PLoS One. 2015 Oct 27;10(10):e0140490. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0140490. eCollection 2015.
- 1International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Km 17, Recta Cali-Palmira, Apartado Aéreo, 6713, Cali, Colombia.
- 2International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Hotel Seminole, 2 Cuadras al Sur, Managua, Nicaragua.
- 3World Coffee Research, 578 John Kimbrough Blvd, College Station, Texas, 77843-2477, United States of America.
Abstract
Cultivation
of Coffea arabica is highly sensitive to and has been shown to be
negatively impacted by progressive climatic changes. Previous research
contributed little to support forward-looking adaptation.
Agro-ecological zoning is a common tool to identify homologous
environments and prioritize research. We demonstrate here a pragmatic
approach to describe spatial changes in agro-climatic zones suitable for
coffee under current and future climates. We defined agro-ecological zones suitable to produce arabica coffee by clustering geo-referenced coffee occurrence locations based on bio-climatic variables. We used random forest classification of climate
data layers to model the spatial distribution of these agro-ecological
zones. We used these zones to identify spatially explicit impact
scenarios and to choose locations for the long-term evaluation of
adaptation measures as climate changes. We found that in zones currently classified as hot and dry, climate change
will impact arabica more than those that are better suited to it.
Research in these zones should therefore focus on expanding arabica's
environmental limits. Zones that currently have climates better suited
for arabica will migrate upwards by about 500m in elevation. In these
zones the up-slope migration will be gradual, but will likely have
negative ecosystem impacts. Additionally, we identified locations that
with high probability will not change their climatic characteristics and are suitable to evaluate C. arabica germplasm in the face of climate change. These locations should be used to investigate long term adaptation strategies to production systems.
