A. UncDr. Adrian Unc and a team of Grenfell researchers and collaborators from the UK and China have had their work published in the well-respected Scientific Reports journal.
The focus of the article is their work on how climate change is affecting food security.
"Food security in an environment of increased uncertainties in the current agricultural regions coupled with a warming of the North raises the question of a possible shift of at least some agricultural activities into the boreal regions, globally," said Prof. Unc, who developed the project, and assembled and led a Grenfell team (Myron King, Dr. Daniel Altdorff, Dr. Lakshman Galagedara), with collaborators from the University of Leeds (Prof. Joseph Holden) and Xi'an University of Science and Technology (Dr. Pengfei Li).
Driven by Grenfell's School of Science and the Environment, the Boreal and Ecosystems Research Initiative and the Environmental Policy Institute, the project examines the likelihood for climate change to lead to expansion of agricultural activities, a question most current for Newfoundland and Labrador.
"While in our province the expansion is driven by immediate food security concerns, the long-term sustainability of agriculture here and elsewhere, under similar conditions, is critically dependent on our understanding of the environmental conditions," said. Dr. Unc. "To assess the extent to which climate supports such developments we carried out what is, to date, likely the most detailed assessment of climate change in the boreal region from the point of view of agricultural feasibility."
The team analysed the patterns of climate change in the northern boreal and near-arctic region integrating crop relevant temperature and water availability analyses.
The article can be found online here.
