Modeling Climate Change and Impacts On Crop Production

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Institute for Sustainable Economic Development
Modeling climate change and impacts on crop production

in Austria
A Dissertation
by
Franziska Strauss
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

Doctor rerum naturalium technicarum
at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Supervisor:
Univ.Prof. DI Dr. Erwin Schmid
Co-advisors:
Dr. Elena Moltchanova
Mag. Dr. Herbert Formayer
DI Dr. Franz Sinabell
Institute for Sustainable Economic Development,

BOKU, Austria
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, UC,

New Zealand
Institute of Meteorology, BOKU, Austria
Austrian Institute of Economic Research, WIFO,
Austria
Vienna, May 2012
Table of Contents
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... ii
Kurzfassung.............................................................................................................. iii
1. Introduction............................................................................................................1
1.1 Research motivation and innovation ...............................................................1
1.2 Research objectives ........................................................................................4
2. Research methodology .........................................................................................5
2.1 Statistical climate modeling for Austria until 2040 ...........................................5
2.2 Integrated impact analyses of climate change ................................................7
3. Outline of the research articles and major findings ...........................................9
3.1 Modeling climate change and biophysical impacts of crop production in
the Austrian Marchfeld region .........................................................................10
3.2 High resolution climate data for Austria in the period from 2008 to 2040
from a statistical climate change model ..........................................................10
3.3 Modeling impacts of increased drought occurrences on crop production in
Austria ............................................................................................................11
3.4 How sensitive are estimates of carbon fixation in agricultural models to
input data? ......................................................................................................12
3.5 Integrated assessment of crop management portfolios in adapting to
climate change in the Marchfeld region...........................................................12
3.6 Optimal irrigation management strategies under weather uncertainty and
risk ..................................................................................................................13
3.7 Integrated assessment of large scale poplar plantations on croplands in
Austria .............................................................................................................14
References ...............................................................................................................15
Abstract
Modeling impacts of climate change on crop production for the next three decades
requires climate change scenario data with a high degree of meteorological
consistency and spatial and temporal resolution. In the course of this cumulative
thesis, the statistical climate model ACLiReM (Austrian Climate model based on
Linear Regression Methods) has been developed to produce climate change
scenarios including daily weather data on minimum and maximum temperatures,
solar radiation, precipitation, relative humidity and wind speed for Austria at 1 km
grid resolution and the period 1975-2040. The climate change scenarios have been
statistically tested to assure physical and spatio-temporal consistencies. Developing
near future climate change scenarios by using statistical methods and observed
weather station data is seen as a valuable alternative to the well-known General
Circulation Models (GCMs) and Regional Climate Models (RCMs). Furthermore, the
statistical approach allows the modeling of extreme weather events such as
increased drought occurrences, which is also demonstrated in this thesis.
Biophysical process models like EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate)
have the potential to depict impacts on crop production of all anticipated variations in
input data (i.e. climate, topography, soils, management). Therefore, sensitivity
analyses have been performed which are important for providing valuable information
about the usefulness and appropriateness of such process models in impact studies
(e.g. for large scale applications) as well as for model inter-comparisons.
In this thesis, several economic optimization models have been developed and
applied in case study contexts. They integrate EPIC simulation data to derive optimal
crop management portfolios and investment strategies under consideration of
production risks and uncertainties both arising from future weather conditions. The
analyses of the thesis demonstrate that the developed climate change scenarios in
conjunction with EPIC and economic optimization models are adequate tools to
assess the impacts on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture, which can be
used to design effective adaptation strategies.
ii
Kurzfassung
Die Modellierung von Klimafolgenwirkungen in der Landwirtschaft in den nchsten
drei Dekaden bedarf hoch aufgelster und konsistenter Klimawandeldaten. Im
Rahmen dieser kumulativen Dissertation wurde das statistische Klimamodell
ACLiReM (Austrian Climate model based on Linear Regression Methods) entwickelt,
um
Klimawandelszenarien
mit
tglichen
Wetterdaten
zu
Minimum-
und
Maximumtemperatur, solarer Strahlung, Niederschlag, relativer Feuchtigkeit und

Windgeschwindigkeit zu generieren, welche fr sterreich auf einem 1 km
Rastergitter und in der Periode 1975-2040 verfgbar sind. Die Klimawandelszenarien
wurden auf ihre physikalische und rumlich-zeitliche Konsistenz statistisch geprft.
Der entwickelte statistische Ansatz unter Verwendung historischer Klimadaten ist
eine ntzliche Alternative zu den bekannten Generellen Zirkulationsmodellen (GCMs)
und Regionalen Klimamodellen (RCM) zur Generierung von Klimawandelszenarien
fr die nchsten zwei bis drei Dekaden. Darber hinaus erlaubt der statistische
Zugang die Modellierung von extremen Wetterereignissen (z.B. hufigeres Eintreten
von Drre), was auch in dieser Dissertation durchgefhrt wurde.
Biophysikalische Prozessmodelle wie EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated
Climate) verfgen ber das Potential, die Auswirkungen aller antizipierten
Variationen von Inputdaten (Klima, Topographie, Boden, Bewirtschaftung) auf die
Pflanzenproduktion darzustellen. Folglich wurden Sensitivittsanalysen durchgefhrt,
welche hilfreiche Informationen ber die Ntzlichkeit und Eignung solcher
Prozessmodelle fr groflchige Anwendungen sowie fr Modellvergleichsstudien
liefern.
In der vorliegenden Dissertation wurden auch unterschiedliche konomische
Optimierungsmodelle entwickelt und im Rahmen von Fallstudien (z.B. fr die Region
Marchfeld) angewendet. Sie bauen auf den Simulationsergebnissen von EPIC auf.
Mit den Optimierungsmodellen wurden Portfolios von Pflanzenproduktionssystemen
und
Investitionsstrategien
fr
Bewsserung
unter
Wetterunsicherheit
und
Produktionsrisiko erstellt. Die Analysen in dieser Dissertation zeigen, dass die

entwickelten
Klimawandelszenarien,
EPIC
und
die
konomischen
Optimierungsmodelle adquate Werkzeuge fr die Abschtzung der Auswirkungen in

klimasensiblen Sektoren wie der Landwirtschaft sind und fr die Analyse von
Adaptationsstrategien verwendet werden knnen.
iii
1. Introduction
1.1
Research motivation and innovation
Today it is nearly non-controversial that climate change associated with a global

temperature increase is proceeding. Nearly, because climate detractors exist who
may argue with a weak solar cycle and therefore with no temperature increase until
2035 (cp. Vahrenholt and Lning, 2012) or with uncertain effects of aerosols on the
climate. At Austrian scale, for instance, climate change is being observed and is
going to affect diverse economic domains in either positive or negative ways. In the
recent scientific literature, climate change impacts on agricultural production in
regions all over the world are being thoroughly investigated and widely discussed in
the scientific communities and the public (e.g. Alexandrow and Hoogenboom, 2000;
Schmid et al., 2004; Lobell et al., 2006; Lobell and Field, 2007; Tebaldi and Lobell,
2008; Balkovi et al., 2011). For instance, the Austrian Federal Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (BMLFUW) financially
supports research for the establishment of a national adaptation strategy to climate
change in different sectors including agriculture, forestry, water, tourism and
electricity. The policy document recently published by BMLFUW (2010) provides first
recommendations for adaptation measures in these sectors.
For the near future until about 2040 1 , the well-known and commonly used
climate change scenarios from General Circulation Models (GCMs) and also
Regional Climate Models (RCMs) show their weaknesses due to (i) the low climate
change signal compared to the model internal variability on decadal time scale, (ii)
the random noise, and (iii) the time-lag between changing atmospheric conditions
and climatic impacts (Christensen et al., 2007; Randall et al., 2007; Cayan et al.,
2008). Moreover, a disadvantage of GCMs and RCMs is that temperatures and solar
radiation are often independently bias-corrected, and thus a reasonable correlation
with rainfall is not always guaranteed. Also the spatial resolutions are often not high
enough to show regional variations at site scale (Tebaldi and Sans, 2008). For all
these reasons, an alternative approach has been developed to produce near future
climate change scenarios for Austria, which is based on long-term historical daily
Throughout the thesis, the time span of interest is the period 20082040, denoted as the near future, which
covers a typical climatological period (cp. definition of climate normals in a 30 year period from the World
MeteorologicalOrganization WMO).
weather data and statistical methods such as regression and bootstrapping

techniques. The statistical climate model ACLiReM (Austrian Climate model based
on Linear Regression Methods) has been developed and applied to produce a
spectrum of near future climate change scenarios for Austria, readily and publicly
available for further impact analyses (www.landnutzung.at). These climate change
scenarios are more consistent with respect to the physical interdependencies and the
spatio-temporal correlations between six weather parameters (i.e. minimum and
maximum temperatures, solar radiation, precipitation, relative humidity and wind
speed), and also represent well the local inter-annual variability and the small scale
climates in the complex topography of Austria. The near future climate change
scenarios also include deliberate assumptions on changing precipitation patterns,
because their future developments remain highly uncertain, such as (i) increases of
mean annual precipitation sums, (ii) decreases of mean annual precipitation sums,
and (iii) re-allocations in seasonal precipitation (i.e. increases in winter precipitation
and decreases in summer precipitation and vice versa). These assumed changes of
precipitation sums have been generated according to the suggestions in the literature
(IPCC, 2007; Jacob et al., 2008; Schnwiese, 2008; Gobiet et al., 2009; Eitzinger et
al., 2009; Auer et al., 2011). Furthermore, several climate change scenarios have
been developed, in which the frequency and intensity of future extreme weather
events have been manipulated to account for any possible increases of future
drought events.
The statistical approach developed in this thesis has limitations as well. One
essential limitation comes from the general assumption that the observed
temperature change continues linearly into the near future. This is only valid for the
next few decades and should not be used for any scenario development of the
second half of the century. Another limitation is that changes in the inter-annual
variability as suggested in several studies (e.g. Seneviratne et al., 2006) are not
considered. However, the magnitude of these changes is rather uncertain
(Christensen et al., 2007; Cayan et al., 2008). For the next three decades, it seems
more important to capture a realistic local inter-annual variability, which is indeed
provided by the statistical approach. However, variabilities on the decadal time scale
have not been included. Such variabilities have a magnitude of about 0.3 C for the
mean annual temperatures, and up to 10% for the mean annual precipitation sums
when comparing weather station data in Austria. This limitation can be partially
2
compensated by using ensembles of the developed climate change scenarios;

partially, because stochastic effects alone always lead to similar magnitudes for
mean annual temperatures, for example. However, deliberate assumptions for
scenario development can help to overcome limitations from neglecting annual and
decadal variations.
Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of the statistical climate change
scenarios, the second part of the thesis constitutes of various biophysical and
economic impact analyses of climate change on crop production in Austria. In
particular, the biophysical process model EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated
Climate; Williams, 1995; Izaurralde et al., 2006) has been applied in all impact
analyses. Biophysical process simulation models are well suited for this task,
because all anticipated combinations and variations of input data (i.e. climate, soil,
topography, and crop management) can be simulated to depict the potential impact
spectrum on crop production and environment, on which also economic impact
analyses are often built (i.e. economic optimization models). EPIC is able to simulate
important natural processes in agricultural land management such as photosynthesis,
evapotranspiration, runoff, erosion, mineralization, nitrification and respiration. In this
context, EPIC has been applied to analyze its sensitivity to climate change and more
specifically to increased drought occurrences by applying climate datasets from
different sources. Such analyses are of particular interest and provide information
about the usefulness and appropriateness of deterministic process models for large
scale applications as well as for model inter-comparisons. In addition, EPIC has been
applied to provide biophysical data for several economic impact analyses. Economic
optimization models are well suited to help finding optimal land use and crop
management options as well as investment strategies in the context of production
risks and uncertainties due to changing climatic conditions. The integration of
biophysical data in economic optimization models allows a better representation of
the biophysical heterogeneity and interrelationships in spatial and temporal contexts.
In the course of this thesis, optimal crop management portfolios as well as optimal
investment strategies for irrigation under climate change have been detected for the
Marchfeld region in Austria. In addition, the biophysical and economic potentials of
large scale poplar plantations for bioenergy production have been analyzed on
Austrian croplands. These case study analyses should exemplify the capability of an
integrated modeling framework for climate change impact analyses in agriculture as
3
well as for developing cost-effective adaptation strategies (i.e. management and

investment) to better cope with the adverse effects of climate change.
1.2
Research objectives
One major objective of this thesis is the development of high resolution climate
change scenarios for Austria and the near future to be readily available for impact
analyses in climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture. These near future climate
change scenarios should be more consistent in a spatial and temporal context than
those usually provided by GCMs or RCMs. In addition, they should be physically
more consistent with respect to multiple weather parameters i.e. minimum and
maximum temperatures, precipitation, solar radiation, relative humidity and wind
speed, and thus shall be directly usable for impact analyses without the need of
employing
complex
bias-correction
algorithms.
Furthermore,
the
developed
methodology should allow a better quantification of uncertainties of near future

climatic conditions as well as the modeling of extreme weather events such as
droughts or floods in Austria.
Case study analyses in crop production should provide some information about
the appropriateness and usefulness of the developed climate change scenarios for
biophysical and economic impact analyses, which is another major objective of the
thesis. Modeling climate change impacts on agriculture require high spatial and
temporal resolutions of data input and model output to cope with the biophysical and
economic heterogeneity in Austrian crop production. Therefore, an integrated
modeling framework comprising detailed geo-referenced and statistical survey data
as well as the biophysical process model EPIC and economic optimization tools is
employed to conduct integrated impact analyses in case study contexts. In particular,
the case studies consist of analyses on (i) the sensitivity of EPIC to overall climate
change and extreme weather events as well as its performance compared to another
biophysical model, (ii) the development of an optimal crop management portfolio
under climate change for the Marchfeld region, (iii) the development of an investment
strategy for irrigation systems and an optimal irrigation portfolio under precipitation
uncertainty in the Marchfeld region, and (iv) the assessment of the economic
potentials and environmental consequences of large scale poplar plantations on
Austrian croplands.
4
2. Research methodology
2.1
Statistical climate modeling for Austria until 2040
In this thesis, regression techniques and repeated bootstrapping methods

together with historical daily weather data have been used to develop high resolution
near future (2008-2040) statistical climate change scenarios for Austria. The
developed climate change scenarios are based on different readily available datasets
mainly from the period 1975-2007 provided by the Central Institute for Meteorology
and Geodynamics (ZAMG). Clusters with homogenous climates in terms of mean
annual precipitation sums and temperatures (climate clusters) have been delineated
using the KLIM dataset with its 1 km spatial grid (Auer et al., 2000). In total, 60
climate clusters have been derived for Austria, and a representative weather station
has been selected for each climate cluster. Concerning temperature, a significant
trend has been estimated for Austria using the homogenized climate dataset
HISTALP (Auer et al., 2007), which includes monthly values of temperatures and
precipitation sums over the past period 1975-2007. In contrast, the annual
precipitation sums do not show any statistically significant development over this
period. Therefore, the developed statistical climate model ACLiReM has been applied
on the quality controlled daily time series of the StartClim project (cp. Schner et al.,
2003) solely for the parameters minimum and maximum temperatures by taking into
account the linear and seasonal time dependencies such as:
Yt t m(s) sin(2mt) m(c) cos(2mt) t
(1)
m1
where Y is the climate variable (maximum temperature and minimum

temperature), and t is the calendar time in years; sines and cosines represent
seasonal variability. The random residual is defined as the difference between the
daily temperature observations and the average historical temperature trend and
follows a Gaussian distribution. The stochastic part of the statistical climate model
comes from randomly selecting a month in the past to allocate the temperature
residuals. This bootstrapping procedure has been chosen because no significant
time
dependence
has
been
observed
5
in
the
temperature
residuals
(homoscedasticity). Moreover, the procedure of keeping monthly sequences

