Abstract
Increasing variability in temperature and precipitation patterns is reducing the security of natural resources including food, water, and energy in many locations globally. Changes in climate are particularly relevant to the agricultural sector, given the increasing demand for food, less predictable water supplies, and more expensive energy. Among these challenges, however, are opportunities to improve human health with climate-conscious approaches to field crop production. Such opportunities may be emerging in historically productive areas in the Appalachian region of the United States including West Virginia that are often typified by food deserts. Long-term records of farm count, farm area, and crop yield data for West Virginia’s most valuable crops are presented relative to national averages to better understand emergent challenges and opportunities associated with local climate changes. Observed datasets of daily maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation for 18 climate observation sites in West Virginia dating back to at least 1930 were used to assess climatic trends between 1900 and 2016. To account for the regions’ complex physiography, daily data were averaged annually and spatially (all 18 sites). The maximum temperatures were shown to decrease significantly (− 0.78 °C/century; p = 0.001), whereas the minimum temperatures increased significantly (0.44 °C/century; p = 0.017), and precipitation increased (25.4 mm/century). Additionally, intra-annual variance of maximum temperatures decreased (− 0.22 °C/century), minimum temperatures increased significantly (0.39 °C/century; p = 0.041), and precipitation increased (25.4 mm/century). Observed climate trends suggest that local and regional changes in land-atmosphere interactions may result in a wetter and more temperate Appalachian climate characterized by longer growing seasons that may be supportive of a broader range of crops. Results suggest that strategically expanding local agriculture to adapt to changing climate could simultaneously improve human health and socioeconomic status in West Virginia, the broader Appalachian region, and other similar physiographic locations globally.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Barry RG (2013) Mountain weather and Climate, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, New York
Butler EE, Mueller ND, Huybers P (2018) Peculiarly pleasant weather for US maize. Proc Natl Acad Sci 115(47):11935–11940. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1808035115
Caesar J, Alexander L, Vose R (2006) Large-scale changes in observed daily maximum and minimum temperatures: creation and analysis of a new gridded data set. J Geophys Res-Atmos 111(D5). https://doi.org/10.1029/2005JD006280
Cook BI, Miller RL, Seager R (2009) Amplification of the North American “dust bowl” drought through human-induced land degradation. Proc Natl Acad Sci 106:4997–5001. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0810200106
Dai A, Trenberth KE, Karl TR (1999) Effects of clouds, soil moisture, precipitation, and water vapor on diurnal temperature range. J Clim 12:2451–2473. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1999)012%3C2451:EOCSMP%3E2.0.CO;2
Deser C, Phillips AS, Alexander MA, Smoliak BV (2014) Projecting North American climate over the next 50 years: uncertainty due to internal variability. J Clim 27:2271–2296. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00451.1
Easterling DR, Horton B, Jones PD, Peterson TC, Karl TR, Parker DE, Salinger MJ, Razuvayev V, Plummer N, Jamason P, Folland CK (1997) Maximum and minimum temperature trends for the globe. Science 277:364–367. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5324.364
Easterling DR, Kunkel KE, Arnold JR, Knutson T, LeGrande AN, Leung LR, Vose RS, Waliser DE, Wehner MF (2017) Precipitation change in the United States. In: DJ Wuebbles, DW Fahey, KA Hibbard, DJ Dokken, BC Stewart and TK Maycock (eds) Climate science special report: fourth national climate assessment, volume I. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, pp. 207–230. https://doi.org/10.7930/J0H993CC
Elsgaard L, Görres CM, Hoffmann CC, Blicher-Mathiesen G, Schelde K, Petersen SO (2012) Net ecosystem exchange of CO 2 and carbon balance for eight temperate organic soils under agricultural management. Agric Ecosyst Environ 162:52–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2012.09.001
Gocic M, Trajkovic S (2013) Analysis of changes in meteorological variables using Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope estimator statistical tests in Serbia. Glob Planet Chang 100:172–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2012.10.014
Held IM, Soden BJ (2006) Robust responses of the hydrological cycle to global warming. J Clim 19:5686–5699. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI3990.1
Hoffmann MP, Smith DL (2011) Feeding out great cities: climate change and opportunities for agriculture in Eastern Canada and the Northeastern US. https://cuaes.cals.cornell.edu/sites/cuaes.cals.cornell.edu/files/shared/documents/Canadian-US%20Collaborations%20White%20Paper.pdf. Accessed 1 Jan 2018
Hubbart JA, Guyette R, Muzika RM (2016) More than drought: precipitation variance, excessive wetness, pathogens and the future of the western edge of the eastern deciduous forest. Sci Total Environ 566:463–467. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.05.108
Hunter J, Roth GW, Frier MC (2010) Winter canola in Pennsylvania: production and agronomic recommendations. Pennsylvania State University Extension. https://extension.psu.edu/winter-canola-in-pennsylvania-production-and-agronomic-recommendations. Accessed May 12 2018
