COS 229-1 - Interdisciplinary Approach using Regional Climate Model, Crop Models, and Public Outreach to Increase Agricultural Climate Change Resiliency: A Case Study from the Greater Bangkok

Abstract: The central coastal region of the Gulf of Thailand around Bangkok is home to over 14 million people. While this delta region produces over half of Thai agricultural export, the poor farmers heavily rely on traditional agricultural practice with limited irrigation. These farmers are extremely vulnerable to increasing frequency of floods, droughts, and salt intrusion as a result of climate change. Our multidisciplinary research team set a goal to create a science-based strategy to increase farmers’ resiliency to both extreme climate variability and long-term climate change. First, we analyzed 50-year of hydroclimate data (temperature, precipitation, flow, and salinity) from 365 climate stations to identify spatial climate change patterns. We then statistically analyzed how these hydroclimatic factors affected crop productions in the past by location and species. We also compared the historic results with crop ecophysiological studies to identify resilient crop options. Five key findings include 1) Precipitation is the best predictor of crop productivity there. Rainfall in turn affects salinity and is strongly correlated to temperature. 2) Precipitation trend is highly spatially variable among all climate stations we analyzed. Thus, it is important to create a micro-regional climate model. 3) Our group created a daily rainfall prediction model using Wavelet-transformed artificial neural network at the 396 climate stations. The model can predict rainfall very accurately 2 months in advance at 95% confidence level and up to 12 months in advance at 79% confidence level. 4) Integrating our climate and crop models, we created real-time seasonal recommendations of crops that are most likely to do well for each region according to the short-term and long-term forecast. Coconut is among the most resilient crop to long-term climate change as it can withstand a variety of salinity, temperature, and precipitation. 5) The biggest obstacle to implement the strategy was to convince farmers to switch crop types or even to change the varieties of the same crops they have already grown due to monetary and knowledge limitation. We worked closely with local agricultural and governmental organizations to effectively transfer real-time knowledge to the community. Effective outreach methods include long-term training and subsidies of new plant materials to the community. Smooth operation also required trained personals who can monitor the models in a long run. Our work showcased the importance of long-term interdisciplinary and multi-organization collaboration to tackle urgent environmental issues.