acknowledges the fact that typical weather events persist for a few days or longer.
Concerning the temperature development, a positive trend of 1.5 C has been
derived for Austria in the period 1975-2007 and extrapolated until 2040 (cp. also
Jacob et al., 2008).
The uncertainties in precipitation are captured by the bootstrapping method,
which has been applied in conjunction with quality controlled daily time series data of
precipitation (StartClim; Schner et al., 2003) to develop several precipitation
scenarios (e.g. from similar distribution of precipitation sums compared to the past to
increases or decreases of annual precipitation sums or re-allocation of seasonal
precipitation sums). The developed climate change scenarios also include data on
daily solar radiation, relative humidity and wind speed (all three parameters from the
corresponding original weather stations) to make them broadly applicable as well as
to better meet the specific data demands of typical biophysical impact simulation
models.
Climate change scenarios with increased severe weather have also been
developed for the period 2008-2040 by bootstrapping from a Beta-distribution of the
computed daily high-resolution weather dataset covering the period 1975-2007.
Therefore, precipitation patterns have been summarized in a drought index DId,
which is the fraction of the country area with zero precipitation on any given day:
(2)
where (d) is the set of all climate clusters (60 climate clusters in Austria) dry
on day d, and Ac is the area of the climate cluster c ( corresponds to the total
area of Austria). The Beta-distribution approach can also be used to develop other
extreme weather scenarios with e.g. increased occurrences of flood events.
In all statistical climate change scenarios, the temporal and spatial correlations
of solar radiation, relative humidity and wind speed with temperature and precipitation
data are by construction similar to the historical observations. This is an important
criterion of the statistical approach compared to GCMs or RCMs, particularly for near
future analyses.
2.2
Integrated impact analyses of climate change
The statistical climate change scenarios have been used for integrated impact
analyses of climate change on Austrian crop production in different case study
contexts. In particular, the climate change scenarios from ACLiReM together with
soil, topographical and crop management data have been input to the biophysical
process model EPIC. Geo-referenced topographical and soil data (BFW, 2009) have
been processed to delineate Homogenous Response Units for Austria (HRUs; cp.
Strmer et al., 2012), necessary to apply deterministic biophysical process models at
large scale. In total, 443 HRUs have been delineated for the Austrian agricultural
area and merged with the data of the 60 climate clusters. In addition, typical crop
rotation systems have been derived with the CropRota model (Schnhart et al.,
2011b) and typical crop management systems (i.e. fertilization, irrigation and tillage
operations) are in accordance with the guidelines of good agricultural practices
(Strmer et al., 2012).
EPIC simulates important biophysical processes in agricultural land use
management such as evapotranspiration, erosion, mineralization, nitrification and
respiration. Deterministic biophysical process models need sufficient input data in
good quality to reliably simulate outcomes of natural processes. If experimental data
are available, the models can be calibrated and the predictive accuracy can be
statistically tested. These models are also used to simulate impacts of climate
change on crop production and environment at larger scales e.g. from regional to
global scales (e.g. Balkovi at al., 2011; Schnhart et al., 2011a; Schneider et al.,
2011) by merging various sources of geo-referenced, statistical, survey, and
disciplinary data. However, the calibration of models becomes infeasible and model
validation is often restricted to comparisons between simulated and statistical crop
yields as well as to sensitivity analyses such as performed in this thesis. Therefore, a
detailed sensitivity analysis has been undertaken for the Marchfeld region which
demonstrates the correlation of EPIC outputs with gradually and discretely
manipulated weather parameters (discretized sensitivity). Another biophysical impact
analysis compares output data from two biophysical process models (EPIC and
Biosphere Energy Transfer Hydrology - BETHY/DLR) simulated with different input
data considering climate, land cover and land use data.
In order to assess the profitability of different crop management systems in the

Marchfeld region, a portfolio model has been developed which applies the
Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) as a risk measure. One major advantage of the
CVaR compared to other risk measures is that it focuses on the tails of a distribution
and can therefore be applied for any distribution. The optimization problem
(maximization of expected crop production profits) has been performed under
different restrictions like different levels of risk aversion and the consideration of
additional environmental constraints (e.g. nitrate leaching and soil organic carbon
stocks which should not exceed/fall below a certain threshold). Thus, optimal crop
management portfolios under changing climatic conditions have been identified for
the Marchfeld region.
A stochastic dynamic programming approach has been developed to analyze
the probability and the optimal timing of investing into either a water-saving drip or a
sprinkler irrigation system in the Marchfeld region until 2040. Moreover, an optimal
irrigation management portfolio has been developed under consideration of different
degrees of risk aversion by using again the CVaR as a risk measure. The latter
approach allows investigating whether irrigation is part of an optimal production
portfolio and if so, which share of the production area is irrigated to minimize
production losses.
Finally, the Biomass optimization model Austria (BiomAT) has been used to
assess the economic potentials and environmental effects of large scale poplar
plantations on Austrian croplands, as short-rotation plantations seem to gain in
importance for producers of bioenergy. Biophysical properties of poplar plantations
from EPIC simulations and the corresponding gross margin annuities have been
input to BiomAT to assess the economic potentials (opportunity costs approach) as
well as environmental effects (i.e. total nitrogen emissions and topsoil organic carbon
stocks) of poplar production on croplands in Austria.
3. Outline of the research articles and major findings

All research articles presented in this thesis have been published in co
authorships. Therefore, the individual contributions are outlined, briefly. I have
initiated all first authored articles and provided an outline on the topic and methods to
conduct the analyses as well as the literature reviews and first drafts of the
manuscripts. In the course of the research process, these have been discussed,
reviewed and refined with the contributing co-authors. In particular, Herbert Formayer
has supported me in collecting most of the required climate datasets (especially
those from ZAMG; others have been available from online portals, for example).
Erwin Schmid and colleagues from the Institute for Sustainable Economic
Development have helped me in gathering the economic datasets. Erwin Schmid has
also performed the national simulations with EPIC and BiomAT. The prototype of the
statistical climate model for the Marchfeld has been developed in close collaboration
with Elena Moltchanova and Herbert Formayer. The first version of the statistical
climate model has been programmed together with Elena Moltchanova using the
statistical software package R. Supported by Herbert Formayer, I have prepared all
the datasets for the application of the statistical climate model (ACLiReM) to produce
climate clusters as well as the near future climate change scenarios for Austria. The
programming of the drought index has also been in close collaboration with Elena
Moltchanova and its impact analysis on crop production with Erwin Schmid. I have
performed most of the biophysical and economic impact analyses for the Marchfeld
region. The economic optimization models have been developed in close
collaboration with Sabine Fuss, Jana Szolgayov, Christine Heumesser, and Erwin
Schmid using GAMS (General Algebraic Modeling System). In the articles, which I
co-authored, I have provided data and simulation outputs as well as have contributed
to the analyses and manuscripts until publication.
3.1
Strauss F, Schmid E, Moltchanova E, Formayer H, Wang X. 2012.

Modeling climate change and biophysical impacts of crop production in the
Austrian
Marchfeld
region,
Climatic
Change,
111:
641-664.
DOI
10.1007/s10584-011-0171-0.
Research article 1 has been published in the journal Climatic Change. A
prototype of the statistical climate model has been developed for the Marchfeld
region. In addition, the sensitivity of selected EPIC outputs (crop yields, topsoil
organic carbon contents, and nitrate leaching) to input parameters such as minimum
and maximum temperatures, precipitation and solar radiation from different climate
dataset sources has been analyzed. The article contributes to the scientific literature
on modeling regional climate change by (i) providing an alternative statistical
approach to model climate change using historical daily weather data, (ii) testing the
sensitivity of the biophysical process model EPIC on alternative climate change
datasets, and (iii) comparing the statistical climate model outputs with GCM outputs
(i.e. scenarios from TYNDALL Centre for Climate Change Research: TYN SC 2.0, cp.
Mitchell et al., 2004). For the latter contribution, the emissions scenarios A1FI and B1
of the Parallel Climate Model (PCM; one of the GCMs) have been consulted at the
grid point nearest to the Marchfeld region. A trivial form of statistical downscaling has
been applied to make the climate change data comparable.
3.2
Strauss F, Formayer H, Schmid E. 2012. High resolution climate data for

Austria in the period from 2008 to 2040 from a statistical climate change
model, International Journal of Climatology, DOI: 10.1002/joc.3434.
Research article 2 has been published in the International Journal of

Climatology. The main research objective of this article has been the development of
alternative climate change scenarios compared to the most often used climate
change projections of GCMs and RCMs, which are afflicted by rather important
limitations, predominantly for the next few decades. It builds on the prototype of the
statistical climate model presented in research article 1. This prototype has been
extended to the Austrian scale (ACLiReM) and applied to produce a spectrum of
climate change scenarios until 2040. This research article thus contributes to the
10
literature on producing high resolution climate change scenario data, which are
directly usable for impact analyses and publicly available (www.landnutzung.at). The
strength of this dataset is a proper consideration of the physical interdependencies
as well as the spatio-temporal correlations between the six weather parameters used
(minimum and maximum temperatures, solar radiation, precipitation, relative humidity
and wind speed). Moreover, it represents well the local inter-annual variability and the
small scale climates in the complex topography of Austria. It is especially valuable for
different impact studies at regional to national levels.
3.3
Strauss F, Moltchanova E, Schmid E. 2012. Modeling impacts of

increased drought occurrences on crop production in Austria, Climatic
Change, submitted.
Research article 3 has been submitted to the journal Climatic Change. Based
on the climate change dataset developed in research article 2, hypothetical drought
scenarios have been generated for Austria. Therefore, a drought index has been
defined by using the empirical Beta-distribution as initial condition, which represents
the fraction of the country area with zero precipitation on any given day. Moreover,
the impacts of increased drought occurrences on crop yields and evapotranspiration
rates have been assessed with EPIC at national scale. The article thus contributes to
the literature in modeling increased drought occurrences at national scale as well as
the impacts on crop production. Only few articles in the scientific literature have
investigated the interrelations between increased drought occurrences and crop
production, yet. The impact analysis of increased drought occurrences on Austrian
crop production indicate that - for the areas with the past precipitation below the
annual average of ~850 mm - already little increases in dryness will result in
significantly lower crop yields (0.88% decrease in crop yield per 1% decrease in
precipitation).
11
3.4
Tum M, Strauss F, McCallum I, Gnther K, Schmid E. 2012. How sensitive

are estimates of carbon fixation in agricultural models to input data?
Carbon Balance and Management, 7:3, DOI:10.1186/1750-0680-7-3.
In research article 4, the sensitivities of two biophysical process models, EPIC

and BETHY/DLR, have been assessed by comparing their simulation outputs using
various types of input data (climate, land cover and land use) for the Marchfeld
region. In particular, the developed statistical climate change dataset as well as
climate data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
(ECMWF) have been used in combination with land cover and land use data
(GLC2000 and the CORINE 2000 products). The article contributes to the literature in
presenting a detailed model inter-comparison study on the sensitivity of alternative
input data sources. Both biophysical models respond similarly to changes in input
data, albeit with a different magnitude. For single years, variabilities of up to 36% with
BETHY/DLR and of up to 39% with EPIC can occur in the net primary productivity
(NPP) under consideration of alternative input data. Moreover, the accuracy of land
cover and land use information has been investigated: GLC2000 land cover
classification overestimates the agricultural area of the Marchfeld region by 24%,
whereas the CORINE 2000 dataset overestimates land cover classification by only
7%. For case study analyses, the choice for land cover datasets providing more
regional contexts is thus recommended.
3.5
Strauss F, Fuss S, Szolgayov J, Schmid E. 2011. Integrated assessment

of crop management portfolios in adapting to climate change in the
Marchfeld
region,
Jahrbuch
der
sterreichischen
Gesellschaft
fr
Agrarkonomie, Band 19(2): 11-20.

The impact of production risks and risk aversion on crop choices is a major
research question in agricultural economics. Research article 5 therefore contributes
to the literature in applying a portfolio optimization approach (based, for example, on
the Conditional Value at Risk - CVaR) to analyze the impact of climate change on
crop production risks and consequently on the choices of crops and crop
management. The source of risk comes from the developed stochastic climate
12
change scenarios. Inputs to the portfolio models are computed profit distributions
which differ among crops, crop managements and climate change scenarios. The
standard diversification effect can be shown such that the more risk averse a farmer,
the more diversification occurs. Another result is that minimum tillage always appears
in the optimal portfolios, however, with different management alternatives with
respect to straw harvesting and fertilization. In contrast, irrigation is not part of the
optimal portfolio, as the increasing revenues through higher crop yields cannot
compensate the higher production costs. However, the optimal portfolio results
strongly depend on the assumptions made with respect to irrigation management (i.e.
fixed irrigation amounts are taken into account) and the calculation of production
costs (e.g. level of water price in case of irrigation).
3.6
Strauss F, Heumesser C, Fuss S, Szolgayov J, Schmid E. 2011. Optimal

irrigation management strategies under weather uncertainty and risk,
Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Gesellschaft fr Agrarkonomie, Band
20(2): 45-54.
Research article 6 contributes to the literature in assessing optimal irrigation

investment strategies considering weather uncertainty with two different model
approaches, the stochastic dynamic programming approach and the portfolio
optimization based again on CVaR as a risk measure. The static portfolio
optimization approach allows investigating whether irrigation is part of an optimal
production portfolio and if so, which share of the production area is irrigated to
minimize production losses. Optimal irrigation management portfolios have been
developed with respect to different degrees of risk aversion. On the other hand, the
stochastic dynamic programming approach examines the probability and the optimal
timing of investing in a water-efficient drip or a less water-efficient sprinkler irrigation
system until 2040. The stochastic dynamic programming approach shows a zero
probability for drip irrigation investment; the portfolio model also shows that drip
irrigation is never part of an optimal management portfolio under both risk neutrality
and risk aversion. However, sprinkler irrigation has a positive probability of being
adopted predominantly for the production of sugar beets and carrots. Future research
should be directed towards policy measures, e.g. implementation of water prices or
13
equipment subsidies which can increase the probability of adopting water-saving drip
irrigation systems (Heumesser et al., 2012).
3.7 Asamer V, Strmer B, Strauss F, Schmid E. 2011. Integrated assessment

of large scale poplar plantations on croplands in Austria, Jahrbuch der
sterreichischen Gesellschaft fr Agrarkonomie, Band 19(2): 41-50.
Federal state governments and producers of bioenergy are planning a future
expansion of areas with short-rotation plantations. Research article 7 contributes to
the literature in assessing the economic potentials and environmental effects of large
scale poplar plantations on Austrian croplands in an integrative manner using the
models ACLiReM, EPIC and BiomAT. The latter allows determining the economic
potentials of biomass production on Austrian croplands in a spatially explicit way by
maximizing the gross margin annuities of agricultural land use under consideration of
available land, quality of location and respective crop rotations. The model results
show that the highest gross margin annuities are achieved in the south-eastern parts
of the country, however, the marginal opportunity costs would also be high compared
to other regions due to intensive livestock production. Thus, the lowest marginal
opportunity costs have been computed in the foothills of the Alps and in the north
eastern parts of Austria. Moreover, large scale poplar plantations would significantly
reduce total nitrogen emissions but only marginally increase topsoil organic carbon
stocks.
14
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18
Both Research article 1 and Research article 2 are available at the respective
Journals webpage
Research article 3 is under review
Research article 4:
Tum M, Strauss F, McCallum I, Gnther K, Schmid E. 2012. How sensitive are
estimates of carbon fixation in agricultural models to input data? Carbon Balance and
Management, 7:3, DOI:10.1186/1750-0680-7-3.
Tum et al. Carbon Balance and Management 2012, 7:3

http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/7/1/3
RESEARCH
Open Access
How sensitive are estimates of carbon fixation in

agricultural models to input data?
Markus Tum1,3*, Franziska Strauss2, Ian McCallum3, Kurt Gnther1 and Erwin Schmid2
Abstract
Background: Process based vegetation models are central to understand the hydrological and carbon cycle. To
achieve useful results at regional to global scales, such models require various input data from a wide range of
earth observations. Since the geographical extent of these datasets varies from local to global scale, data quality
and validity is of major interest when they are chosen for use. It is important to assess the effect of different input
datasets in terms of quality to model outputs. In this article, we reflect on both: the uncertainty in input data and
the reliability of model results. For our case study analysis we selected the Marchfeld region in Austria. We used
independent meteorological datasets from the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics and the
European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Land cover / land use information was taken
from the GLC2000 and the CORINE 2000 products.
Results: For our case study analysis we selected two different process based models: the Environmental Policy
Integrated Climate (EPIC) and the Biosphere Energy Transfer Hydrology (BETHY/DLR) model. Both process models
show a congruent pattern to changes in input data. The annual variability of NPP reaches 36% for BETHY/DLR and
39% for EPIC when changing major input datasets. However, EPIC is less sensitive to meteorological input data
than BETHY/DLR. The ECMWF maximum temperatures show a systematic pattern. Temperatures above 20C are
overestimated, whereas temperatures below 20C are underestimated, resulting in an overall underestimation of
NPP in both models. Besides, BETHY/DLR is sensitive to the choice and accuracy of the land cover product.
Discussion: This study shows that the impact of input data uncertainty on modelling results need to be assessed:
whenever the models are applied under new conditions, local data should be used for both input and result
comparison.
Keywords: agricultural models, net primary productivity, EPIC, BETHY/DLR, land cover, weather
Background
Modelling the net carbon uptake by vegetation (Net Pri
mary Productivity, NPP) and estimating the yields of
agricultural plants have become important tools to
study the mechanisms of carbon exchange between the
atmosphere and vegetation, as well as issues of food
security. Different approaches are currently tracked
which can be grouped to their approaches how photo
synthesis is modelled.
Models describing the chemical, physical and plant
physiological processes of plant development and the
* Correspondence: markus.tum@dlr.de
1
Deutsches Zentrum fr Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Deutsches
Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling,
Germany
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
interaction of plants with the atmosphere can be applied