IPCC (2014) Climate change 2014: synthesis report. In: Core Writing Team, RK Pachauri and LA Meyer (eds) Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp
Jefferson PG (2016) Climate warming and long-term trends in Saskatchewan hay yield. Modern Environmental Science and Engineering 2(12):765–768. https://doi.org/10.15341/mese(2333-2581)/12.02.2016/001
Kadioğlu M (1997) Trends in surface air temperature data over Turkey. Int J Climatol 17:511–520. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0088(199704)17:5%3C511::AID-JOC130%3E3.0.CO;2-0
Kutta E, Hubbart JA (2016) Reconsidering meteorological seasons in a changing climate. Clim Chang 137:511–524. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1704-3
Kutta E, Hubbart JA (2018) Changing climatic averages and variance: implications for mesophication at the eastern edge of North America’s eastern deciduous forest. Forests 9:605. https://doi.org/10.3390/f9100605
Lanzante JR (1996) Resistant, robust and non-parametric techniques for the analysis of climate data: theory and examples, including applications to historical radiosonde station data. Int J Climatol 16:1197–1226. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0088(199611)16:11%3C1197::AID-JOC89%3E3.0.CO;2-L
Lark TJ, Salmon JM, Gibbs HK (2015) Cropland expansion outpaces agricultural and biofuel policies in the United States. Environ Res Lett 10:044003. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044003
Levitt J (1980) Responses of plants to environmental stress, volume 1: chilling, freezing, and high temperature stresses. Academic Press, New York
Mann ME, Gleick PH (2015) Climate change and California drought in the 21st century. Proc Natl Acad Sci 112:3858–3859. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1503667112
Mann ME, Zhang Z, Hughes MK, Bradley RS, Miller SK, Rutherford S, Ni F (2008) Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105(36):13252–13257. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0805721105
Mascioli NR, Previdi M, Fiore AM, Ting M (2017) Timing and seasonality of the United States ‘warming hole’. Environ Res Lett 12:034008. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa5ef4
Matson PA, Parton WJ, Power AG, Swift MJ (1997) Agricultural intensification and ecosystem properties. Science 277:504–509. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5325.504
McMaster GS, Wilhelm WW (1997) Growing degree-days: one equation, two interpretations. Agric Forest Meteorol 87:291–300. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-1923(97)00027-0
Mondal A, Kundu S, Mukhopadhyay A (2012) Rainfall trend analysis by Mann-Kendall test: a case study of north-eastern part of Cuttack district, Orissa. International Journal of Geology, Earth and Environmental Sciences 2:70–78
Mueller ND, Butler EE, McKinnon KA, Rhines A, Tingley M, Holbrook NM, Huybers P (2016) Cooling of US Midwest summer temperature extremes from cropland intensification. Nat Clim Chang 6:317–322. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2825
Murphy WJ (1993) Tables for weights and measurement: crops. Extension publications (MU) Accessed July 31, 2018. Available online at: https://extension2.missouri.edu/G4020
Naylor R, Ehrlich PR (1997) Natural pest control services and agriculture. Nature’s services: societal dependence on natural ecosystems, pg. 151–174. Island Press, Washington DC
NCAR National Center for Atmospheric Research Staff (Eds). Last modified 05 Sep 2014. The climate data guide: trend analysis. Retrieved from https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data-tools-and-analysis/trend-analysis
NOAAs NCEI Climate Data Online Accessed 10/6/2017
Partal T, Kahya E (2006) Trend analysis in Turkish precipitation data. Hydrol Process 20:2011–2026. https://doi.org/10.1002/hyp.5993
Peel MC, Finlayson BL, McMahon TA (2007) Updated world map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification. Hydrol Earth Syst Sci Discuss 4:439–473. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00298818. Accessed 15 Nov 2017
Pielke Sr RA, Stohlgren T, Parton W, Doesken N, Moeny J, Schell L, Redmond K (2000) Spatial representativeness of temperature measurements from a single site. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 81(4):826–830. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26215143. Accessed 24 March 2018
Pielke RA, Adegoke J, Beltran-Przekurat A, Hiemstra CA, Lin J, Nair US, Niyogi D, Nobis TE (2007) An overview of regional land-use and land-cover impacts on rainfall. Tellus B 59:587–601. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0889.2007.00251.x
Pohlert T (2018) Package ‘trend’. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/trend/trend.pdf. Accessed on 10/2018
Randall D (2015) An introduction to the global circulation of the atmosphere. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Remans R, Wood SA, Saha N, Anderman TL, DeFries RS (2014) Measuring nutritional diversity of national food supplies. Glob Food Sec 3:174–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2014.07.001
Ritchie JT, Nesmith DS (1991) Temperature and crop development. In: Modeling plant and soil systems, agronomy monograph, vol 31. ASA, CSSA, SSSA, Madison, WI, pp 5–29. https://doi.org/10.2134/agronmonogr31.c2
Rosenzweig C, Tubiello FN, Goldberg R, Mills E, Bloomfield J (2002) Increased crop damage in the US from excess precipitation under climate change. Glob Environ Chang 12:197–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0959-3780(02)00008-0
Sen PK (1968) Estimates of the regression coefficient based on Kendall’s tau. J Am Stat Assoc 63:1379–1389. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1968.10480934
