Combined Impact of Climate Change and Land Qualities on Winter Wheat Yield in Central Fore-Caucasus: The Long-Term Retrospective Study

Abstract

Progressing climate change has been increasingly threatening the agricultural sector by compromising the resilience of ecosystems and endangering food security worldwide. Altering patterns of major climatic parameters require the perspectives of agricultural production to be assessed in a holistic way to understand the interactions of climatic and non-climatic factors on crop yield. However, it is difficult to distinguish the direct influence of changing temperature and precipitation on the productivity of crops while simultaneously capturing other contributing factors, such as spatial allocation of agricultural lands, economic conditions of land use, and soil fertility. Wide temporal and spatial fluctuations of climatic impacts substantially complicate the task. In the case of the 170-year retrospective analysis of the winter wheat sector in the south of Russia, this study tackles the challenge by establishing the multiplicative function to estimate crop yields as a long-term result of a combined influence of agricultural output parameters, qualities of soils, and climate variables. It is found that within the climate–land–yield triangle, linkages tighten or weaken depending on the strength of noise effects of economic and social perturbations. Still, the overall pressure of climate change on the cultivation of winter wheat has been aggravating. The inter-territory relocation of areas under crops based on the matching of soil types, precipitation, air temperature, and erodibility of lands is suggested as a climate response option. The approach can be employed as a decision support tool when developing territory-specific land management policies to cope with adverse climate impacts on the winter wheat sector.