Water balance spatial assessment according to the management and land use in the context of climate change

• Grant number: 17/17109-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: January 01, 2018
• End date: December 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy - Agricultural Meteorology
• Principal Investigator: Quirijn de Jong van Lier
• Grantee: Fábio Vale Scarpare
• Supervisor: Claudio Osvaldo Stockle
• Host Institution: Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Washington State University (WSU), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 16/09133-1 - Cane yield and water balance assessment in expansion areas according to agricultural management adopted in the context of climate change, BP.PD

Abstract

The expansion of sugarcane into the Cerrado region presents new uncertainties about the impact of agricultural management on previously undeveloped land, while leaving open existing questions about the historical impact of sugarcane on local and regional water budgets. The spatially distributed grid-based hydrologic characteristics of the VIC-CropSyst model may provide a useful tool for analysis and decision support within the ongoing post-doc project that aims to assess the sugarcane water balance under climate change and management scenarios on additional biomes under pressure from sugarcane expansion. Therefore, we intend to apply the VIC-CropSyst modeling platform to increase the spatial scale of water/energy cycles assessment in order to answer the following questions: How does agricultural management in regions dominated by sugarcane production, especially soil tillage and irrigation, affect a basin's hydrological regime under climate change scenarios? How has the expansion of sugarcane affected the local water budget historically and how will its impact change into the future? What management strategies can be adopted to mitigate negative impacts of sugarcane expansion in a diversity of biomes? Data collected during the ongoing post-doc project will assist in transitioning from field scale dynamics to understanding regional processes through model calibration. The completion of this project is expected to inform the relationship between land use and management with water availability for irrigation use.