to simulate the rate of carbon dioxide uptake of the
plant through photosynthesis (called Gross Primary Pro
ductivity, GPP). These models follow the concept of [1]
and [2] to simulate the process of photosynthesis. More
over, carbon uptake of well-watered and fertilized
annual plants is linearly related to the amount of
absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (PAR),
which can be derived from satellite data (i.e. the fraction
of PAR which is absorbed by the canopy; cp. [3] or cal
culated by the accumulation of dry matter.
NPP is defined as the difference between GPP and
autotrophic respiration. Therefore, it is important to
estimate the autotrophic respiration of plants following
the determination of GPP. Autotrophic respiration is
defined as the oxidation of organic compounds found in
2012 Tum et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

roots, stems and leaves, to CO2 or water. In the litera

ture, different approaches to estimate autotrophic
respiration are discussed, taking into account the actual
biomass or GPP (e.g. [4-6]). When the Light Use Effi
ciency (LUE) approach is integrated in a coupled soil
plant - atmosphere model as in the EPIC (Environment
Policy Integrated Climate) model, daily estimates of eva
potranspiration and carbon assimilation fluxes can be
obtained [7].
In contrast to these models, more sophisticated
approaches are in use and under development. These
models track photosynthesis on the molecule level. They
take into account the interaction between plants, atmo
sphere and soil by simulating the uptake and release of
carbon by plants and soil in a physically consistent way
including conservation of energy and momentum.
In the literature one can find descriptions of estab
lished vegetation models for use on different scales
[8-11]. Each of these models is driven by meteorological
input data and parameterized for global use with special
focus on the long-term competition between the plant
functional types when natural disturbance and succes
sion driven by light competition occur. Models with a
spatial resolution of kilometres and a time horizon of
some years as e.g. the soil-vegetation-atmosphere-trans
fer (SVAT) model BETHY/DLR (Biosphere Energy
Transfer Hydrology Model) [12] which can be used for
regional assessments of NPP or biomass development.
During the last decades, the use of both modelling
approaches was often met with resistance, mainly
because of the need of calibration, validation and deter
mination of the level of uncertainty (e.g.: [13-15]).
Furthermore for many users, i.e. policy makers, it is dif
ficult to judge whether the model outputs are within
acceptable levels of uncertainty or not, mainly due to
their limited background in model development [16].
However, in this context it is of importance to the pol
icy maker to understand the validity of the model results
and their associated uncertainties.
Since empirical research traditionally advances in its
data accuracy and validity - in contrast - process-based
models do not always provide comparable outputs, it is
difficult to judge on the quality of modelled data, espe
cially with the traditional criteria for assessing scientific
outcomes [17]. However, regardless of the datas source,
there will always be some uncertainty associated with it.
To address these issues, we have assessed the variabil
ity of the soil-vegetation-atmosphere-transfer model
BETHY/DLR [12] and the bio-physical process model
EPIC [7] on three different meteorological input datasets
and two land cover maps. Since the two models were
designed for different specific purposes, we do not
intend to discuss advantages or disadvantages but place
special attention on the investigation of model
Page 2 of 13
sensitivity to the spatial resolution of the input datasets.

The Austrian Marchfeld region has been chosen as case
study analysis because many datasets (Table 1) are read
ily available. The period of investigation is 2000 to 2003.
It is important to note that this study is not a classical
sensitivity analysis for assessing systematically the
responses of models to changes in input data and model
parameters (e.g. [18-21]), but a model variability
analysis.
Methods
Biophysical process models
EPIC is a comprehensive model under continuous devel

opment since 1981, capable of simulating many agricul
tural processes that occur as a result of climate forcing,
landscape characteristics, soil conditions and crop man
agement schemes [7,22,23]. Biophysical processes simu
lated with EPIC include among others plant and crop
growth, hydrology, wind and water erosion, and nutrient
cycling. These processes are simulated with daily time
steps or smaller. EPIC contains algorithms that allow for a
complete description of the hydrological balance at the
small watershed scale (up to 100 ha) including snowmelt,
surface runoff, infiltration, soil water content, percolation,
lateral flow, water table dynamics, and evapotranspiration.
Daily weather can be endogenously generated for precipi
tation, temperature, solar radiation, wind speed, and rela
tive humidity or it can be input exogenously.
EPIC uses the concept of radiation-use efficiency by
which a fraction of daily photosynthetically active radia
tion is intercepted by the plant canopy and converted
into plant biomass. The leaf area index is simulated as a
function of heat units, crop stress and development
stages. Daily gains in plant biomass are affected by
vapor pressure deficits and atmospheric CO2 concentra
tion [24]. Crop yield is simulated using the harvest
index which is affected by the heat unit factor and
includes the amount of the crop removed from the field
as well as the above-ground biomass. Stress indices for
water, temperature, nitrogen, phosphorus and aeration
are calculated daily using the value of the most severe
of these stresses to reduce potential plant growth and
crop yield. Similarly, stress factors for soil strength, tem
perature, and aluminum toxicity are used to adjust
potential root growth [25].
The soil water balance depending on the potential
water use, the root zone depth and the water use distri
bution parameter is applied in a general water use func
tion where any water deficit can be overcome if a layer
that is encountered has adequate water storage. The
potential water use is reduced when the soil water sto
rage is less than 25% of plant-available soil water by
using dependencies on the soil water contents at field
capacity and wilting point [7].

Page 3 of 13
Table 1 Meteorological, land cover, and other data.

Datatype
Period used
Resolution of
space and time
Parameters used
Characteristics
References
Meteorology 2000-2003
weather stations;
daily
Precipitation;
Minimum
temperature;
Maximum
temperature;
Wind Speed;
Radiation;
Relative Humidity
Measured time series
Central Institute for Meteorology and

Geodynamics (ZAMG)
1 km2 grid; daily
Precipitation;
Minimum
temperature;
Maximum
temperature;
Wind Speed;
Radiation;
Relative Humidity
Reallocated time series (from

now on ZAMG reallocated)
[32]
0.25; up to 4
times a day
Vegetation
Indices
2000-2003
1 km2 grid; 36
time steps per
year
Precipitation;
Time series of model re-analysis European Centre for Medium-Range
Minimum
(ERA-40)
Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)
temperature;
Maximum
temperature;
Wind Speed;
Cloud cover;
Soil Water Content
Leaf Area Index
Global coverage
Ple dObservation des Surfaces
(LAI)
continentales par TELdtection
(POSTEL)
Landcover
2000
1 km2 grid, year

2000
Land cover / land

use information;
22 classes
Global coverage (GLC2000)
[35,36]
Landcover
2000
1 ha grid, year
2000
Land cover / land

use information;
44 classes
European coverage (CORINE

2000)
[37]
Census
1999 Agrar
struktur
erhebung
Marchfeld sub
regions, year 1999
Agricultural land
use information;
Main soil type
distribution
Land use data of farms

aggregated to municipalities
[30,42]
BETHY/DLR belongs to the family of SVAT models,

which track the transformation of atmospheric carbon
dioxide into energy storing sugars, a process known as
photosynthesis. BETHY/DLR is based on the Jena
Scheme of Atmosphere Biosphere Coupling in Hamburg
(JSBACH) by [4] and was modified by [12]. The
JSBACH model was originally considered for global
usage and computes the biosphere-atmosphere exchange
within the Global Circulation Model ECHAM5 (Eur
opean Centre Hamburg). BETHY/DLR as well as
JSBACH use the combined approach to integrate photo
synthesis [26,27], which means that the enzyme kinetics
are parameterized on the leaf level. In this context, C3
and C4 plants are distinguished because of significant
differences in the way of their carbon-fixation: C4 plants
(e.g. corn and sugar cane) are able to fix more atmo
spheric carbon dioxide at high temperatures than C3
plants (e.g. wheat and barley). Thus, the photosynthesis
of C3 plants is saturated at higher temperatures. In a
second step, the rate of photosynthesis is extrapolated
from leaf to canopy level by taking into account both,

the canopy structure as well as the interaction of the
plant between soil, atmosphere and vegetation. The
two-flux scheme of [28] which includes three canopy
layers, is used to approximate the radiation absorption
in the canopy. Evapotranspiration, stomatal conductance
and the soil water balance is included in the model for
mulation. To compute NPP on an annual basis snow is
included in the water budget. Water stress is considered
by calculating the demand for evapotranspiration using
the approach of [2] limited by the criteria of [29]. Here
it is assumed, that evapotranspiration can not be higher
than a certain soil water supply via roots. Autotrophic
respiration is evaluated as the sum of maintenance and
growth respiration. The plant specific dark respiration
determines the maintenance respiration, while growth
respiration is assumed to be proportional to the differ
ence between GPP and maintenance respiration. The
main outputs of BETHY/DLR are given by time series
of GPP, NPP, evapotranspiration, and of soil water

Page 4 of 13
content in daily steps with the spatial resolution of the

respective land cover classification. A more detailed
model description can be found in [12].
The general characteristics as e.g. main outputs and
the general formulation to compute NPP of the two
models BETHY/DLR and EPIC are presented in table 2.
Framework of Case Study Analysis
The Austrian Marchfeld region serves as case study area

to assess the variability of the two biophysical process
models on alternative input datasets. The EPIC model
has already been applied and validated here [30], and
the data necessary for our study is readily available (see
table 1). The Marchfeld region is located in Lower Aus
tria, part of the Vienna Basin, and forms with around
100,000 ha one of the largest plains in Austria. Around
75% of the area is used for agricultural production. The
natural boundaries are to the East the river March (the
Austrian border to Slovakia), to the North the hills of
the Weinviertel, to the West the mountain range of
Bisamberg and the city of Vienna, and to the South the
river Danube. For locating the region a map is presented
in Figure 1.
Since land use practices are not homogenously distrib
uted in this area, five sub-regions have been identified
using the cluster analysis methods [31]. Each sub-region
has an area of in between 85 km2 and 250 km2 . The
urban land cover as well as forest and shrub lands have
not been taken into account in the variability analysis.
Five typical soils have been selected with respect to
majority criteria for the agricultural land cover (four dif
ferent Chernozems and one black earth; [30]).
The biophysical process models have been applied
with different meteorological inputs (table 1) from the
period 2000 to 2003. We have used meteorological
observations from weather stations of the Central Insti
tute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in the
Marchfeld region, reallocated meteorological data from
weather stations across Austria of ZAMG [32], and
meteorological data from the European Centre for Med
ium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).
Figure 1 Map of the study area. The case study area Marchfeld
with the four sub-regions (upper figure), with underlying CORINE
land cover dataset 2000. Green pixels represent forest, red and
violet pixels urban areas, brown pixels shrub land, and yellow pixels
agricultural areas. The lower figure highlights the location of the
Marchfeld region. The red square represents the map extract of the
upper figure.
The meteorological observations (ZAMG) are from

the weather station in Gross Enzersdorf, and provide
daily values of six weather parameters including mini
mum and maximum temperatures, relative humidity,
wind speed precipitation and solar radiation.
Table 2 General characteristics of the biophysical process models EPIC and BETHY/DLR.
BETHY/DLR
EPIC
Abbreviation
Biosphere Energy Transfer Hydrology

Model
Environmental Policy Integrated Climate
References
[4,12]
[7,22,23]
Model type
SVAT model
crop model
Time step
Daily
Up to < 1 day
Main simulation processes
GPP, NPP, NEP, evapotranspiration, soil

water content
plant and crop growth, heat and water balance, wind and water
erosion, nutrient cycling
General formulation to
compute NPP
NPP = GPP - autotrophic respiration
NPP = (yield+straw+roots)- (water content+non carbon fraction)

[32] developed a reallocated meteorological dataset

comprising climate data for Austria and the period from
1975 to 2007 with temporal and spatial resolutions of
one day and 1 km2 . In addition climate change scenar
ios have been developed for the period 2008 to 2040.
They processed daily data from 34 weather stations of
ZAMG to 60 spatial climate clusters with homogeneous
climates relating to mean annual precipitation sums and
mean annual temperatures from the period 1961-1990.
Based on these precipitation and temperature classes
four climate clusters describe the climate in the March
feld region (cluster 1: mean annual precipitation sums
smaller than 500 mm and mean annual temperatures
between 8.5C and 9.5C; cluster 2: mean annual precipi
tation sums smaller than 500 mm and mean annual
temperatures between 9.5C and 10.5C; cluster 3: mean
annual precipitation sums between 500 mm and 600
mm and mean annual temperatures between 8.5C and
9.5C; cluster 4: mean annual precipitation sums
between 500 mm and 600 mm and mean annual tem
peratures between 9.5C and 10.5C). For each homoge
nous climate cluster, [32] performed regression model
analyses primarily to compute a set of daily climate data
for the time period 2008 to 2040. This method has also
been applied for the time period 1975 to 2007 to pro
vide a consistent dataset. The integral parts of the
regression model are i) the consideration (extrapolation
in the period 2008 to 2040, respectively) of the observed
linear temperature trend from 1975 to 2007 derived
from a homogenized dataset, and ii) the repeated boot
strapping of temperature residuals and of observations
for solar radiation, precipitation, relative humidity, and
wind speed to ensure consistent spatial and temporal
correlations. We have also used these reallocated data
for the period 2000 to 2003 in our variability analysis.
The third dataset is derived from ECMWF data and
has a temporal resolution of up to four times a day and
a spatial resolution of 0.25 0.25. It includes model
analysis data of 2 m air temperature, cloud cover, soil
water content of the four upper layers and wind speed
at 10 m above ground. From this dataset the daily
mean, as well as minimum and maximum temperatures
and the daily mean of cloud cover in all three strata
(high, medium, low) are used. The daily temperature
values are scaled with the difference between ECMWF
reference height and the global ETOP05 (Earth Topo
graphy and Ocean Bathymetry Database) 5-minute
gridded elevation data by using the temperature gradient
of the U.S. Standard Atmosphere (-0.65 K per 100 m) in
order to downscale the ECMWF temperature data to
km2 resolution. Precipitation values are derived twice a
day from the ECMWF re-analysis project (ERA-40).
PAR is not used directly from the corresponding
ECMWF product data as it is only available as forecast
Page 5 of 13
data and therefore rather uncertain. Thus, daily PAR is

determined from global radiation which is computed
following the approach of [33] taking into account the
geographical coordinates of the day, and using a trans
mission, which depends on the degree of cloudiness.
The degree of cloudiness is calculated as a weighted
sum of each cloud strata for each day, and the global
radiation is calculated for each location in the time step
of one hour. The advantage of this approach is the use
of analysis data of cloud coverage to compute PAR data
which leads to more exact results than directly using the
PAR forecast data [12].
Hence the BETHY/DLR model needs an initial soil
water content, the ECMWF soil water dataset is used
only for the transient phase of the model. Afterwards
the model simulates the soil water content indepen
dently, according to the hydrological boundary condi
tions. Investigations of [12] have shown that in most
cases sufficient hydrological boundary conditions are
available after a transient phase of about one year.
In addition to the meteorological data, the BETHY/
DLR model is driven by two sets of remote sensing data.
Detailed and homogenous land cover / land use infor
mation are used to get information about the vegetation
types the model is run for. Vegetation is represented by
time series of the Leaf Area Index (LAI). Time series of
LAI were used from the Carbon cycle and Change in
Land Observational Products from an Ensemble of
Satellites (CYCLOPES) 10 day composite datasets of
POSTEL (Pole dObservation des Surfaces continentales
par TELedetection), which have a spatial resolution of 1
km 1 km. For each of the grid cells, time series analy
sis has been applied in order to eliminate data gaps and
outliers. In the framework of this study the harmonic
analysis has been used. The method of the harmonic
analysis is based on the method of superposition such as
the Fourier transformation. This method ([34]) is used
to process LAI time series at the German Remote Sen
sing Data Center.
The CYCLOPES dataset additionally contains informa
tion of land cover and land use and is available as
GLC2000 (valid for the year 2000). The Land Cover
Classification System of the Food and Agriculture Orga
nization of the United Nations has been used to derive
land cover classes of GLC2000 resulting in 22 different
land cover classes [35,36].
A translation of the GLC2000 vegetation classes had
to be performed in order to use the GLC2000 land use /
land cover classification to model NPP with BETHY/
DLR. The actual model setup of BETHY/DLR includes
33 inherent vegetation classes which can be regarded as
vegetation types. Each vegetation type is linked with bio
chemical parameters as i.e. the maximum electron trans
port rate and the maximum carboxylation rate, and

other vegetation specific parameters as maximum height

and rooting depth. These parameters describe the
mechanism of photosynthesis of vegetation. In this
study only the GLC2000 class 16 Cultivated and mana
ged areas has been used and translated to the BETHY/
DLR vegetation type arable land as no further detailed
information about the land use (e.g. crop rotation) is
available from the GLC2000.
In addition to the GLC2000 dataset the Coordinated
Information on the European Environment (CORINE)
2000 land cover / land use classification has been used,
to validate the GLC2000 dataset. The CORINE 2000
data was derived from LANDSAT satellite images and is
also available for the year 2000 [37]. The CORINE 2000
is available as raster datasets in spatial resolutions of
100 m 100 m, 250 m 250 m and 1 km 1 km for
32 European countries, including Austria. For this study
the dataset with resolution 100 m 100 m has been
used. The CORINE 2000 provides information about 44
vegetation classes which had also to be translated to
BETHY/DLR vegetation types. We assumed that only
the CORINE 2000 class Non-irrigated arable land con
tains the needed information about agricultural land,
since all other classes which are available for the March
feld region report different land use (e.g. forests and
urban areas). The CORINE 2000 class Non-irrigated
arable land is then translated to the BETHY/DLR class
arable land.
From Crop Yield to NPP
The crop yields of EPIC for the thirteen crops in the

