Climate Change Impact on Bioclimatic Deficiency, Using MicroLEIS DSS in Ahar Soils, Iran

Regional impact studies of the future climate change effects are necessary because projectedchanges in meteorological variables differ from one region to another, and different climatesystems can react in varied ways to the same changes. in this study, the effects of climatechange on bioclimatic deficiency were compared in two cultivation methods (irrigated andrainfed) in a semi-arid region, ahar (east azarbaijan, iran). the agricultural land usesselected for evaluation were wheat (triticum aestivum), alfalfa (medicago sativa), sugar beet(beta vulgaris), potato (solanum tuberosum), and maize (zea mays). in this way, terraza modelincluded in the land evaluation decision support system, called microleis dss, was used.terraza gives a quantitative prediction of a site bioclimatic deficiency. soil morphological andanalytical data were obtained from 44 sampling points based on a grid survey. agro-climaticdata, referred to temperature and precipitation, were collected from weather stations locatedin ahar region, which benefits from more than 20 consecutive years of weather data. a futurescenario of climate change was calculated according to the intergovernmental panel onclimate change (ipcc) on regions of asia under scenario a1fi (highest future emission) for2080s. although, increasing of precipitation being available by climate change in the futurescenario, humidity index will be reduced because of high temperature. the results showed thatclimate change is likely to cause severe water stress in irrigated cultivation of alfalfa, sugarbeet, potato, and maize, the use of irrigation methods being essential to maintain agriculturalproductivity. although irrigation is indicated as very important in this regime of semi-aridagriculture, cultivation of rainfed wheat can be possible instead of the irrigated one. also, it isrevealed that climate perturbation effects on rainfed conditions are more serious than those onthe irrigated conditions in the area.