Climate change risk assessment for land-based activities

This project sought to give land stewards a greater understanding of the most suitable crop options for their land, by providing a holistic understanding of the benefits and consequences of the options.

The vision for this research was to identify a greater range of suitable land opportunities and more diverse benefits for New Zealand. Climate change will impact on all options, and there is a need to future-proof land use decision making.

This project was a collaboration with the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, and continued from an earlier project, in which several biophysical models were used to project future changes in production.

In this new phase, the research team developed a methodology to assess the risks on future land use options due to climate change:

This project worked across several land use types, including pastoral, arable, horticultural and forestry options. The risks we considered were identified through discussions with our stakeholders.

Previous research:

Climate change & its effect on our agricultural land