Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in Yolo County, California.

In agriculture, one of the key challenges to effective climate change adaptation and greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation is strengthening the dialog between scientists who evaluate multi-scale adaptation strategies and the many stakeholders who contribute to policy and management decisions.  Here, we highlight four case studies from Yolo County, California, that examine how stakeholder involvement supports shared learning and planning for climate change at several scales within an agricultural landscape. In the first case study, field-scale water management practices to decrease water use and GHG emissions are evaluated in a joint research venture between university scientists and industry leaders in the production of processing tomatoes. Second, we consider how local land managers may capitalize on programs sponsored by governmental and non-governmental agencies to restore riparian zones, sequester carbon and maximize other ecosystem benefits within a multi-functional working landscape. The third case study describes collaboration between researchers and the local water district managers to develop an integrated hydrologic model of the Cache and Putah Creek watersheds, for use as a decision support tool for adaptation under different climate change scenarios. In the final example, we examine how local officials, scientists, growers and other rural stakeholders are contributing to an inventory of Yolo County’s GHG emissions and ultimately to the development of local and regional climate action plans that consider the role of local agriculture in climate change adaptation and GHG mitigation. The value of such collaborations is that they provide important opportunities for information exchange and can lead to specific tools or broader frameworks for decision making that can enhance local adaptive capacity, and also GHG mitigation.