Book Review 7

Review

Title: Climate Change Modeling, Mitigation, and Adaptation

Author(s):

Editor(s): Surampalli, R.Y., T.C. Zhang, C.S.P. Ojha, B.R. Gurjar, R.D. Tyagi, and C.M. Kao

Publisher: ASAE

ISBN 13: 9780784412718

Published: 2013

Pages: 708

Cost: $170

Rating (1-5): 3

Submitted By: Hatfield, Jerry L.

Date posted: November 08, 2013

Changes in climate at the local, regional, national, and international weather are evidence that disruptions to agriculture, food supplies, and human welfare are occuring.

Changes in climate at the local, regional, national, and international weather are evidence that disruptions to agriculture, food supplies, and human welfare are occurring. Climate Change Modeling, Mitigation, and Adaptation provides an overview in three general areas: Basic Sciences and Vulnerability Assessment; Modeling and Predicting; and Reducing and Adapting, and divided into a series of chapters which provide detail on each of these topic areas. The main editor for this volume is Rao Y. Surampalli from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and an international expert in the area of energy, environment, and water policy. The co-editors of this volume represent the international community in expertise on engineering and the environment. The authors for these chapters are from the international community with their expertise focused on a specific area. In the first section, Basic Sciences and Vulnerability Assessment, portions of each chapter are redundant and often show the same general information on emission trends, projections, and amounts. Many chapters appear to be a collection of papers because they often refer to figures which are printed in black and white but ask the reader to reference color of lines and notations which are impossible to detect. The cost of climate impacts is often given in Rupees without a reference year for the monetary value, which makes interpretation of the cost difficult. This is an extremely important aspect of any book so the value of transactions can be assessed as the age of the book increases. Agriculture is a small part of this book and mentioned in Chapter 4 as part of the emissions inventory of different sectors contributing the overall emissions of greenhouse gases. Agriculture is also mentioned in Chapter 2 as part of the solutions to reduce CO2 emissions around the world by contributing to biomass to replace oil for fuel, stopping de-forestation and re-establishing 300 million ha of new tree plantations, and applying conservation tillage to all crop land, which would be 10 times the current usage of conservation tillage. Drought is extensively discussed in Chapter 10 where the role of climate change in hydrologic extremes is evaluated as part of the potential changes in the hydrologic cycle. The role of agriculture both as a source and sink for CO2 is presented to help the reader place agriculture in the context of other sectors of society. One of the most extensive discussions of agriculture is presented in Chapter 16, “Modeling the impact of climate change on agriculture and food production.” A variety of crop models covering a number of crops is presented in a way to introduce the reader to the potential use of crop models as part of the climate change discussion. This effort should help a non-agricultural reader understand some of the complexities to modeling future climate effects on agricultural systems. If the reader is expecting a treatise on agriculture, this book doesn’t provide an in-depth coverage; however, for a general introduction to climate change and potential mitigation strategies, this book provides that level of information. One valuable aspect is the comparison of the different climate treaties which have been adopted. Overall, this volume provides valuable information for a reader to obtain background on the contributing factors to climate change and mitigation. There are some aspects of the book which need to be overlooked to obtain this information. I would recommend this book as an introduction to the topic as a general reading or to provide an alternative viewpoint on the topic of climate change but is probably not detailed enough to be a text for classwork.