Shen X, Liu B, Li G, Wu Z, Jin Y, Yu P, Zhou D (2014) Spatiotemporal change of diurnal temperature range and its relationship with sunshine duration and precipitation in China. J Geophys Res - Atmos 119:13,163–13,179. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022326
Tabari H, Marofi S, Aeini A, Talaee PH, Mohammadi K (2011) Trend analysis of reference evapotranspiration in the western half of Iran. Agric For Meteorol 151:128–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2010.09.009
Thomson LJ, Macfadyen S, Hoffmann AA (2010) Predicting the effects of climate change on natural enemies of agricultural pests. Biol Control 52:296–306. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2009.01.022
Thrupp LA (2000) Linking agricultural biodiversity and food security: the valuable role of agrobiodiversity for sustainable agriculture. Int Aff 76:283–297. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.00133
Trenberth KE, Dai A, Van Der Schrier G, Jones PD, Barichivich J, Briffa KR, Sheffield J (2014) Global warming and changes in drought. Nat Clim Chang 4:17–22. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2067
United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (2018) Farming and Farm Income. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/farming-and-farm-income/. Accessed: 10-23-2018
United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Services (2017) Food desert locator: release no. 0191.11. https://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/food-desert-locator. Accessed 12 Feb 2018
USDA-NASS (2014) West Virginia Agriculture State Profile 2014. http://www.agriculture.wv.gov/Media/Documents/West%20Virginia%20Agriculture%20PPWV SF2014pdf.pdf
Vasseur DA, DeLong JP, Gilbert B, Greig HS, Harley CD, McCann KS, Savage V, Tunney TD, O'Connor MI (2014) Increased temperature variation poses a greater risk to species than climate warming. Proc R Soc Lond Biol Sci 281:20132612. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.2612
Visser S, Savidge M (2016) “West Virginia floods devastate 1,200 homes, many lives”. CNN. Accessed January 31, 2017. Available online at: https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/us/west-virginia-flooding-weather/index.html
Vose RS, Easterling DR, Kunkel KE, LeGrande AN, Wehner MF (2017) Temperature changes in the United States. Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I. In: DJ Wuebbles, DW Fahey, KA Hibbard, DJ Dokken, BC Stewart, TK Maycock (eds) U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, pp 185–206. https://doi.org/10.7930/J0N29V45
Walker RE, Keane CR, Burke JG (2010) Disparities and access to healthy food in the United States: a review of food deserts literature. Health Place 16:876–884. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.04.013
Walthall CL, Anderson CJ, Baumgard LH, Takle E, Wright-Morton L (2013) Climate change and agriculture in the United States: effects and adaptation. Geological and Atmospheric Science Reports 1. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/ge_at_reports/1/. Accessed: 12-1-2018
Wang JY (1960) A critique of the heat unit approach to plant response studies. Ecology 41:785–790. https://doi.org/10.2307/1931815
Wang R, Bowling LC, Cherkauer KA, Cibin R, Her Y, Chaubey I (2017) Biophysical and hydrological effects of future climate change including trends in CO 2, in the St. Joseph River watershed, Eastern Corn Belt. Agric Water Manag 180:280–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2016.09.017
West JW (2003) Effects of heat-stress on production in dairy cattle. J Dairy Sci 86:2131–2144. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(03)73803-X
Wilks DS (2011) Statistical methods in the atmospheric sciences, vol 100. Academic press, Oxford
Wolfe DW, Schwartz MD, Lakso AN, Otsuki Y, Pool RM, Shaulis NJ (2005) Climate change and shifts in spring phenology of three horticultural woody perennials in northeastern USA. Int J Biometeorol 49:303–309. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-004-0248-9
World Meteorological Organization (2007) The role of climatological normals in a changing climate. WCDMP-No. 61, WMO-TD/No.1377, World Meteorological Organization
Wuebbles DJ, Hayhoe K (2004) Climate change projections for the United States Midwest. Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Chang 9:335–363. https://doi.org/10.1023/B:MITI.0000038843.73424.de
Yue S, Pilon P, Cavadias G (2002) Power of the Mann–Kendall and Spearman’s rho tests for detecting monotonic trends in hydrological series. J Hydrol 259:254–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-1694(01)00594-7
Acknowledgements
Special thanks are due to many scientists of the Interdisciplinary Hydrology Laboratory (www.forh2o.net).
Funding
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Number OIA-1458952, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 1011536, and the West Virginia Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Disclaimer
Results presented may not reflect the views of the sponsors and no official endorsement should be inferred. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Additional information
Editor: Luis Lassaletta.
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Electronic supplementary material
ESM 1
(DOCX 1.80 mb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kutta, E., Hubbart, J.A. Observed climatic changes in West Virginia and opportunities for agriculture. Reg Environ Change 19, 1087–1099 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1455-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1455-y