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Paper Type

ERF

Description

California has a unique climate that is suitable for growing a variety of agricultural crops. As stated by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities, and of these, over a third of the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts consumed in the United States, are grown in California. Mark Gaskell, Ph.D., a California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor, recently began an experiment to grow coffee plants; he believed that due to changing climatic conditions, California farmers could begin to grow coffee plants in their fields. Several farmers agreed to experiment as well and found that the plants did indeed grow. The issue, however, is that farmers would like to know if they can reliably plant coffee on their farms and sustain coffee production for years to come. As a result, this study will utilize the maximum entropy approach, a well-established algorithm for modeling habitat suitability over geographical domains, to measure the impact of future climate change on the sustainability of growing coffee plants in California in the years ahead. Layers of worldwide climate data, that represent 19 bioclimatic variables, will be utilized in this study. WorldClim is an online repository that contains historic, monthly, meteorological data averaged across 30 years (1970–2000) as well as climate data representing possible future conditions based on various climate prediction models. While this study is focusing on the impact of climate change on coffee plants, it is expected the methodological processes developed, and the resultant findings will be applicable to a wide variety of agricultural crops.

Paper Number

1276

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Aug 10th, 12:00 AM

Outside the Bean Belt: A Study on the Suitability and Sustainability of Coffee Plants in Southern California due to Climate Change using GIS

California has a unique climate that is suitable for growing a variety of agricultural crops. As stated by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, California’s agricultural abundance includes more than 400 commodities, and of these, over a third of the vegetables and three-quarters of the fruits and nuts consumed in the United States, are grown in California. Mark Gaskell, Ph.D., a California Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor, recently began an experiment to grow coffee plants; he believed that due to changing climatic conditions, California farmers could begin to grow coffee plants in their fields. Several farmers agreed to experiment as well and found that the plants did indeed grow. The issue, however, is that farmers would like to know if they can reliably plant coffee on their farms and sustain coffee production for years to come. As a result, this study will utilize the maximum entropy approach, a well-established algorithm for modeling habitat suitability over geographical domains, to measure the impact of future climate change on the sustainability of growing coffee plants in California in the years ahead. Layers of worldwide climate data, that represent 19 bioclimatic variables, will be utilized in this study. WorldClim is an online repository that contains historic, monthly, meteorological data averaged across 30 years (1970–2000) as well as climate data representing possible future conditions based on various climate prediction models. While this study is focusing on the impact of climate change on coffee plants, it is expected the methodological processes developed, and the resultant findings will be applicable to a wide variety of agricultural crops.

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