Reduced Snowfall May Harm Winter Crops
Climate change is having enormous effects on farming. One of these effects is reduced snowfall. With less snow protection, winter crops may be more likely to freeze, and the reduced amount of snow could lead to drought later in the year.
MSI PI Zhenong Jin (assistant professor, Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering) led a study published in Nature Climate Change that studied the effects of warmer winters and reduced snowfall on winter wheat. A story about this research appears on the University of Minnesota News site: Research Brief: Critical Benefits of Snowpack for Winter Wheat Are Diminishing. The paper can be found on the journal website: P Zhu, T Kim, Z Jin, C Lin, X Wang, P Ciais, MD Mueller, A Aghakouchak, J Huang, D Mulla, D Makowski. The Critical Benefits of Snowpack Insulation and Snowmelt for Winter Wheat Productivity. Nature Climate Change (2022). doi: 0.1038/s41558-022-01327-3.
Professor Jin uses MSI resources for a number of projects that integrate computational modeling, remote sensing, and machine learning for agriculture sustainability.
