The impact of the climate change to crop cultivation: the case study with model crops for Turkey

WOS: 000436191100022The Earth is in an era, when the natural balance has been deteriorated by the human and the adverse effects have been increased by these deteriorations. The adverse effects of global climate change have no limitations, and if these effects are overlooked by the human, they shall spread to all areas rapidly. The plants, which are so important for all living creatures, shall be faced with deaths, migrations or adaptation challenges in the future because of the climate change-originated geographical alteration on the variables such as air temperature and precipitation. These reasons make essential the estimations of geographical distribution of plants in the future. In the study, the geographic-climatic suitability of maize, safflower, canola (rape), cotton, wheat and switchgrass was projected for 2070, and the current and future conditions were compared. The applied steps in the study are; (1) the climatic data-obtained from Worldclim as current and 2070-projected data, (2) the identification of essential temperature and precipitation intervals for crops' growth from EcoCrop, (3) application of the Climate Change Adaptation Modeler (CCAM)'s sub-model "Crop Climatic Suitability Modeling (CCSM)" in TerrSet, a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing software by Clark Labs, and finally (4) generation of the climatic suitability maps for each crop for current and future. With this study, the climate-based geographic suitability of plants was evaluated for Turkey where is dominated by Mediterranean climate pattern as 41.1% in Koppen Climate Classification. In the study, the projected areal suitability of maize, switchgrass and cotton shall not change significantly according to current conditions. Safflower's and canola's areal suitability shall expand and displace, respectively. Here, the major loser in areal suitability shall be wheat in Turkey. The methodology may aid for planners and land managers to understand changes in climatic suitability of plants from present to future