Marchfeld region have been converted to NPP values
(table 2) for comparison with the BETHY/DLR outputs,
which are given as time series of NPP. For this purpose,
conversion factors of the relation between yield and
straw as well as the above- and below- ground biomass
are used. Empirical conversion factors about the rela
tions between crop yield and straw yield can be found
in e.g. [38,39]. In a first step, the above-ground biomass
is computed for each crop using these empirical conver
sion factors. In a second step the below-ground biomass
is computed with the use of conversion factors about
the ratio of above- to below- ground biomass which are
described in [40]. These conversion factors which ori
ginally have been derived for crops in Canada are
assumed to be valid for the area of interest as well, as it
already was proposed by [41]. After calculating the bio
mass of the whole plant, the remaining water content
and the non carbon content have to be subtracted, fol
lowing crop specific values, which are also reported in e.
g. [38]. A detailed description of the approach and the
used factors can be found in [41].
In order to compare the now available NPP per crop
and sub-regions of EPIC with the BETHY/DLR results,
Page 6 of 13
statistical data about the land use of each of the four

sub-regions is used to aggregate the NPP of EPIC.
These statistical data provided by [30] and [42] give
detailed information about the distribution of agricul
tural area over the thirteen main crops as well as the
distribution of the five main soils being representative
for the Marchfeld region. The results of BETHY/DLR
have been aggregated to annual sums per sub-region
with a Geographic Information System (GIS) tool, taking
into account the equi-rectangular projection (latitude
longitude, WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984)) of
the data.
Results and discussion

The variability analysis consists of seven model setups to
compare model response to different input datasets.
Three model simulations with the EPIC model have
been performed and four with the BETHY/DLR model.
The model setups are presented in table 3.
The EPIC model requires homogeneity with respect to
data input (i.e. soil, topography, weather, crop manage
ment) such that the model has been applied for all com
binations of climate, soil, and crop management,
separately. Thus, the variability analysis has been con
ducted mainly for the meteorological datasets. In total
60 different model runs have been performed with EPIC
for each crop. In contrast, the BETHY/DLR model is
driven with the two different land cover classifications
as well as the three different meteorological input data
sets. For the Marchfeld region the FAO soil map of the
world, which is used as input data for BETHY/DLR,
reports one major soil type (Haplic Chermozem) which
occupies 89% of the area and four additional soil types
for the rest of the area. The EPIC model setup EPIC(1)
is interpreted as reference, as it represents the already
validated model setup [30].
In Figure 2, all model results fare compared to the
EPIC(1) results (table 3). The values of NPP are given in
kilotonnes carbon per sub-region and year.
Depending on the model setup, the NPP results of
BETHY/DLR show a variability of overestimations of up
Table 3 Model setups for the variability analysis

Model
Meteorological
input
Land cover
classification
Short
Name
BETHY/
DLR
ZAMG
CORINE 2000
BETHY(1)
ZAMG reallocated
CORINE 2000
BETHY(2)
ECMWF
CORINE 2000
BETHY(3)
ECMWF
GLC2000
BETHY(4)
ZAMG
EPIC(1)
ZAMG reallocated
EPIC(2)
ECMWF
EPIC(3)
EPIC

Page 7 of 13
Figure 2 Comparison of the model results. Comparison of the model results (NPP) of BETHY/DLR and EPIC for the four Marchfeld sub-regions
and the period 2000 to 2003. The nomenclature follows the scheme of table 3. Circles represent sub-region 1, triangles sub-region 2, crosses
sub-region 3 and diamonds sub-region 4.
to 32% and underestimations of up to 12%, linked with

coefficients of determination between 0.94 and 0.63,
respectively. The highest overestimation of NPP (32%) is
modelled when using the GLC2000 and meteorological

input data from ECMWF (Figure 2D). Figure 2D repre
sents the results of both models with the typical setup

which was used in previous investigations (default

setup). This overestimation is combined with a high
coefficient of determination of about 0.94. When chan
ging the land cover classification from GLC2000 to
CORINE 2000 (while the meteorological input remains
unchanged) an underestimation of about 12% has been
found (Figure 2C). From Figure 2C it is evident that
only 4 BETHY/DLR results determine the underestima
tion and thus the coefficient of determination of about
0.77. These four data points are all representative for
sub-region 4, whereas the rest is close to the 45 line.
Using measured meteorological data from ZAMG
results in an overestimation of NPP of about 11% (Fig
ure 2A), which is combined with the highest variability
within the sub-regions and years for all four model set
ups of BETHY/DLR. Nevertheless a high coefficient of
determination of about 0.68 is achieved. When using
the reallocated ZAMG data of [32] for BETHY/DLR
combined with CORINE as land cover an overestima
tion of the modelled NPP of about 15% (Figure 2B) has
been found. A strong correlation of the simulation years
is observed, which indicates homogeneity in the meteor
ological data.
The comparison between EPIC results with different
weather input reveals that the ECMWF data affects the
EPIC model to underestimate NPP by 8% (Figure 2F).
The use of the reallocated meteorological dataset (Figure
2E) results in a little underestimation, linked with the
highest coefficient of determination (0.97). Figure 2E
demonstrates that EPIC is not very sensitive to mea
sured or homogenized meteorological input data just in
contrast to BETHY/DLR which can be seen in Figure
2A and 2B. Measured meteorological data during the
four years result in a high variability of the annual NPP
of sub-regions 1 and 4 while the reallocated meteorolo
gical data cluster the annual NPP of all sub-regions
resulting in low variability for all sub-regions.
Figure 2D and figure2F show that the EPIC model as
well as the BETHY/DLR model react in a similar way
when alternating between ECMWF and ZAMG data.
The BETHY/DLR model simulates 23% more NPP
when using the ZAMG data, and the EPIC model simu
lates around 7% more NPP when using the ZAMG data.
A reason for investigating the influence of different
land cover classifications (GLC2000 versus CORINE
2000) is the higher spatial resolution of CORINE 2000.
It is expected that CORINE 2000 represents the small
scale land use structure of the Marchfeld region better
than the GLC2000 classification. In Figure 3 the agricul
tural areas reported in the statistical source [30,42], the
GLC2000 and CORINE 2000 are presented for all four
Marchfeld sub-regions.
The agricultural areas presented in GLC2000 and
CORINE 2000 have been computed using GIS tools. As
Page 8 of 13
Figure 3 Validation of Land cover land use products.

Comparison of agricultural areas described by statistical sources
[30,42], GLC2000 and CORINE 2000 in km2 for the four sub-regions
of the Marchfeld region.
shown in Figure 3, the GLC2000 considerably overesti

mates the agricultural areas (sub-regions one, three and
four) by 25% to 57% compared to the statistical infor
mation. On the other hand, CORINE 2000 slightly over
(17%) or underestimates (6%) the agricultural areas
compared to the statistical sources. However, approxi
mately the same agricultural area is found for sub
region two for each land cover classification. For all
sub-regions of the Marchfeld region the statistical data
report an agricultural area of around 670 km 2 ,
GLC2000 of 881 km2 , and CORINE 2000 of 718 km2 .
As the difference in agricultural area between CORINE
2000 and the statistical data is smaller than the differ
ence between GLC2000 and the statistical data, we con
clude that the CORINE 2000 land cover represents the
real situation more precisely than GLC2000. The differ
ences of the results described in Figure 2D and 2C
showing an NPP decrease when changing from
GLC2000 to CORINE 2000 can thus be explained by
the fact that the BETHY/DLR model was driven for a
smaller agricultural area.
To proof this, the results for BETHY(3) and BETHY(4)
are presented in Figure 4 as a linear correlation. For both
model setups meteorology was fix (ECMWF), but the
land cover classification was changed. With this direct
comparison it becomes clear that the reason for the
highly different model results presented in Figure 2C and
2D lays in the uncertainty in the two land covers.
When comparing the ECMWF data with the mea
sured ZAMG data it is obvious that the ECMWF data
underestimates the maximum and minimum tempera
tures (see Figure 5). The comparison of daily weather
measurements is conducted for two of the 34 ZAMG

Figure 4 Comparison of the BETHY/DLR model response to

different land cover / land use products. Comparison of the
model results (NPP) of the BETHY/DLR runs BETHY(3) and BETHY(4)
for the four Marchfeld sub-regions and the period 2000 to 2003.
The nomenclature follows the scheme of table 3. Circles represent
sub-region 1, triangles sub-region 2, crosses sub-region 3 and
diamonds sub-region 4.
weather stations which are situated closest to the

Marchfeld (Schwechat and Gross Enzersdorf) and for
the time period 2000 to 2003.
For both stations the maximum temperature of the
ECMWF data is underestimated by about 21% expressed
by a high coefficient of correlation of up to 0.72. The
minimum temperature is underestimated even slightly
higher (up to 28%) but again combined with a high coef
ficient of correlation (up to 0.74). In contrast, precipita
tion is not represented very well by ECMWF data as the
correlation reveals high uncertainties. Hence a compari
son of the ECMWF data for only two measurement sta
tions is not very meaningful. Therefore the analysis has
been expanded to all of the 34 available ZAMG weather
stations. The analysis shows that the mean maximum
and minimum temperatures of ECMWF data averaged
over daily values in the period 2000 to 2003 are about
24% and 29% lower, respectively, than the temperatures
recorded by the 34 ZAMG weather stations. However,
minimum and maximum temperatures are both linked
with a coefficient of determination of about 0.65, which
is in good correspondence with the two presented obser
vation stations in Figure 5. The comparison between
sums of annual precipitation between the ECMWF and
the ZAMG data reveals over- and underestimations of up
to 90% for single stations. The daily precipitation rates
averaged over all ZAMG observation stations show a
coefficient of determination of about 0.27. This very low
coefficient corresponds with the presented stations in
Figure 5 and indicates poor agreement of measured and
simulated precipitation.
Page 9 of 13
As ECMWF data significantly underestimate tempera

ture, the increase of NPP when using ZAMG data could
be explained by longer vegetation periods in the ZAMG
data. We investigated the vegetation period by comput
ing the growing-degree-days (GDD). The basic equation
is: GDD = [(TMAX + TMIN)/2]-TBase, where TMAX and
TMIN are daily maximum and minimum temperatures,
respectively and T BASE is the base temperature which
can be fixed at 10C [43]. Furthermore, the growing per
iod in Austria is assumed to be from mid March to mid
October. The mean GDD averaged over all 34 ZAMG
stations in Austria and the years 2000 to 2003 is about
1186.2, which is about 136.1 (~11.5%) more than the
corresponding ECMWF GDD value (1050.1).
In a third model setup both models are driven with
the reallocated ZAMG data to test the model response
to homogenized trend data. Figure 2B and 2E show that
both, the EPIC and the BETHY/DLR models respond in
a consistent way, concerning their annual variability, to
the reallocated ZAMG data. The variability in the NPP
over the four years within one sub-region is about 4%
(EPIC) and 3% (BETHY/DLR), respectively.
To give information about the annual variability of
NPP within the model results, annual sums of NPP over
the whole area of investigation are presented in Figure
6. The values are given in kilotonnes carbon per year.
The nomenclature in Figure 6 follows the scheme of
table 2. When using the reallocated weather data, the
annual variability of NPP is very low for both models
BETHY(2) and EPIC(2), which can also be seen from
Figure 2B and 2E. This is not surprising since they
represent trend data with lower inter-annual variability.
When looking at the model setup for BETHY(1) with
measured ZAMG data, BETHY/DLR strongly responds
to the climate data. This is very prominent for the year
2003, for which a water stress situation for the March
feld region is reported [44]. In comparison to the NPP
sum calculated for 2002, the annual NPP in 2003 is
lower by about 23%. However, this model response can
not be seen in the EPIC output, which might be due to
the reason that for one of the four climate clusters,
which is representative for most of the area of the
Marchfeld region, higher crop yields have been simu
lated especially for winter crops in 2003. With the use
of ECMWF data in model setup EPIC(3), the EPIC out
put shows a massive NPP decrease in 2003 compared to
2002. This could again be explained with the lower
GDD of the ECMWF. In addition, the ECMWF data
represent around 8.5% less precipitation over the days
which have been counted as GDD.
The reason for the non equidistant annual differences
between the BETHY/DLR model runs BETHY(3) and
BETHY(4) might be that the misclassified pixels of
GLC2000 represent non agricultural areas which react

Page 10 of 13
Figure 5 Validation of ECMWF meteorology. Comparison of the ECMWF time series of minimum and maximum temperatures as well as
precipitation with the corresponding daily measured data of the ZAMG stations Gross Enzersdorf and Schwechat in the period 2000 to 2003.
in different ways to climate conditions than agricultural

areas.
It is notable that the variability of the model outputs
can be as large as 36% for BETHY/DLR and 39% for
EPIC when changing major input datasets. Furthermore,
it is remarkable that both models response similarly
when using the same datasets. For instance, all three
model setups with the ECMWF data show for all four
sub-regions a relative increase of NPP from 2000 to
2001 followed by a decrease in 2002 and again in 2003.
Conclusions
Net-Primary-Productivity (NPP) has been modelled
using the SVAT model BETHY/DLR and the biophysical

