Project Details

Description

The mission of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station is 'To enhance the vitality, health, sustainability and overall quality of life in New Jersey by developing and delivering practical, effective solutions to current and future challenges to agriculture; fisheries; food; natural resources; environments; public health; and economic, community, and youth development.' The work proposed here will address the issue of climate change, which will certainly affect the quality of life in New Jersey, including the environment, agriculture, and water resources. It will address the causes of climate change, potential geoengineering responses to climate change, and how climate change will impact us. The work will be related to agriculture, in that it will include the production of future scenarios of climate change that can be used to plan for different agricultural practices, and will consider geoengineering techniques to control the climate, which will affect agriculture. In fact, preliminary results show that geoengineering may reduce agricultural output in Asia, and this is one of negative aspects that will need to be considered when deciding whether to implement it. The studies of soil moisture and irrigation will have implications in many locations, including New Jersey. The high quality, problem-solving research that will result from this project will be presented at scientific conferences, published in refereed journals and in popular articles for the public, and will be disseminated via Rutgers websites. Expected Impact: Given the global nature of the proposed research, it is difficult to say specifically how it will affect specific stakeholders, or even who the stakeholders are. The most important research is on nuclear winter, as climate changes induced by the use of nuclear weapons, on a global or even localized scale, are the greatest threat to the planet. The plan is for our message to result in steps toward global nuclear disarmament, and this will benefit all life on Earth. The geoengineering work will allow policymakers to make better informed decisions about appropriate and effective responses to global warming. The work on volcanic eruptions will allow better predictions of the climate response to future eruptions. The other work will allow a better understanding of how the climate system works, and how water resources will change with global warming, affecting stakeholders in many different locations.

StatusFinished
Effective start/end date4/1/103/31/15

Funding

  • National Institute of Food and Agriculture

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