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ABSTRACT The provision of farm management decision support and advisory services to insure climate resilient agricultural production systems, especially for subsistence farmers, depends on data on such producers. The main objective of the paper was to generate such data by comparing the status quo regarding dryland, subsistence grain farmers' perceptions of climate variability, their adaptation strategies and crop productivity. Using a survey questionnaire, the comparison was made across...
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Increased seasonal climatic variability is a major contributor to uncertainty in livestock-based livelihoods across Southern Africa. Erratic rainfall patterns and prolonged droughts have resulted in the region being identified as a climate ‘vulnerability hotspot’. Based on fieldwork conducted in the dry seasons in a semiarid region of South Africa, we present an interdisciplinary approach to assess the differential effects of drought on two types of livestock systems. Organic matter...
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Abstract A broad scope of crop models with varying demands on data inputs is being used for several purposes, such as possible adaptation strategies to control climate change impacts on future crop production, management decisions, and adaptation policies. A constant challenge to crop model simulation, especially for future crop performance projections and impact studies under varied conditions, is the unavailability of reliable historical data for model calibrations. In some cases,...
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Smallholder oilseed production constitutes a crucial component of rural economies and continues to face the consequences of a changing climate despite the increased levels of vulnerability. This paper assesses how smallholder oilseed farmers’ adaptive capacity in Limpopo is enhanced through various institutional support schemes within the context of increased climate extremes and their need to sustain production. Six hundred farmers were interviewed across three agro-ecological zones of...
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In assessing the relationships between crop productivity and future climate change, a combination of climate change scenarios, environmental conditions and resultant crop yields information are utilized. Recent progress in simulating the impacts of future climate change on crops is focused on increased temperature, and little attention is paid to the possibility of flood stress or on the exploration of adaptation options related to flood stress. As part of this review, this relationship is...
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Grasslands cover ca. 30% of the global land surface and provide critical ecosystem services. Among them, carbon storage is one of the most important. However, grasslands are increasingly threatened by drought and overgrazing which might negatively affect soil carbon stocks. Despite this threat, there is a dearth of information on how drought and grazing jointly impact soil carbon stocks and CO2 fluxes in dryland grasslands. With the aid of a large field experiment, we studied the combined...
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Adapting groundnut production to the high climatic variability and extremes prevailing in Limpopo (South Africa) requires season- and site-specific exploitation of genotype x environment x management interactions. Notably, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) causes distinctive seasonal rainfall anomalies in the province: Weather records over the period 1955–2010, showed El Niño years with an average of 296 mm growing season rainfall, neutral years with 349 mm and La Niña with...
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Pronounced subsidence leading to summer drought over southern Africa causes warmer than average surface air temperatures or even heatwave (HW) conditions. We investigated the occurrence of HWs during the summer drought over South Africa based on station data and the ECMWF ERA5 reanalyses. Temperature observations from the South African Weather Service were analyzed for seasonality and long-term trends (1981–2020) as background to the occurrence and variability of HWs. We focused on three...
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<p><span><span>On the background of increasing welfare and continued population growth, there is an ever-increasing pressure on land and other natural resources in many parts of the world. The situation is, however, particularly severe in the drylands of Sub-Saharan Africa. Southern African landscapes, composed of arable lands, tree orchards and rangelands, provide a range of important ecosystem functions. These functions are increasingly threatened...