Figure 6 Annual sums of NPP for the study area. Annual sums
of NPP in kilotonnes carbon for the Marchfeld region in the period
2000 to 2003 simulated with the models BETHY/DLR and EPIC. The
nomenclature follows the scheme of table 2.
process model EPIC for the Austrian Marchfeld region

and the period 2000 to 2003. Both models seem to be
robust but respond differently on alternative input data
sets (i.e. meteorological and land cover / land use data).
We have used meteorological data from the ECMWF
and the ZAMG as well as a reallocated dataset based on
ZAMG weather observations. Land cover / land use
information have been taken from the GLC2000 and the
CORINE 2000 products. With these datasets, we have
performed a variability analysis with the two models
BETHY/DLR and EPIC with respect to their output
responses. We show that lower NPP values were mod
elled when using ECMWF data as an input compared to
ZAMG data. This is confirmed by both models. The
reason is traced to the underestimation of the GDD of
about 11.5% in the ECMWF data. We observe that both
models respond similarly to changes in input data, albeit
with a different magnitude. For single years, variabilities
in the NPP of up to 36% for BETHY/DLR and of up to
39% for EPIC can occur with alternative input data.
Besides the variability analysis of alternative model
input data sources, we have also analysed the accuracy of
the input data. We have found that the GLC2000 land
cover classification overestimates the agricultural area of
the Marchfeld region by 24%, whereas the CORINE 2000
dataset overestimates land cover classification by only
7%. With this finding preference for land cover datasets
with higher resolution is recommended. The ECMWF
data has been compared with measured data from
ZAMG. We have found high uncertainties in the daily
precipitation and small ones in daily maximum and mini
mum temperatures, which is confirmed by other studies.
Page 11 of 13
For further investigations in other regions, the finding

of the bias in the ECMWF data should be taken into
account and crosschecked with local weather station
data. In addition, more detailed land cover products
should be considered with respect to spatial resolution
and reported land use practices. Thus whenever the
models (or any model) are applied under new condi
tions, local data (if applicable) should be used for both
input and result comparison.
This study shows that especially for process-based
modelling approaches, not only comprehensive valida
tion and calibration approaches need to be applied, but
also knowledge of input data uncertainty and variability
of the modelling results need to be assessed. Process
based models have a potentially valuable role for various
applications. However their validity must be determined
where possible, especially when used for decision mak
ing processes.
List of abbreviations
BETHY/DLR: Biosphere Energy Transfer Hydrology Model; CORINE:
Coordinated Information on the European Environment; CYCLOPES: Carbon
Cycle and Change in Land Observational Products from an Ensemble of
Satellites; ECHAM: European Centre Hamburg; ECMWF: European Centre for
Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; EPIC: Environmental Policy Integrated
Climate; ETOP: Earth Topography and Ocean Bathymetry Database; GDD:
Growing Degree Day; GPP: Gross Primary Productivity; JSBACH: Jena Scheme
of Atmosphere Biosphere Coupling in Hamburg; LAI: Leaf Area Index; LUE:
Light Use Efficiency NPP: Net Primary Productivity; PAR: Photosynthetically
Active Radiation; POSTEL: Pole dObservation des Surfaces Continentales par
Teledetection; WGS84: World Geodetic System 1984; SVAT: Soil-Vegetation
Atmosphere-Transfer; ZAMG: Central Institute for Meteorology and
Geodynamics.
Acknowledgements
This study was conducted under the Energy Observation for monitoring
and assessment of the environmental impact of energy use (EnerGEO,
grant agreement no.: 226364) project funded by the European Union.
Financial support of the collaborative research program proVISION of the
Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research and Federal Ministry
of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management under the
research contract 100394 is gratefully acknowledged (more information:
http://www.dafne.at, http://www.landnutzung.at). The authors would also
like to thank ECMWF, MediasFrance and ZAMG for providing their data.
Furthermore the authors thank the IIASA YSSP program which provided
the opportunity for undertaking this study. Special thanks are given to
Dr. Georgii Alexandrov for inspiring suggestions during the review
process.
Author details
Deutsches Zentrum fr Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Deutsches
Fernerkundungsdatenzentrum (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling,
Germany. 2University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna,
Feistmantelstrasse 4, A-1180 Vienna, Austria. 3International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis, Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria.
1
Authors contributions
MT had the idea, provided the first draft for the design of the study and
was responsible for the BETHY/DLRs part. FS provided the idea of including
the EPIC model outputs for the study and carefully reviewed the manuscript
during each step of the production. IM, KG and ES contributed to the
analysis with their expertise, provided literature and developing ideas. All
authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Page 12 of 13
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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Received: 8 August 2011 Accepted: 1 February 2012

Published: 1 February 2012
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Page 13 of 13
44. StartClim: Teilprojekt von StartClim2004: Analysen von Hitze und

Trockenheit und deren Auswirkungen in sterreich. Analyse der
Auswirkungen der Trockenheit 2003 in der Landwirtschaft sterreichs
Vergleich verschiedener Methoden. 2004 [http://www.austroclim.at/
startclim/].
doi:10.1186/1750-0680-7-3
Cite this article as: Tum et al.: How sensitive are estimates of carbon
fixation in agricultural models to input data? Carbon Balance and
Management 2012 7:3.
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Research article 5:
Strauss F, Fuss S, Szolgayov J, Schmid E. 2011. Integrated assessment of crop
management portfolios in adapting to climate change in the Marchfeld region,
Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Gesellschaft fr Agrarkonomie, Band 19(2): 11-20.
Integrated assessment of crop management

portfolios in adapting to climate change in the
Marchfeld region1
Integrative Bewertung von landwirtschaftlichen Bewirtschaftungsportfolios
unter Anpassung an den Klimawandel im Marchfeld
Franziska STRAUSS, Sabine FUSS, Jana SZOLGAYOV and

Erwin SCHMID
Zusammenfassung
Die Portfoliooptimierung zur integrativen Bewertung von Bewirtschaf
tungsoptionen ist ein geeignetes Werkzeug, um Anpassungsstrategien
an den Klimawandel in der landwirtschaftlichen Produktion zu entwi
ckeln. Risiken fr Landwirte knnen diverse Quellen haben. In unserer
Analyse wurde das durch unsichere Wetterbedingungen entstehende
Risiko untersucht und durch stochastische Klimaszenarien abgebildet.
Zwei Portfoliomodelle wurden fr die Bewertung von Bewirtschaf
tungsoptionen in den Zeitperioden 2008-2020, 2021-2030 und 2031-2040
fr das Marchfeld angewandt: ein traditionelles nicht-lineares MeanVariance (E-V) Modell und ein Modell, welches als Risikoma den
Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) verwendet. Die untersuchten
Ackerkulturen sind Mais, Winterweizen, Sonnenblume und Sommer
gerste mit unterschiedlichen Bewirtschaftungsverfahren. Die minimale
Bodenbearbeitung scheint in allen Portfolios auf. Der Portfolioanteil
von Winterweizen wird ber die Zeit z.T. von Sonnenblume substitu
iert. Unter Bercksichtigung von Umweltindikatoren (z.B. Bodenkoh
lenstoffvorrat, Nitratauswaschung) kehren sich die Anteile von Acker
kulturen und Bewirtschaftungsverfahren im Portfolio um, wobei auch
Mais einen kleinen Anteil einnimmt. Das E-V Modell zeigt mehr Diver
sifikation bezglich der Ackerkulturen, whrend das CVaR Modell
Erschienen 2011 im Jahrbuch der sterreichischen Gesellschaft fr Agrarkonomie,

Band 19(2): 11-20. On-line verfgbar: http://oega.boku.ac.at
12
Strauss, Fuss, Szolgayov and Schmid
mehr Diversifikation zwischen unterschiedlichen Produktionsalterna

tiven aufweist.
Schlagworte:
Klimawandel,
Portfoliooptimierung
in
der
Landwirtschaft, Risikomanagement
Summary
Portfolio optimization is an adequate tool to find optimal crop
management options in adapting to climate change. The risk farmers
have to face can be caused by different sources. In our study, we focus
on the risk arising from unknown weather conditions. Therefore, we
developed stochastic climate change scenarios for the Marchfeld
region. Two portfolio models have been applied in the time periods
2008-2020, 2021-2030 and 2031-2040: a traditional non-linear mean
variance (E-V) model and a model using the Conditional Value at Risk
(CVaR) as risk metric. Investigated crops are corn, winter wheat,
sunflower and spring barley with different crop management
alternatives. Minimum tillage appears in all portfolios. We found a
decreasing share of winter wheat that gets partially substituted by
sunflower over the time periods. When including environmental
constraints (soil organic carbon content, nitrate leaching) the reverse
effect on the resulting portfolio shares is observed with corn being
included. The E-V model reveals more diversification with respect to
the crops, whereas the CVaR model shows more diversification with
respect to crop management options.
Keywords: climate change, portfolio optimization in agriculture, risk
management
1. Introduction
Agricultural production is a dynamic process affected by different
sources of uncertainty, among the most essential being weather,
technology advancement, individual farming practices, and price
fluctuations in commodity markets. Assessing optimal crop
management is one instrument to develop adaptation strategies to
climate change in agricultural production. Portfolio optimization,
developed by MARKOWITZ (1952) is one of the methodologies to
identify optimal agricultural management options under risk. He
shows that as the allowed variance increases, the maximal expected
Integrative Assessment of Crop Management Portfolios
13
return also increases and all the optimal portfolios chosen from the
efficient frontier depend on the investors risk aversion level.
Alternatively, ROCKAFELLAR and URYASEV (2000) implemented a new
risk measure, namely the Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) in their
portfolio analysis. In contrast to the variance of the returns used by
MARKOWITZ (1952), which describes the spread of a distribution, the
CVaR focuses on the tails of a distribution.
The impact of risk aversion on crop choice is therefore still a major
research question in development and agricultural economics. Further
applications of portfolio theory to risky decisions in agriculture can be
found in e.g. BARKLEY and PETERSON (2008) and LARSEN et al. (2009).
The aim of our study is to identify crop management portfolios for the
Marchfeld region by taking into account the uncertainties coming from
future stochastic climate change scenarios as done in BARKLEY and
PETERSON (2008). We consider two model types in this study, the
traditional non-linear E-V model (FREUND, 1956) and the model of the
Conditional Value at Risk (ROCKAFELLAR and URYASEV, 2000). Whereas
LARSEN et al. (2009), using a CVaR portfolio model, are interested in a
geographical diversification, we focus on crop management
diversification.
Both models optimize the portfolio using profit distributions as an
input and maximizing/minimizing an objective function. In the E-V
model risk aversion is introduced by a risk aversion parameter
discounting standard deviation in the objective function, whereas in
the CVaR model the risk aversion is represented by different
confidence levels of the profit distributions.
2. Data and method

Our model framework consists of three main models: the weather and
climate change model, the biophysical process model EPIC
(Environmental Policy Integrated Climate; WILLIAMS, 1995; IZAURRALDE
et al., 2006) and the portfolio optimization models.
Historical weather time series from 1975-2007 from a weather station in
the Marchfeld region feed into the weather model. Based on the
method of STRAUSS et al. (2009), we have developed stochastic climate
scenarios for the period 2008-2040. Residuals from maximum and
minimum temperature have been reallocated randomly together with
14
the observed values of the weather parameters precipitation, solar

radiation, relative humidity and wind. The climate scenarios are
among other site specific data important input to the EPIC model.
Typical crop management variants for the region are conventional,
reduced or minimum tillage operations, with or without irrigation,
with or without straw removal, and different fertilizer application
rates. The crops investigated are corn, winter wheat, sunflower, and
spring barley. EPIC simulates output among others for crop yields,
nitrate leaching and topsoil organic carbon contents for different
weather scenarios, site conditions, and crop management variants. We
use the simulated crop yields together with data on variable costs
(BMLFUW, 2008) and mean commodity prices from 1995-2008 to
calculate profit distributions:
m ,i y m ,i p m c m
(1)
where are the profits in /ha, y are the simulated crop yields in t/ha,
p is the price in /t, and c are the variable costs in /ha for each time
period (2008-2020, 2021-2030, 2031-2040), the index m denotes the sites,
crops and crop management variants and i is the weather scenario
index.
The various profit distributions are input to the portfolio models (also
distributions on nitrate leaching and topsoil organic carbon contents
when considering environmental constraints). The output of our
portfolio optimizations are optimal shares of crops and crop
management variants in three time periods.
Before we present the portfolio models we provide the definition of
CVaR (ROCKAFELLAR and URYASEV, 2000). The Value at Risk (VaR)
captures extreme events providing information on the tail of a
distribution. The VaR of a portfolio is then the lowest amount such
that with specified probability level the portfolio loss will not
exceed . The CVaR is the conditional expectation of losses above that
amount . So, the VaR corresponds to the -percentile of the
distribution, whereas CVaR is the mean of the values exceeding VaR.
We consider two types of objective functions using different risk
measures. One maximizes the expected profits with a penalization of
standard deviation as described in the E-V model (FREUND, 1956). The
other one minimizes the expected value of losses exceeding a defined
15
percentile as described in the CVaR model of ROCKAFELLAR and
URYASEV (2000).
In the E-V model, a weighted sum of expected profits discounted by
the standard deviation is maximized (FREUND, 1956):
Max xm E( m,i ) [
xm
m,i
1
N
(
m,i
m,i
E( m,i )) 2 ]1 / 2
(2)
where E denotes the expected value across weather scenarios, N is the

number of weather scenarios, x is the portfolio variable giving the
specification of crop, management, and fertilizer rates, and is the risk
aversion parameter (, m and i as in eq. 1). We maximize
independently for the three time periods. The conditions to be satisfied
are that the portfolio shares have to sum up to 1.
The CVaR model is linear where CVaR is minimized subject to a
constraint on minimum expected profits (ROCKAFELLAR and URYASEV,
2000):
1
u m,i
Min a
x,a,u
N (1 ) m,i
(3)
where u m,i 0 and u m,i ( y m,i p m c m )x m a i
1
( y m,i pm cm )xm R
N m,i
where um,i = [u1, u2, , uN]T R is an auxiliary variable, is a threshold
(with probability profits will not fall short of ), and is the
confidence level. Also, the portfolio shares have to sum up to 1, all xm
and um,i must be greater than or equal to zero and a constraint on
minimum expected profits, R, has to be fulfilled. In the experiments,
we employ values for this required expected profit R such that it is not
binding.
The CVaR and E-V approaches could, in the case where profit
distributions are non normal, lead to quite different optimal solutions
(ROCKAFELLAR and URYASEV, 2000). The choice of the risk measure
depends on how we assume the farmers to behave under risk.
Since we were interested in the portfolios of crops and crop
management variants with respect to increasing degrees of risk
aversion, we conducted the following experiments. In the E-V model,
we gradually increased the risk aversion parameter from zero (risk
16
neutral) to 2.5. In the CVaR model, we solved the problem for two
values of confidence levels: in the case where =75%, a farmer would
be assumed to be relatively indifferent to tail risk. Along the same
lines, requiring a 99% level of confidence can be interpreted as a
situation of relatively high loss-aversion. Finally, we included in both
models environmental constraints on nitrate leaching and topsoil
organic carbon (optional), whereby the thresholds are less than 2 kg/ha
for nitrate leaching and more than 55 t/ha for topsoil organic carbon.
However, we have not conducted extensive sensitivity analysis to
examine the impact of less and more stringent environmental
requirements yet.
3. Results and discussion

The simulated crop yields decrease over time. Crops usually grow at or
near their thermal optimum, so even a minor temperature increase
during the growing season can reduce crop yields. Furthermore, the
Marchfeld is known as a region with low annual precipitation sums,
which also affect crop yields. The evaporation of soils increases so that
less soil water is available for the plants. The profits drop significantly
in all crop and management cases under c.p. (Table 1).
Table 1: Expected profits in /ha in three time periods and different levels of risk
aversion (CVaR 75: 75% confidence level, CVaR 99: 99% confidence level, RN:
risk-neutral =0, RA: risk-averse =2.5 in the E-V model).
without environm. constraints CVaR 75
CVaR 99
RN
RA
2008-2020
227.6
220.4
229.6
219.4
2021-2030
200.0
197.4
203.8
198.2
2031-2040
192.1
190.3
192.4
190.7
with environm. constraints
2008-2020
210.3
203.4
210.3
204.1
2021-2030
193.8
191.2
193.8
191.2
2031-2040
186.8
186.8
186.8
186.8
In line with portfolio optimization, the farmer has to accept a lower

level of expected profits for lower levels of risk (Table 1). That is,
increasing risk aversion should have a negative impact on the expected
portfolio profit. When considering environmental constraints, the
expected profits turn out to be a bit lower than without these
17
constraints (Table 1), and the values of expected profits are very similar
over the risk measures in each time period. Furthermore, risk aversion
loses its impact on expected profits until 2040. Under environmental
constraints, the expected profits are even completely independent from
risk aversion level, because variability within profits does not differ
much.
In the following plot (Figure 1) we show portfolio shares for each time
period (2008-2020, 2021-2030, 2031-2040) for both the E-V model and
the CVaR model. RA (risk-averse; =2.5) and RN (risk-neutral; =0) are
the output shares of the E-V model, while CVaR 75 (75% confidence
level) and CVaR 99 (99% confidence level) are the output shares of the
CVaR model. The six-digit coding of management options in Figure 1
and 2 are: M for minimum tillage, R for reduced tillage, N/I for no
irrigation/irrigation, N/S for without straw removal or with straw
removal, 080/100/120 for fertilizer application rates of
80%/100%/120% of the recommended amounts. Straw is removed
from the fields only for winter wheat and spring barley, even at the
level of crop rotation corn/winter wheat/sunflower/spring barley.
The model results show that portfolios with minimum tillage are
optimal with different crop management alternatives. Spring barley is
never part of the optimal portfolio, and corn enters the portfolio only
when considering the environmental constraints. Irrigation does not
seem to become an interesting option under climate change, as the
marginal higher crop yields cannot compensate the higher production
costs. The standard diversification effect is observable: the more risk
averse a farmer, the more diversification occurs.
Without consideration of environmental constraints (Figure 1), the
relative share of winter wheat declines over the time periods, while the
share of sunflower increases in most cases. We found some deviations
between the results of the two models, which points to the fact that
profits are not normally distributed. For example, the CVaR model
produces the same pattern as the other model only when the
confidence level is very low. For cases with higher loss aversion, there
is diversification within winter wheat management variants and the
share of winter wheat rises in the second period. So, if a farmer is loss
averse then his portfolio contains only one crop, but he diversifies
more over management options.
18
Figure 1: Portfolio shares in each time period (period 1 to 3) and for each portfolio
model. Note: RA (risk-averse), RN (risk-neutral) concerne the E-V model, CVaR
75 (75% confidence level), CVaR 99 (99% confidence level) of CVaR model;
WWHT=winter wheat, SUNF=sunflower; 6-digit coding: M for minimum
tillage, R for reduced tillage, N/I for no irrigation/irrigation, N/S for without
straw removal or with straw removal, 080/100/120 for fertilizer application rates
of 80%/100%/120% of the recommended amounts.
The portfolio shares change when including environmental constraints

