Projecting Changes in Food Security Throughout Central America
Abstract
Climate non-stationarity continues to change the productivity of local food and water supply. These changes in supplies could result in starvation or sur-pluses, greatly affecting the surrounding populations and causing adverse effects such as malnutrition, mass migration, and political unrest. This study addresses the following questions regarding the future potential of land resources to support local populations with food and water: How will crop pro-duction be affected by changing environmental conditions? Which specific regions are expected to experience the greatest pressure? How might we expect land use to shift through the end of the 21st century, based on future environmental conditions? Current crop growth is analyzed, along with projected crop growth based on future climate scenarios. Recent historic anthropogenic biome maps are statistically correlated with recent historic climate data to generate models and are applied to anticipated future climates to generate future anthrome maps. The crop analysis is then coupled with the anthromes results, yielding a crop suitability forecast. This analysis is constrained to the area of Central America over the course of the 21st century for this study.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 03, 2020
- Accession Number
- AD1100914
Entities
People
- Aaron C. Petri
- Angela M. Rhodes
- James D. Westervelt
- Kayla A. Cotterman
Organizations
- Construction Engineering Research Laboratory