The importance and utility of incorporating agriculture and human land-use in global climate 
model simulations


Nearly half of Earth's land surface is currently devoted to agricultural production, by way of 
crop (seasonal or perennial) or pasture cover. In addition, our urban and peri-urban landuse is 
expanding, as almost half the global population has migrated from rural areas. Securing food 
production for an increasing, and increasingly urban, population must be balanced with 
evaluating and quantifying the environmental impact of land use, such that both resources and 
ecosystems are sustained into the future. The increasing resolution and complexity of global 
climate models are now enabling experiments that can test the historic and future impact of 
land-use and management. This will enable us to better understand the feedbacks and 
forcings between climate change and variability, and land-use, particularly with respect to 
large-scale agricultural land management. In this seminar, I will describe the ways in which 
agriculture and land management and use are being incorporated into various GCMs' 
simulations and I will discuss the utility of such investigations for climate impact assessments, 
model development, and for helping us to better understand the contributing factors in global 
environmental change. In house, many GISS scientists have been undertaking a variety of land 
use and cover investigations, and are working towards expanding ModelE's capability for such 
assessments. I hope to foster discussion of what developments are currently being pursued at 
GISS, and potential additional research ideas we can explore with ModelE based upon the 
advances made both in-house and among other model development groups.