in the portfolio optimization (not shown). Minimum tillage is still
chosen in both models. But, the CVaR model with 99% confidence level
shows a high share of winter wheat, and a very low share of corn only
in the first period and some management diversification for sunflower,
where the reduced tillage comes into solution with a very low amount.
In the E-V model, high level of risk aversion leads also to similar
results.
4. Conclusion
We have analysed the impact of climate change on crop production
risks. The source of risk comes from stochastic climate change
scenarios. We have applied two portfolio models - a non-linear E-V
model and a CVaR model - using profit distributions which differ
among crops, crop managements and weather scenarios. The effects of
climate change lead to a decline in expected profits due to lower crop
yields (c.p.). The results show that the relative share of winter wheat is
19
substituted by sunflower over the three time periods. The optimal

portfolios differ when considering environmental constraints.
Particularly, the share of winter wheat remains the most important in
all three periods, whereas the share of sunflower is relatively low and
corn is being included in the portfolio. In the optimal portfolios,
minimum tillage always appears with different production alternatives
concerning straw management, irrigation and fertilizer application
rates.
Another important finding is about the risk modelling approaches: the
E-V model diversifies more across crops whereas the CVaR model
diversifies more across crop management options. Therefore, research
should be focused on comparing these different model approaches and
their consequences for optimal portfolios. Finally, with increasing
temperatures, expected portfolio profits are found to decrease due to
more evaporation and therefore less available soil water. This effect is
independent of the type of risk metric used in the objective function.
The results indicate that climate change will have a negative impact on
agricultural productivity, which dominates outcomes and the scope to
hedge against risks emanating from uncertain weather condition
shrinks.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management within the
proVISION project: A toolbox of models of a sustainable economy
(http://franz.sinabell.wifo.ac.at/provision/) as well as from the EU
commission through the FP7 project ccTAME (Climate Change
Terrestrial Adaptation and Climate Change; http://www.cctame.eu).
References
BARKLEY, A. and PETERSON, H.H. (2008): Wheat Variety Selection: An Application of
Portfolio Theory to Improve Returns, Proceedings of the NCCC-134 Conference
on Applied Commodity Price Analysis, Forecasting, and Market Risk
Management, St. Louis, MO.
BMLFUW - Bundesministerium fr Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und
Wasserwirtschaft (2008): Deckungsbeitrge und Daten fr die Betriebsplanung,
Berger, Horn (BMLFUW).
FREUND, R. (1956): The Introduction of Risk into a Programming Model,
Econometrica, 21: S 253-263.
20
IZAURRALDE, R.C., WILLIAMS, J., R., MCGILL, W.B., ROSENBERG, N.J. and QUIROGA,
M.C. (2006): Simulating soil C dynamics with EPIC: Model description and
testing against long-term data. Ecological Modelling 192(3-4): S 362-384.
LARSEN, R., VEDENOV, D. and LEATHAM, D. (2009): Enterprise-level risk assessment of
geographically diversified commercial farms: a copula approach, Southern
Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia.
MARKOWITZ, H. (1952): The Utility of Wealth, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 60, S
151-158.
ROCKAFELLAR, R.T. and URYASEV, S. (2000): Optimization of Conditional Value-AtRisk, The Journal of Risk, 2: S 21-41.
STRAUSS, F., SCHMID, E., FORMAYER, H., MOLTCHANOVA, E. and WANG, X. (2009):
Climate Change and Likely Near Future Development of Ecological Indicators in
the Marchfeld Region of Lower Austria, submitted.
WILLIAMS, J.R. (1995): The EPIC Model, In: Singh, V.P. (eds.), Computer Models of
Watershed Hydrology, Water Resources Publications, Highlands Ranch,
Colorado, S 909-1000.
Addresses of authors
Mag. Franziska Strauss
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences
Feistmantelstrae 4, 1180 Vienna, Austria
Tel.: +43 1 47654 3666
eMail: franziska.strauss@boku.ac.at
Dr. Sabine Fuss
International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis
Schlossplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Tel.: +43 2236 807 550
eMail: fuss@iiasa.ac.at
Dr. Jana Szolgayov
International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis
Tel.: +43 2236 807 550
eMail: szolgay@iiasa.ac.at
PD DI Dr. Erwin Schmid
University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences
Tel.: +43 1 47654 3653
eMail: erwin.schmid@boku.ac.at
Research article 6:
Strauss F, Heumesser C, Fuss S, Szolgayov J, Schmid E. 2011. Optimal Irrigation
Management Strategies under Weather Uncertainty and Risk, Jahrbuch der
sterreichischen Gesellschaft fr Agrarkonomie, Band 20(2): 45-54.
Optimal Irrigation Management Strategies under

Weather Uncertainty and Risk
Optimale Strategien fr Bewsserungsmanagement unter
Wetterunsicherheit und Risiko
Franziska STRAUSS, Christine HEUMESSER, Sabine FUSS,

Jana SZOLGAYOV and Erwin SCHMID1
Summary
Climate change will affect agricultural production through changes in
water supply, such that optimal irrigation management strategies gain
importance. For the Marchfeld region, we firstly analyze with a
stochastic dynamic programming approach the probability of investing
into either a water-saving drip or a sprinkler irrigation system until
2040. Secondly, we develop optimal irrigation management portfolios
for different degrees of risk aversion using climate data from a
statistical model and the simulations for specific crops of the
biophysical process model EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated
Climate). Investment in drip irrigation systems is not profitable.
Sprinkler irrigation has a positive probability of being adopted for the
production of sugar beets and carrots and therefore mostly shows a
100% share in the portfolio optimization.
Keywords: Irrigation management, precipitation uncertainty, EPIC,
stochastic dynamic programming approach, Portfolio Optimization
Zusammenfassung
Aufgrund der unsicheren Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf die
Wasserverfgbarkeit in der landwirtschaftlichen Produktion gewinnt
eine Analyse optimaler Bewsserungsmanagementstrategien auch in
der Region Marchfeld an Bedeutung. Wir analysieren mit einem stoch
astischen, dynamischen Programmierungsmodell die Wahrscheinlich-

46
Strauss, Heumesser, Fuss, Szolgayov and Schmid
keit, bis 2040 in ein wassersparendes Trpfchen- oder Sprinklerbe

wsserungssystem zu investieren. Des Weiteren erstellen wir Portfolios
fr ein optimales Bewsserungsmanagement. Wir verwenden Klima
daten eines statistischen Klimamodells sowie Simulationsdaten fr
regionsspezifische Kulturen des biophysikalischen Prozessmodells
EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate). Die Investition in
Trpfchenbewsserungsanlagen ist nicht rentabel. Zuckerrben und
Karotten werden mit Sprinklerbewsserung produziert, wobei die
Portfolioanteile von Sprinklerbewsserung meist bei 100% liegen.
Schlagworte: Bewsserungsmanagement, Unsicherheit in Nieder
schlagsentwicklung, EPIC, stochastisch dynamisches Programmier
ungsmodell, Portfoliooptimierung
1. Introduction
For Central and Southern Europe, it has been estimated that areas
under water stress can increase from 19% in 2007 to 35% in 2070 (IPCC,
2007). Therefore, it is crucial to assess optimal irrigation management
strategies. In the Marchfeld region, intensive agriculture has expanded
from the 1970s onwards, and has led to a decrease of the annual
groundwater level from the 1970s to the 1990s (STENITZER and HOESCH,
2005). Even though groundwater levels have recovered, the quality of
groundwater is affected negatively by excessive irrigation which can
increase nitrate leaching into groundwater (STENITZER, 2004).
Currently, only sprinkler irrigation systems are used in Marchfeld.1
However, drip irrigation systems allow for a precise application of
water and have the potential to increase crop yields (WARD and
PULIDO-VELAZQUEZ, 2008). Therefore, it might be viable to adopt drip
irrigation systems in the Marchfeld in the future.2
As drip irrigation is usually capital intensive, a farmer might be
reluctant to invest when facing production uncertainty arising from
weather uncertainty. We apply a stochastic dynamic programming
approach to examine the probability of investing in a water-efficient
drip or a less water-efficient sprinkler irrigation system. We assume
that farmers are uncertain about which annual precipitation sum will
www.marchfeldkanal.at; accessed in February 2011
Irrigation management under weather uncertainties and risk
47
occur in the period 2009-2040. Our investment model contributes

insights about the optimal timing to invest in an irrigation system.
However, it does not account for how the farmer manages the installed
irrigation system, e.g. whether it is employed on all fields in order to
diversify production risk under various levels of risk aversion.
Therefore, we apply a static portfolio optimization approach using the
Conditional Value at Risk as risk metric (CVaR; cp. ROCKFELLAR and
URYASEV, 2000). This approach allows investigating whether irrigation
is part of an optimal production portfolio and if so, which share of the
production area is irrigated to minimize production losses under
various levels of risk aversion. The optimal crop management portfolio
suggests for each crop, what percentage of a cultivated hectare land is
irrigated by a specific system, or not irrigated in a specified period of
time. In our analysis, we use simulation data from the biophysical
process model EPIC (IZAURRALDE et al., 2006) in the region Marchfeld.
The climate change scenario is derived from a statistical climate model
(STRAUSS et al., 2010). In the next sections, we present data and methods
applied in the analysis. It is followed by results and discussion in
section 4 and conclusion and outlook in section 5.
2. Data
The biophysical process model EPIC provides annual outputs on, inter
alia, dry matter crop and straw yields, nitrogen emissions, and soil
organic carbon contents. The outputs are mainly based on five thematic
datasets: land use, topography, soil, cropland management and
weather. Cereals are the most important crops in Marchfeld, but also
vegetables are commonly cultivated. Therefore, we simulate bio
physical impacts of five crops (winter wheat, sugar beets, potatoes,
corn, and carrots) which cover more than 50% of the agricultural land.
We concentrate on the most frequent soil type (covering ~50% of the
region), a Chernozem from fine sediment and loess formation with
available soil water capacity of 196 mm as well as topsoil humus con
tents of 2.6%. The statistical climate change model generates weather
scenarios via bootstrapping for 2008-2040, based on in-situ weather
observations from 1975 to 2007 (provided by the Central Institute for
Meteorology and Geodynamics). In the period 1975-2007, the average
annual maximum/ minimum temperature was 14.8 C / 6.1 C, which
48
is assumed to increase to 16.7C / 8.0C in 2040. For 2008-2040, a range

of possible precipitation scenarios has been generated. We use one
extreme precipitation scenario for the region, which portrays a
decrease in annual precipitation sums of -5% until 2016, -10% until
2024, -15% until and 2032, and -20% until 2040 (STRAUSS et al., 2010).
These values have been verified by the literature. For instance,
CHRISTENSEN and CHRISTENSEN (2007) employ various General
Circulation Models (GCMs) and Regional Climate Models (RCMs) by
using different emission scenarios (A2 and B2) (IPCC, 2007) as well as
different resolutions, ensemble members and parameterizations for
some European regions simulating increases or decreases in seasonal
precipitation sums of ~60% until 2100 depending on the assumptions
made. In our study, the bootstrapping resulted in 300 weather
scenarios, which depict the uncertainty of annual precipitation sums in
our economic models.
Tab. 1: Summary statistics of relevant parameters for the period 2009-2040
No irrigation
Sprinkler
Drip
Mean
Std
Mean
Std
Mean
Std
Dry matter yield t/ha/a
CORN
6.2
1.2
7.9
0.5
7.9
0.5
CARROTS
5.4
0.6
5.5
0.4
5.5
0.4
POTATOES
7.0
0.8
7.1
0.8
7.1
0.8
7.8
1.1
10.1
0.6
10.3
0.5
SUG. BEETS
W. WHEAT
4.7
0.8
4.8
0.8
4.8
0.8
Irrigation mm/ha/a
CORN
0.0
0.0
127
51
113
45
CARROTS
0.0
0.0
39
36
34
32
0.0
0.0
53
37
47
32
POTATOES
SUG. BEETS
0.0
0.0
162
56
143
49
W. WHEAT
0.0
0.0
35
35
32
31
Profit /ha/a
CORN
130
163
9.4
84.8
-249
70.2
CARROTS
8321
1100
8351
843
7909
825
POTATOES
2347
515
2112
512
1815
514
SUG. BEETS
48
198
60
104
-167
86
W. WHEAT
460
175
204
168
-100
169
Source: own calculations
We use simulated annual crop yields, variable production costs

(BMLFUW, 2008), and mean commodity prices from 2005-2009 to
49
calculate annual profits. Capital costs of irrigation systems were

surveyed from producers (personal communication with Fa. BAUER; Fa.
PARGA). Notably, the annual capital cost of a drip irrigation system,
which are assumed to operate for 15 years, is 400 /ha/a for carrots
and 233 /ha/a for all other crops, whereas the annual capital cost for
sprinkler irrigation is 213 /ha/a for all crops. Notable differences in
labor hour requirements per ha occur to install or run the respective
irrigation system (drip irrigation: 30 h/ha/a; sprinkler irrigation:
depending on irrigation amounts applied to the fields; variation
between on average 1 h/ha/a for winter wheat and 6 h/ha/a for sugar
beets). Table 1 provides summary statistics on dry matter crop yields,
irrigation water input and respective profits for the period 2009-2040.
The crop yields are declining compared to the past (1975-2007). As
expected, irrigation in the period 2009-2040, leads to a decrease in crop
volatility, except for potatoes.
3. Method
3.1 The stochastic dynamic programming approach
In the dynamic programming model, the farmer decides in each year of
the planning period whether to invest into a drip or sprinkler irrigation
system and whether to operate the installed system. Investment in
irrigation systems is a long-term investment. We assume that a farmer
bases his investment decision on his expectation about how annual
precipitation will develop over the years 2009-2040. We further assume
that in each year 300 possible realizations occur with equal probability.
Once the system has been installed, the farmer can decide whether to
operate the irrigation system or not from the following year onwards
depending on his daily information about rainfall. We denote xt {0,1,2}
the state of the system in year t, 0 implying that until period t no
irrigation system has been built; 1 that drip has been built; and 2 that
sprinkler has been built prior to period t. The investment and
operational decisions in year t are denoted as at and ut. Both can be
chosen from the set {0, 1, 2}, where 0 means that no investment is made
/ the irrigation system is not switched on; 1 that drip irrigation is
adopted / drip is switched on; and 2 that sprinkler irrigation is
adopted / sprinkler is switched on. If a system has already been
installed, no further investment is possible, atxt=0. The state of the
system in the next year is determined by the current state and the
50
investment decision in the current year, xt+1=xt+at. It cannot be

operated if it has not been installed in a previous year: ut{0,xt}. The
precipitation scenarios are given by Pt~ ( t1 ,..., tN ). In each year, there
are w=1,,N with N=300 uniformly distributed precipitation values,
which affect the farmers profits.
The inputs are the profits of crop production. The total profit ut , tn is
derived by operational profits in period t, depending on the
operational decision and the annual precipitation sums (equation 1),
minus the annualized capital cost, c(xt+at), depending on the state in
period t after the investment decision has been made (equation 2):
u, tn y(u, tn ) p c c _Lhi c Varc q e u, tn p e i _Lh u, tn c qin u, tn p n
(1)
c x t at a _Capc x t at a _well x t at
(2)
The components of the operational profit include parameters assumed
c
to be constant over time: p , the constant commodity price for each
crop; c, the hourly wage; pe, the cost of electricity per kWh; pn, the price
of fertilizer; and Varc, the variable production costs per crop. The
remaining components vary by operational decision and the respective
annual precipitation sums, including: y(u, tn ) , the crop yields used for
the revenue; c_Lh, the labor requirement per crop; qie (ut ,Pt ) , the energy
cost per irrigation system; i _Lhu, tn , the annual labor requirement for
irrigation activity; and qin (ut ,Pt ) , the annual amount of nitrogen
fertilizer used. The annualized fixed cost of the respective irrigation
systems is the sum of the annualized capital cost, a_Capc(xt+at), and the
annualized cost of building a well, a_well(xt+at).
The problem of the farmer can be formulated as an optimization
problem of timing his investment decisions, at, and choosing
operational action, ut, so that the expected sum of profits over the
planning period is maximized (equation 3). The discount rate is given
by r, and e-rt is the discount factor.
31
maxE e rt ( (ut , ti ) c(xt at ))

at ,ut
t1
s.t.
xt 1 xt at ;t 1,...,31
x1 0
xt at 0;t 1,...,31
ut 0, xt ;t 1,...,31
Pt ~ U ( t1 ,..., t300 );t 1,...,31
(3)
51
This is a standard stochastic optimal control problem in discrete time

periods on a finite horizon, and can be solved by backward dynamic
programming. The annual decisions are obtained recursively by solv
ing the Bellman equation. The result is a matrix of the optimal invest
ment actions for each period, all possible states and weather scenarios.
With this information we derive the cumulative probabilities of
investment.
3.2 The Portfolio Optimization Model

