Predicting the Distribution of Wheat and Maize in Pakistan under Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change has various and wide-ranging impacts on different physical and biological systems of Earth. One such system is agriculture that is impacted vastly by climate change and gives rise to the situation of food security or insecurity at both the local and global level. Pakistan is an agrarian country, still faces food security issues. Pakistan is predicted to be highly susceptible to go through area reduction and geographical shifting of major crops within the country. In such scenario, keeping in view the pressure of rapidly increasing population of the country, it is of utmost importance to assess the food vulnerability to climate change. For this purpose, the potential distribution of Wheat and Maize, which are staple food crop, are going to be assessed in this study. To assess the impact of climate change on these crops in Pakistan, Species Distribution Model ‘MaxEnt’ is used. Results from the model show that there is an area decline under both future climate change scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) compared to the current climate for both the crops. The important climate variables for maize distribution were precipitation of the wettest quarter and isothermally, whereas irrigation and elevation were the most important factors for wheat distribution in current climate. While for future distribution, bioclimatic factor of mean temperature of the warmest quarter had the most importance for maize crop, and precipitation of the warmest quarter was important factor for wheat. The results of the study are beneficial in understanding the effects of habitat distribution of crops as well as climate change on the production and yield of crop, and can help policy makers in lessening the imminent threat of food insecurity in future.