Cross-Scales Agro-Hydro-Climatic Assessment and Crop Modeling Across the U.S. Corn Belt: What Have We Learnt?

The U.S. Corn Belt produces nearly a third of the global corn supply and contributes nearly $150 billion annually to the U.S economy. This study is a result of a USDA sponsored project titled Useful to Usable (U2U): “Transforming Climate Variability and Change Information for Cereal Crop Producers”. The objective of this project is to improve farm resilience and profitability in the U.S. Corn Belt region by transforming existing meteorological dataset into usable knowledge and tools for the agricultural community. Our group has been actively leading efforts for: (i) the synthesis related to agricultural impacts of climate variability in the Corn Belt, and (ii) developing and delivering accessible datasets, tools and modeling products to agricultural community. This presentation will provide an overview of these efforts related to regional agro-hydro-climatic analysis and crop modeling and for the U.S. Corn Belt, as well as developing tools and delivering datasets for farmers and researchers. Studies have been underway related to: crop modeling at field scale and regional scale for both contemporary and future time periods, the development of Agro-hydro-climatic dataset, and integrating crop simulation into land surface models for applications within weather and regional climate simulations, including local and regional drought assessment and impact on global trades. The presentation will share our findings, our experience from these multiyear cross-scales agro-hydro-climatic studies.