The Value at Risk (VaR) of a portfolio is the lowest amount such that
with probability , the portfolio loss will not exceed . The CVaR is the
conditional expectation of losses above that amount for a specified
confidence level (ROCKAFELLAR and URYASEV, 2000). We suppose that,
for =75% a farmer would be relatively indifferent to tail risk (risk
neutral), whereas =99% can be interpreted as high loss-aversion (risk
averse). For the portfolio optimization model we average the total
annual profits, ut , tn , over the respective years in the three time
periods; hence, we have for each period and each of the 300 weather
scenarios an average profit, m ,w , where w=1,,N, with N=300
represents the 300 weather scenarios. The optimization is performed
for each crop in each period separately. In contrast to the stochastic
dynamic programming approach, the decision maker can choose to
integrate drip, sprinkler or no irrigation system (index m) into his
optimal portfolio. The optimization only accounts for scenarios when
the irrigation system is actually switched on, ut{1,2}. The output of our
portfolio optimizations are optimal shares of irrigation management
for each crop in the three time periods (sm).
Min a
s ,a ,v
N(1 )
v
m ,w
m ,w
where v m ,w 0 and v m ,w m ,w sm a w
1
N
m ,w sm
(4)
m ,w
In the model, vm,w = [v1, v2, , vN]T R is an auxiliary variable, is a

threshold, and is the confidence level. Also, the portfolio shares sm
have to sum up to 1, all sm and vm,w must be greater than or equal to
zero, and a constraint on minimum expected profits, R, has to be
52
fulfilled. In the experiments, we employ values for R such that it is not

binding to capture the full effect of risk aversion.
4. Results
Results of the analysis with the stochastic dynamic programming appr
oach show that farmers will never invest into a drip irrigation system.
The probability that sprinkler irrigation is adopted for production of
carrots and sugar beets is 100% in year 2024. Vegetables and sugar
beets are the most irrigated crops in the Marchfeld region. According
to our climate scenarios, year 2025 marks a decrease in annual
precipitation sums by 15% on all randomly drawn precipitation sums.
Figure 1: Optimal irrigation portfolios for winter wheat, sugar beets, carrots,
potatoes and corn, for risk neutrality and risk aversion in three time periods
Source: own calculations
Similarly, drip irrigation never constitutes part of an optimal portfolio

for all crops under both risk neutrality and aversion (Figure 1). Under
assumption of risk neutrality, the optimal portfolio for sugar beets
53
exclusively includes sprinkler irrigation. For carrots, the optimization

shows a 100% share of sprinkler in the periods 2021-2030 and 2031
2040, but only a lower share of sprinkler irrigation in the first period
(~30%) as profits without irrigation are higher (8.645 /ha compared to
8.571 /ha with sprinkler system). Thus, the farmer irrigates only 30%
of his cultivated land in the period 2009-2020 in order to diversify
production risk. By relying on rain-fed production on 70% of his field,
he saves the variable cost incurred by employing sprinkler irrigation
even though he has previously incurred high capital costs to adopt
sprinkler irrigation. For corn, potatoes and winter wheat no irrigation
system is part of an optimal portfolio at any time. Assuming risk
aversion, the optimal portfolio changes for carrots production. The
optimization shows a 100% share of sprinkler irrigation in all periods.
5. Conclusions
In both models, we observe similar results in optimal irrigation
investment and management. The stochastic dynamic programming
approach shows a zero probability for drip irrigation investment; the
portfolio model shows that drip irrigation is never part in an optimal
management portfolio under both risk neutrality and risk aversion.
Analyzing the profits (Table 1), we see that average profits of drip
irrigation are always lower than of sprinkler irrigation and no
irrigation. From a resource point of view, a low utilization of irrigation
systems implies that groundwater resources can recover from
exploitation. On the other hand, the potential of irrigated agriculture
cannot be exploited and less is produced on cropland. Thus, future
research should be directed towards policy measures, e.g. imple
mentation of water prices or equipment subsidies which can increase
the probability of adopting drip irrigation systems. It must also be kept
in mind that the model is run on a site scale, and economics of scale of
irrigation investment, have not been taken into account so far.
Acknowledgements
This research has been carried out under the FP7 projects EuroGEOSS,
ccTAME and PASHMINA. We thank Bernhard Strmer, BOKU, for data
provision.
54
References
BMLFUW (2008): Deckungsbeitrge und Daten fr die Betriebsplanung 2008. Wien.
CHRISTENSEN, J. and CHRISTENSEN, O. (2007): A summary of the PRUDENCE model
projections of changes in European climate by the end of this century. Climatic
Change, 81, pp. 7-30.
FIRMA BAUER (2010): Personal communication, April 2010. URL: http://www.bauer
at.com/
FIRMA PARGA (2010): Personal communication, April 2010. URL: http://www.parga
online.de/
IPCC (2007): Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and II to the 4th
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Geneva.
IZAURRALDE, R. C., WILLIAMS, J. R, MCGILL, W. B., ROSENBERG, N. J., and QUIROGA, M.
C. (2006): Simulating soil C dynamics with EPIC: Model description and testing
against long-term data. Ecological Modelling 192, 3-4, pp. 362-384.
ROCKAFELLAR, R. T. and URYASEV, S. (2000): Optimization of Conditional Value-AtRisk, The Journal of Risk, 2, pp. 21-41.
STENITZER, E. (2004): Anmerkungen zur praktischen Bewsserung im Marchfeld aus
wasserwirtschaftlicher Sicht, Landwirtschaft und Grundwasserschutz 2.
3.3.2004, HBLFA-BAL. Irdning.
STENITZER, E. and HOESCH, J. (2005): Grundwasserneubildung im Marchfeld
Lysimetermessungen und Modellrechnungen, 11. Gumpensteiner Lysimeter
tagung, 5.-6.4.2005, HBLFA-BAL. Irdning.
STRAUSS, F., FORMAYER, H., ASAMER, V., and SCHMID, E. (2010): Climate change data
for Austria and the period 2008-2040 with one day and km resolution, DP-48
2010, Institute for Sustainable Economic Development, University of Natural
Resources and Life Sciences Vienna. Vienna.
WARD, F. A. and PULIDO-VELAZQUEZ, M. (2008): Water conservation in irrigation can
increase water use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, pp.
18215-18220.
Affiliations
Mag. Franziska Strauss, Mag. Christine Heumesser, Prof. DI Dr. Erwin Schmid
University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Tel.: +43 1 47654 3670
franziska.strauss@boku.ac.at, christine.heumesser@boku.ac.at, erwin.schmid@boku.ac.at
Dr. Sabine Fuss, Dr. Jana Szolgayov
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Tel.: +43 2236 807 0
fuss@iiasa.ac.at, szolgay@iiasa.ac.at
Research article 7:
Asamer V, Strmer B, Strauss F, Schmid E. 2011. Integrated assessment of large
scale poplar plantations on croplands in Austria, Jahrbuch der sterreichischen
Gesellschaft fr Agrarkonomie, Band 19(2): 41-50.
Integrierte Analyse einer groflchigen Pappel

produktion auf Ackerflchen in sterreich
Integrated assessment of large-scale poplar plantations on croplands in
Austria
Veronika ASAMER, Bernhard STRMER, Franziska STRAUSS

und Erwin SCHMID1
Zusammenfassung
Derzeit werden in sterreich 1.335 ha Ackerflchen als Kurzumtriebs
flchen deklariert (STATISTIK AUSTRIA, 2009). Plne von Landesregie
rungen und Bioenergieproduzenten zum Ausbau von Kurzumtriebs
flchen lassen eine weitere Zunahme erwarten. Die konomischen und
umweltbedingten Auswirkungen einer groflchigen Pappelprodukti
on werden im Rahmen einer integrierten Landnutzungsanalyse unter
sucht. Modellergebnisse zeigen, dass die hchsten Deckungsbei
tragsannuitten in der Pappelproduktion mit dreijhrigen Umtriebsin
tervallen zu erzielen sind. Zur Abschtzung des konomischen Poten
zials flieen die Deckungsbeitragsannuitten der Pappelproduktion
und der regional blichen Fruchtfolgen in das rumlich explizite Bio
masseoptimierungsmodell BiomAT ein, was die Grenzopportunitts
kosten der Pappelproduktion bestimmt. Die umweltbedingten Aus
wirkungen zeigen, dass sich der Bodenkohlenstoffvorrat im Acker
oberboden bei einem groflchigen Pappelanbau kaum ndern, wh
rend sich die gesamten Stickstoffemissionen deutlich verringern wr
den.
Schlagworte: Kurzumtriebsflchen, groflchiger Pappelanbau, Gren
zopportunittskosten, integrierte Landnutzungsanalyse, BiomAT

42
Asamer, Strmer, Strauss und Schmid
Summary
In 2009, about 1.335 ha croplands have been declared as short-rotation
plantations in Austria (STATISTIK AUSTRIA, 2009). Federal state govern
ments and producers of bioenergy plan to expand these areas. We as
sess the economic and environmental effects of large-scale poplar plan
tations on croplands in Austria using the integrated biomass optimiza
tion model BiomAT. The model results show that the highest gross
margin annuities deliver poplar plantations in three-year rotations.
Economic potentials of large-scale poplar plantations have been as
sessed in a marginal opportunity cost framework by comparing gross
margin annuities of poplar production and crop rotations. The assess
ment of environmental effects of polar production shows that topsoil
organic carbon contents of croplands do not change whereas total ni
trogen emissions could be reduced significantly.
Keywords: short-rotation poplar plantations, marginal opportunity
costs assessment, integrated land use analysis, BiomAT
1. Einleitung
Durch die steigende Nachfrage nach Energie aus erneuerbaren Ener
gietrgern wird der Energieholzproduktion auf Ackerflchen ein be
deutendes Potenzial zuerkannt. Einzelne Bundeslnder planen einen
weiteren Ausbau von Kurzumtriebsflchen. In sterreich knnen vor
allem Weide und Pappel im Kurzumtrieb hohe jhrliche Zuwachsleis
tungen bringen (MYLIUS, 1990). Um eine kostengnstige maschinelle
Ernte zu ermglichen, ist es notwendig grere Schlge mit geringer
Hangneigung zu bepflanzen. Die Ernte mit Feldhcksler ist nur im
zwei- bis maximal dreijhrigen Umtriebsintervall mglich. Fr hhere
Umtriebsintervalle kann derzeit nur mit einem Harvester oder motor
manuell geerntet werden.
In sterreich wurden in den letzten Jahren mehrere wissenschaftliche
Untersuchungen zum Potenzial von Biomasse in der Energiewirtschaft
erstellt (BRAINBOWS, 2007; EEA, 2006; KLETZAN et al. 2008). Diese Stu
dien betrachten jedoch das Potenzial an heimischer Biomasse als eine
naturwissenschaftlich-technische Fragestellung und behandeln die
damit verbundenen Opportunittskosten nur am Rande oder gar nicht.
Die Produktion der Biomasse fr energetische Zwecke steht jedoch
Integrierte Analyse einer Pappelproduktion in sterreich
43
teilweise in direkter Konkurrenz zur Produktion von Nahrungs- und

Futtermitteln (KLETZAN et al. 2008).
Der Beitrag versucht potenzielle Ackerflchen fr Kurzumtriebsflchen
rumlich explizit in sterreich zu verorten und beschftigt sich mit der
Frage, welche konomischen und umweltbedingten Auswirkungen ein
groflchiger Anbau von Pappeln zur Folge htte.
Das konomische Produktionspotenzial wird anhand der Grenzoppor
tunittskosten der Pappelproduktion bestimmt und rumlich explizit
dargestellt. Dazu sind Deckungsbeitragsannuitten von verschiedenen
Kurzumtriebsverfahren und von typischen, regionalen Fruchtfolgen
errechnet worden. Diese flieen zusammen mit Umweltindikatoren
(z.B. Bodenkohlenstoffspeicherung, Stickstoffemissionen) in das inte
grierte Biomasseoptimierungsmodell BiomAT ein, mit dem die Gren
zopportunittskosten und umweltbedingten Auswirkungen einer
groflchigen Pappelproduktion auf sterreichischen Ackerflchen
ermittelt werden. Mit der rumlich expliziten Modellanalyse und der
geographischen Darstellung der Ergebnisse lassen sich die Potenziale
und Konsequenzen einer groflchigen Pappelproduktion verorten,
was zur besseren Planung und wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung bei
tragen soll.
Im Kapitel Material und Methode werden die Datengrundlage sowie
der Arbeits- und Analyseablufe genauer beschrieben. Im Anschluss
daran werden die Ergebnisse der Modellanalyse prsentiert, diskutiert
und die wichtigsten Schlussfolgerungen abgeleitet.
2. Material und Methode

Als Datengrundlage fr die integrierte Landnutzungsanalyse wurden
mit einem Geographischen Informationssystem Daten zu Bodenformen
(sterreichische Bodenkarte 1:25.000), Topographie, Landnutzung,
Bewirtschaftung und Klima von Ackerflchen in sterreich verarbeitet.
Die Daten wurden auf Gemeindeebene und auf einem 1.000 m Raster
rumlich explizit aufbereitet. Die Wetterparameter Temperatur, Nie
derschlag, Sonneneinstrahlung, relative Feuchte und Wind wurden
von ausgewhlten Wetterstationen (STRAUSS et al., 2010) mit den ande
ren Standortdaten verschnitten. Aus den Bodendaten wurden 247 typi
sche Bodenformen anhand ihrer Typengruppe ausgewhlt und mit
Klassen der Hangneigung und Seehhe verschnitten. Fr jede Ge
44
meinde wurden bis zu drei typische Fruchtfolgen mit dem Modell

CropRota (SCHNHART et al., 2009) auf Basis der flchenstrksten
Ackerlandnutzungen je Gemeinde aus dem Integriertem Verwaltungsund Kontrollsystem--Datensatz, kurz INVEKOS, (BMLFUW, 2008a)
abgeleitet.
Die Pappelzuwachsleistungen, Ackerpflanzenertrge, Stickstoff
emissionen und Bodenkohlenstoffgehalte fr die verschiedenen
Fruchtfolgen, Anbau- und Umtriebsverfahren wurden mit dem bio
physikalischen Prozessmodell EPIC (Environmental Policy Integrated
Climate; WILLIAMS, 1995; IZAURRALDE et al. 2006) simuliert. Bei den
Kurzumtriebspappeln fhrten wir 30-jhrige Simulationen fr Verfah
ren mit zwei-, drei-, acht- und zehnjhrigen Umtriebsintervallen, so
wohl mit als auch ohne Dngung durch. Bei den typischen Fruchtfol
gen fhrten wir ebenfalls 30-jhrige Simulationen mit drei unterschied
lichen Dngungsintensitten (hoch, mittel, niedrig) durch.
Die Berechnungen der Deckungsbeitragsannuitten erfolgten fr Pap
peln im Kurzumtrieb nach STRMER und SCHMID (2007). Diese Berech
nungen beinhalten die variablen Maschinenkosten nach KLRichtstzen. Zu den Kostenkomponenten zhlen die Rekultivierungs
kosten (z.B. Bodenfrse), Pflanzenschutzkosten (chemisch und mecha
nisch) und die Dngungskosten (Phosphor, Kalium, Stickstoff). Fr die
Deckungsbeitragsberechnungen von Fruchtfolgen und Tierhaltung
wurde auf die Standarddeckungsbeitrge (BMLFUW, 2008b) zurck
gegriffen. Die variablen Kosten setzen sich hier aus den Aufwendun
gen fr Dngung, Pflanzenschutzmittel, Maschineneinstze, Saatgut,
Versicherungen zusammen. In den Erlsen wurden durchschnittliche
Prmien aus dem sterreichischen Programm zur Frderung einer
umweltgerechten, extensiven und den natrlichen Lebensraum scht
zenden Landwirtschaft (PUL) von 115 /ha fr den Verzicht von er
tragssteigernden Betriebsmitteln auf Ackerflchen (niedrige Dngerin
tensitt) mit einberechnet. Diese wurden zusammen mit Umweltindi
katoren in das rumlich explizite Biomasseoptimierungsmodell (Bio
mAT) zur Abschtzung der Grenzopportunittskosten und Umwelt
wirkungen einer Pappelproduktion in sterreich integriert. BiomAT
maximiert den Gesamtdeckungsbeitrag (TGM) der landwirtschaftli
chen Produktion auf den sterreichischen Ackerflchen. Dabei werden
die Deckungsbeitragsannuitten (c) der Pappelproduktions- und
Fruchtfolgealternativen (Index i) auf den verschiedenen homogenen
45
Landeinheiten (Index h) je Gemeinde maximiert. Die Pappelprodukti

on (Index e) ist ein Subset von i. Die einzelnen Produktionsaktivtten
sind in Form von Leontief Produktionsfunktionen in der Koeffizien
tenmatrix (Ah,i) beschrieben. Mit einer zustzlichen Beschrnkung kn
nen die unterschiedlichen Pappelproduktionsumfnge (s) in die Mo
delllsung gezwungen werden, welche auch die Grenzopportunitts
kosten der Pappelproduktion anhand des Schattenpreises liefert. Die
Entscheidungsvariable (x) findet somit die optimalen Produktionsfl
chen fr Pappel und Fruchtfolgen unter Einhaltung aller Beschrnkun
gen.
max TGM
s.t.
(A
(A
(c
h,i xh,i )
h,i
h,i xh,i ) bh
fr alle h
(1)
h,e xh,e ) s
h,e
xh,i 0
3. Ergebnisse und Diskussion

