[Enviro-lunch] 10/26 Alison Marklein, "Modeling the effects of climate change and agricultural management on tomato-corn yields and soil health"

[Nate Bogie]

Dear all,

Please join us next Thursday (10/26) for our speaker, Dr. Alison Marklein
from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.


 *Modeling the effects of climate change and agricultural management on
tomato-corn yields and soil health*



*Alison Marklein*

LBNL/UC Berkeley


*[image: Inline image 1]*


*Abstract*:

Predicting the effects of climate change on agriculture – and interactions
with various management strategies - is important for continuing food
security. Agro-ecosystem research studies are critical for understanding
the effects of management practices and climate on yields and soil health,
but even long-term sites have limitations in their ability to predict the
effects of future climate. For example, studies that simulate warming or
elevated carbon dioxide can be expensive and logistically difficult to
perform at scales comparable to existing farms. One alternative is to use
models to predict the effects of climate change on agro-ecosystems. Here,
we use the model *ecosys* to address interactions between climate change
and management practices using long-term data (since 1993) from three
tomato-corn cropping systems at an experimental and operational farm in the
central valley of California: a conventional corn-tomato cropping system
with mineral fertilizer; and organic corn-tomato, fertilized by poultry
compost and a leguminous winter cover crop; and a “mixed” corn-tomato
rotation with mineral fertilizer and a leguminous cover crop. This model is
ideal for answering our questions because how questions because it includes
explicit process-based functions for plant growth, plant water use, soil
hydrology, and soil carbon, and has been tested extensively in a variety of
agricultural ecosystems. Then, we simulate the effects of climate change
scenarios on these cropping systems to see how climate may affect yields,
crop water use, and soil carbon storage.



*Bio: *

Alison Marklein is a postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and UC
Berkeley who uses modeling and data analysis to quantify feedbacks between
the terrestrial biosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere, and their
implications for climate change, forest ecology, and our food supply. Her
current research is modeling the effects of soil chemistry, climate change,
and agricultural management on soil carbon storage and plant growth. Her
past research has focused on how interactions between nitrogen and
phosphorus affect terrestrial carbon sequestration and the dynamics
of plants and microbes. She received her B.A. in Computational Biology at
Cornell University in 2008 and her Ph.D. in Ecosystem Biogeochemistry at UC
Davis in 2014. She worked as a postdoc at UC Davis and the University of
Montana before joining LBNL in 2016.


When: Oct. 26th, Thursday, 12pm – 1pm

Where: SE2-302


Coffee will be provided and please bring your own mugs.

We look forward to seeing you,


Organizers for 2017-18: Nate Bogie and Lixia Jin

Faculty coordinator: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe

_______________________________________________
Enviro-lunch mailing list
Enviro-lunch at lists.ucmerced.edu
http://lists.ucmerced.edu/mailman/listinfo/enviro-lunch
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/enviro-lunch/attachments/20171020/f04fb748/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 4003343 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/enviro-lunch/attachments/20171020/f04fb748/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PastedGraphic-1.png
Type: image/png
Size: 25776 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/enviro-lunch/attachments/20171020/f04fb748/attachment-0003.png>