focus of the study lies on the potentials of adaption measures to decrease yield deficits and reduce irrigation demands for a case study in 2022. We will re-formulate this in the revised version for clarification.
Comment 6:
Lines 521-523, I think it would be nice if at least some examples of certain types of management adaptations towards higher SOC can be listed.
We agree with the reviewer. Although we do mention management practices that can increase SOC content in the Introduction (l. 53-55; cover cropping, compost/manure application), this paragraph should rather be placed in section 5.4 (Practical limitations to managing SOC stocks) in the discussion. We will implement this in the revised version of the manuscript.
Comment 7:
In section 5.2 and 5.3, please delete some repetative content from results.
We will address this suggestion in the revised manuscript.
Comment 8:
Can different models generate different results?
Yes, if another model represents soil hydraulic processes differently, also the resulting water retention and irrigation demand can differ from the results we obtained with SWAP. The advantage of SWAP is its very detailed representation of soil water flow combined with a comprehensive representation of dynamic crop growth in the WOFOST module. We will make this clear in the revised version.
Comment 9:
Line 159, typo.
Thank you for pointing that out; we will correct it in the revised version of the manuscript.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-1201-AC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Malve Heinz, 28 Jun 2024
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