Die Modellergebnisse zur Pappelproduktion auf Ackerflchen in s
terreich zeigen, dass vor allem in Regionen des Alpenvorlandes, der
Sdoststeiermark, des sdlichen Wiens und des nrdlichen Burgen
landes von den hchsten jhrlichen Zuwchsen ausgegangen werden
kann (>6,5 tatro/ha). Hhere jhrliche Zuwachsleistungen und eine lan
ge Nutzungsdauer (30 Jahre) der Anlage ermglichen hhere durch
schnittliche Deckungsbeitragsannuitten.
In Abbildung 1 sind Deckungsbeitragsannuitten der Pappelprodukti
on auf Ackerflchen fr den dreijhrigen Umtrieb mit Dngung darge
stellt. Die Deckungsbeitragsannuitten der zwei-, acht- und zehnjhri
gen Umtriebsintervalle liegen deutlich unter denen der dreijhrigen.
Jedoch kann es auch bei dreijhrigen Umtriebsintervallen auf ungns
tigen Standorten zu negativen Deckungsbeitragsannuitten kommen.
Bei einer Darstellung der Verfahren mit den maximalen Deckungsbei
tragsannuitten pro Rasterzelle erweist sich bei 99% der Flche der
dreijhrige Kurzumtrieb als optimal, wobei hier zu etwa gleichen Tei
46
len der Anbau mit und ohne Dngung Vorzug erhalten. Bei den bri
gen Flchen dominiert das zehnjhrige Umtriebsintervall. Die hchsten
durchschnittlichen jhrlichen Pappelzuwchse werden mit der ge
dngten dreijhrigen Bewirtschaftungsvariante erzielt. Wrden die
1,2 Mio. ha Ackerflche komplett mit der zuwachsstrksten Umtriebsund Dngungsvariante bewirtschaftet werden, kann mit einem durch
schnittlichen jhrlichen Zuwachs von ca. 6,4 Mio. tatro pro Jahr gerech
net werden. Wird hingegen die gesamte Ackerflche mit der de
ckungsbeitragsstrksten Bewirtschaftungsvariante bepflanzt, ergibt
sich ein maximal jhrlicher Zuwachs von ca. 6,2 Mio. tatro pro Jahr.
Abb. 1: Durchschnittliche Deckungsbeitragsannuitten von Pappeln uf Ackerfl

chen im dreijhrigen Umtriebsintervall mit Dngung in Euro/ha.
Quelle: eigene Darstellung
Diese Ergebnisse wurden zusammen mit den Fruchtfolgeergebnissen

in das rumlich explizite Biomasseoptimierungsmodell BiomAT inte
griert, um die Grenzopportunittskosten und somit das konomische
Potenzial sowie die Umweltwirkungen der Pappelproduktion auf
Ackerflchen in sterreich abzuschtzen. Um die konomischen Po
tenziale eines groflchigen Pappelanbaus zu erhalten, wurden Szena
rien mit unterschiedlichen Produktionsumfngen fr die Pappelpro
duktion mit BiomAT durchgefhrt.
47
In Abbildung 2 werden potenzielle Ackerflchen fr einen 50%igen

Anbau von Kurzumtriebsflchen in sterreich dargestellt. Die Modell
ergebnisse zeigen, dass vor allem die Regionen des Alpenvorlandes,
groe Teile Niedersterreichs und des nrdlichen Burgenlandes fr
den Anbau von Kurzumtriebsflchen geeignet sind. Das heit, dass
dort die niedrigsten Grenzopportunittskosten im Vergleich zur bri
gen Ackerflche vorzufinden sind. Bei einem fnfprozentigen Pappel
anteil an der Ackerflche ergeben sich Grenzopportunittskosten von
ca. 63 /ha. Diese steigen bei einem 50% Anteil auf ca. 360 /ha an.
Die Sdoststeiermark ist zwar eine standrtliche Gunstlage fr die
Pappelproduktion, jedoch bereitet die Tierhaltung in dieser Region
hohe Opportunittskosten, sodass ein groflchiger Anbau wirtschaft
lich nicht geeignet ist.
Abb. 2: Verortung der Pappelflche auf 50% der Ackerflchen in sterreich.

Die Analyse des konomischen Potenzials beinhaltet auch den Ver

gleich unterschiedlicher Diskontierungsraten, die zur Berechnung der
Deckungsbeitragsannuitten in der Pappelproduktion herangezogen
wurden. Bei einer Diskontierungsrate von 5% ergeben sich bei einem
20%igen Anbau Grenzopportunittskosten von ca. 150 /ha. Bei einer
Diskontierungsrate von 6% beluft sich dieser Wert auf ca. 180 /ha
und bei 4% auf ca. 130 /ha. Diese Ergebnisse besttigen die theoreti
48
schen berlegungen, dass hhere Diskontierungsraten ceteris paribus

zu hheren Grenzopportunittskosten fhren.
Um den Einfluss des sterreichisches Programms zur Frderung einer
umweltgerechten, extensiven und den natrlichen Lebensraum scht
zenden Landwirtschaft (PUL) auf die Grenzopportunittskosten des
Pappelanbaus zu analysieren, wurden alle Berechnungen ohne Berck
sichtigung dieser Zahlungen bei den regional blichen Fruchtfolgen
wiederholt. Wie sich hierbei herausstellt, verringern sich die Grenzop
portunittskosten des Pappelanbaus um durchschnittlich ca. 2%.
Zustzlich wurden umweltbedingte Konsequenzen (Bodenkohlen
stoffspeicherung, Stickstoffemissionen) in der integrierten Landnut
zungsanalyse mitbercksichtigt. Die Modellergebnisse zeigen, dass
sich der gesamte Bodenkohlenstoffvorrat von Ackerflchen nur sehr
gering verndert. Hingegen knnten die Gesamtstickstoffemissionen
infolge einer groflchigen Pappelproduktion deutlich reduziert wer
den (vgl. Abbildung 3).
Abb 3. nderungen im Bodenkohlenstoffvorrat von Ackerbden bis 30 cm

Bodentiefe () und bei den gesamten Stickstoffemissionen () in Abhngigkeit der
Pappelproduktionsflche.
4. Fazit
Die vorliegenden Berechnungen zeigen, dass die hchsten jhrlichen
Zuwchse (>6.5 tatro/ha) in stlichen und sdlichen Teilen sterreichs
49
erzielt werden knnen. Die hchsten jhrlichen Pappelzuwchse und

Deckungsbeitragsannuitten werden im dreijhrigen Umtriebsintervall
mit Dngung erwirtschaftet. Die integrierte Analyse der Szenarien mit
verschiedenen Pappelproduktionsflchen zeigt, dass die niedrigsten
Grenzopportunittskosten derzeit in den Regionen des Alpenvorlan
des, in Teilen Niedersterreichs und dem nrdlichen Burgenland vor
zufinden sind. Trotz der standrtlichen Gunstlagen fr den Pappelan
bau in der Sdoststeiermark sind die Grenzopportunittskosten auf
grund der intensiveren Tierhaltung hoch, was die relativ geringen
Pappelflchen in der Region erklrt.
Der Vergleich unterschiedlicher Diskontierungsraten zur Berechnung
der Deckungsbeitragsannuitten ergab, dass hhere Diskontierungsra
ten zu hheren Grenzopportunittskosten und somit zu geringeren
Pappelflchen ceteris paribus fhren. Die Analyseergebnisse der um
weltbedingten Konsequenzen eines groflchigen Pappelanbaus zei
gen, dass die Gesamtstickstoffemissionen deutlich reduziert werden
knnen, whrend der Bodenkohlenstoffvorrat sich nur gering ndert.
Diese integrierte Landnutzungsanalyse mit BiomAT zeigt, dass die
konomischen Potenziale der Pappelproduktion wesentlich geringer
als die agronomisch-technischen Potenziale sind und unterstreicht die
Notwendigkeit von zustzlichen Analysen dieser Art. Deshalb werden
in weiterfhrenden BiomAT Analysen die Grnlandflchen ster
reichs sowie alle Naturschutzflchen in die Berechnungen mit einflie
en, die bessere Entscheidungsgrundlagen fr die Agrar-, Energie-,
Regional- und Umweltpolitik sowie zur integrierten Natur- und Raumund Landschaftsplanung liefern sollen.
Danksagung
Wir danken dem Jubilumsfonds der sterreichischen Nationalbank
und dem Forschungsprogramm proVision des BMWF sowie dem
BMLFUW fr die finanzielle Untersttzung der Forschungsprojekte.
Literatur
BMLFUW Bundesministerium fr Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Was
serwirtschaft (2008a): INVEKOS-Daten Integriertes Verwaltung- und Kontroll
system, Wien.
50
BMLFUW - Bundesministerium fr Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Umwelt und Was

serwirtschaft (2008b): Deckungsbeitrge und Daten fr die Betriebsplanung
2008. 2. Auflage.
INFORMATIONSMANAGEMENT
GMBH
(2007):
BiomasseBRAINBOWS
RessourcenPotential in sterreich. Studie im Auftrag der RENERGIE Raiffeisen
Managementgesellschaft fr erneuerbare Energie GmbH, Endbericht 07.05.2007,
Wien, 2007.
EEA - European Environment Agency (2006): How much bioenergy can Europe pro
duce without harming the environment? Luxemburg.
IZAURRALDE, R.C., WILLIAMS, J.R., MCGILL, W.B., ROSENBERG, N.J. und QUIROGA,
M.C. (2006): Simulating soil C dynamics with EPIC: Model description and test
ing against long-term data. Ecological Modelling 192(3-4), S. 362-384.
KLETZAN, D., KRATENA, K., MEYER, I., SINABELL, F., SCHMID, E. und STRMER, B.
(2008): Volkswirtschaftliche Evaluierung eines nationalen Biomasseaktionsplans
fr sterreich. WIFO, Wien.
MYLIUS, CH., FREIHERR von (1990): Wirtschaftlichkeitsberechnungen zum Anbau
schnellwachsender Baumarten im Kurzumtrieb auf landwirtschaftliche Flchen,
Diplomarbeit, Universitt fr Bodenkultur Wien.
SCHNHART, M., SCHMID, E. und SCHNEIDER, U. A. (2009): CropRota A Model to
Generate Optimal Crop Rotations from Observed Land Use. Diskussionspapier
DP-45-2009. Universitt fr Bodenkultur Wien.
STATISTIK AUSTRIA (2009): Bodennutzung in sterreich 2006 bis 2008. Wien.
STRAUSS, F., FORMAYER, H. und SCHMID, E. (2010): Climate Change data for Austria
and the period 2008 to 2040 with one day and km resolution. Diskussionspapier
DP-48-2010. Universitt fr Bodenkultur Wien.
STRMER, B. und SCHMID, E. (2007): Wirtschaftlichkeit von Weide und Pappel im
Kurzumtrieb unter sterreichischen Verhltnissen, Lndlicher Raum.
WILLIAMS, J.R. (1995): The Epic Model. In: Singh, V.P. (eds). Computer Models of
Watershed Hydrology. Water Resources Publications, Highlands Ranch, Colora
do.
Anschrift der Verfasser

Mag. Veronika Asamer
DI Bernhard Strmer
Mag. Franziska Strauss
Priv. Doz. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Erwin Schmid
Universitt fr Bodenkultur
Department fr Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
Institut fr nachhaltige Wirtschaftsentwicklung
Feistmantelstrae 4, 1180 Wien,sterreich
Tel.: +43 1 47654 3556
eMail: veronika.asamer@boku.ac.at

Modeling Climate Change and Impacts On Crop Production

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University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

Institute for Sustainable Economic Development

Modeling climate change and impacts on crop production

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

Institute for Sustainable Economic Development,

Department of Mathematics and Statistics, UC,

Vienna, May 2012

1.1 Research motivation and innovation ...............................................................1

1.2 Research objectives ........................................................................................4

2. Research methodology .........................................................................................5

2.1 Statistical climate modeling for Austria until 2040 ...........................................5

2.2 Integrated impact analyses of climate change ................................................7

3. Outline of the research articles and major findings ...........................................9

3.1 Modeling climate change and biophysical impacts of crop production in

the Austrian Marchfeld region .........................................................................10

from a statistical climate change model ..........................................................10

3.3 Modeling impacts of increased drought occurrences on crop production in

3.4 How sensitive are estimates of carbon fixation in agricultural models to

input data? ......................................................................................................12

3.5 Integrated assessment of crop management portfolios in adapting to

climate change in the Marchfeld region...........................................................12

3.6 Optimal irrigation management strategies under weather uncertainty and

3.7 Integrated assessment of large scale poplar plantations on croplands in

Maximumtemperatur, solarer Strahlung, Niederschlag, relativer Feuchtigkeit und

Produktionsrisiko erstellt. Die Analysen in dieser Dissertation zeigen, dass die

Optimierungsmodelle adquate Werkzeuge fr die Abschtzung der Auswirkungen in

Research motivation and innovation

Today it is nearly non-controversial that climate change associated with a global

weather data and statistical methods such as regression and bootstrapping

compensated by using ensembles of the developed climate change scenarios;

well as for developing cost-effective adaptation strategies (i.e. management and

methodology should allow a better quantification of uncertainties of near future

Statistical climate modeling for Austria until 2040

In this thesis, regression techniques and repeated bootstrapping methods

Yt t m(s) sin(2mt) m(c) cos(2mt) t

where Y is the climate variable (maximum temperature and minimum

(homoscedasticity). Moreover, the procedure of keeping monthly sequences

Integrated impact analyses of climate change

In order to assess the profitability of different crop management systems in the

3. Outline of the research articles and major findings

Strauss F, Schmid E, Moltchanova E, Formayer H, Wang X. 2012.

Strauss F, Formayer H, Schmid E. 2012. High resolution climate data for

Research article 2 has been published in the International Journal of

Strauss F, Moltchanova E, Schmid E. 2012. Modeling impacts of

Tum M, Strauss F, McCallum I, Gnther K, Schmid E. 2012. How sensitive

In research article 4, the sensitivities of two biophysical process models, EPIC

Strauss F, Fuss S, Szolgayov J, Schmid E. 2011. Integrated assessment

Agrarkonomie, Band 19(2): 11-20.

Strauss F, Heumesser C, Fuss S, Szolgayov J, Schmid E. 2011. Optimal

Research article 6 contributes to the literature in assessing optimal irrigation

3.7 Asamer V, Strmer B, Strauss F, Schmid E. 2011. Integrated assessment

I to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate

and their evaluation. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M,

Tebaldi C, Lobell DB. 2008. Towards probabilistic projections of climate change

Research article 3 is under review

Tum M, Strauss F, McCallum I, Gnther K, Schmid E. 2012. How sensitive are

Management, 7:3, DOI:10.1186/1750-0680-7-3.

Tum et al. Carbon Balance and Management 2012, 7:3

How sensitive are estimates of carbon fixation in

interaction of plants with the atmosphere can be applied

Tum et al. Carbon Balance and Management 2012, 7:3

roots, stems and leaves, to CO2 or water. In the litera

sensitivity to the spatial resolution of the input datasets.